You’re training, you’re competing, you’re tight — what type of massage do you need?
If you are regularly training, competing in events, or even if you’re a Defence member preparing for or recovering from fitness assessments, other events or competitions; you may assume you need a “sports massage” to help fix or alleviate sore and aching muscles.
However, be aware that in its truest context, “sports massage” is just five to 15-minute massage immediately prior to or after an event, which is great if that’s all you want or need.
If you do regular exercise or are involved in regular competition and want a thorough massage to balance muscles and postural alignment to prepare for or recover from events, you need a REMEDIAL massage. This could be a single or multiple massages anywhere from several days to several weeks before or afterwards.
You can still go to a sports massage therapist because they should already be a qualified remedial massage therapist with a good knowledge of anatomy and physiology and have acquired additional skills in stretching techniques, exercise therapies and specific muscle testing — just make sure you ask for the right type of massage. Any therapist always should check your feet, hips and jaw for alignment or dysfunction issues as they are critical to every aspect of the body, in particular muscle balance and movement – no matter where your problem areas are.
If your main focus is just on supervised exercises and stretching, rather than muscle massage, an exercise physiologist and/or physical training instructor is your best bet.
If you need several sessions to begin rehabilitating significant sporting injuries (or post surgery), you need a physiotherapist. Then you need a remedial massage to help all the compensating muscles to recover. That will also speed up the healing process by helping to realign your overall posture and reduce the impact on your damaged tissue.
Townsville is a fantastic city for players and spectators in amateur and professional sports and for people who just want to keep fit. It’s probably THE most community-spirited, sports-minded city in Australia.
Just make sure you are getting the right maintenance your body needs to keep moving.
About the author
David Hall has been a massage therapist for over 23 years and specialises in remedial massage and overall musculo-skeletal therapy. He is Diploma qualified and is a nationally accredited and qualified massage trainer, a member of the Australian Association of Massage Therapists (AAMT) and an associate member of Townsville-Mackay Medicare Local.
