Sports Massage
What is Sports Massage?
The term ‘sports massage’ arose when the therapeutic benefits of massage were popularised among athletes, and can be used interchangeably with the term ‘clinical massage’. Both entail a knowledge-based approach to treating soft tissue conditions and disorders.
Typically, a sports massage will include a variety of techniques including deep tissue massage, myofascial release, trigger point therapy, Swedish massage and sports stretching, applied with a broad or specific focus tailored to the needs of the client.
Here are some types of sports stretching techniques you may encounter during a sports massage:
Passive Stretches
There’s something about having someone else take you into a stretch that feels incredibly productive.
Aside from feeling great, stretches are good for helping to increase range of motion in a joint, by lengthening and improving blood flow to the tissues. I’ll often take my clients into a passive stretch where I ask them to breath through, as we move the joint to it’s end of range.
PNF Stretching
Aside from passive stretches, dynamic stretching techniques add a different dimension to stretching - employing a neurologic reflex to further enhance the efficiency of the stretch.
One of our favourite techniques is PNF stretching (a.k.a. proprioceptive neuromuscular facilitation). It’s also known as the contract-relax stretch, because it involves taking your joint to its end of range and then getting you to resist gentle pressure for a number of seconds before letting go and allowing the therapist to take you further into the stretch.
PNF stretching makes use of what is known as the tendon reflex (a.k.a. the golgi tendon organ reflex), which inhibits a muscle from contracting in response to excessive contraction of that muscle.
This allows us to take the muscle further into a stretch than would otherwise be possible.
Active Isolated Stretching
The other technique we sometimes use is known as Active Isolated Stretching (AIS), which involves getting the client to actively engage their agonist muscles, before applying two seconds of stretch to the joint’s end of range for its antagonist muscles.
This technique exploits a neurologic reflex known as reciprocal inhibition, which dictates that as a muscle contracts, its agonist relaxes.
It takes roughly two seconds for what is known as the myostatic stretch reflex to kick in - this is the body’s natural protective mechanism that causes a lengthening muscle to contract once it has been taken beyond a certain point in order to protect the muscle belly from being torn.
By limiting the stretch to two seconds, we can further enhance the stretch before the muscle begins contracting , allowing for better and faster results.
The isotonic contraction involved also makes AIS stretching a great warm up stretch, as this brings a greater amount of blood and oxygen to the muscles, allowing for better functional optimisation.