Blending regular massage therapy sessions into one’s fitness routine can be a wonderful way to pump up the amount of rest the muscles and joints receive. Receiving massage therapy can also help fitness enthusiasts speed healing, avoid injury and continue to achieve better results when they are off the massage table.
The reason massage therapy can be such an important part of a consistent fitness regimen is because the hands-on healing offered via massage therapy offers a huge dose of rest and rejuvenation to the physical body as well as the mind. This serves to balance the wear and tear and stress and strain placed on muscles and joints, and even one’s mental capacity, when engaging in intense fitness pursuits.
Of course, the definition of an intense fitness pursuit will vary by individual. For the senior citizen, walking a couple miles a day or every other day might be considered an intense fitness pursuit. For sedentary or overweight individuals who are just starting to get in shape, walking around the block once or twice a day might feel like pure fitness.
At the other end of the spectrum are professional athletes and fitness enthusiasts who have been committed to improving their physical health and performance for quite some time. These people may run marathons and triathlons, compete in body-building competitions and engage in other highly demanding fitness activities. In the case of professional athletes, obviously this group is involved in serious fitness training and competition on a regular basis.
However, no matter where your clients’ fitness falls on this spectrum—most people may be somewhere more in the middle—the benefits of booking consistent sessions of massage therapy still stand. Taking time to rest and heal one’s body with the help of a skilled massage therapist is a wonderful way to ensure your clients can continue to engage in their chosen fitness pursuits without feeling burned out or increasing their risk of injury.
For starters, massage therapy is well known for its ability to ease tense, tight and sore muscles. This can be a huge help when clients have just begun their fitness journey and every muscle in their body aches. It also can help when they alter their fitness routine, because this usually results in sore muscles as well.
However, even if your have been engaging in their fitness regimen for quite some time, they can still reap big benefits from regular massage therapy sessions. In other words, their muscles may not be screaming in pain like they did the first week they started lifting weights, but those same muscles may be restricted and filled with tension from constant wear and tear and from repeating similar movements, such as squats or curls.
In this scenario, the fitness veteran may soon see that consistent massage therapy sessions can not only help to alleviate underlying muscular tension, but also increase his or her range of motion by releasing restrictions.