Tag Archive for: Sports Injuries Prevention

Why Athletes Love Sports Massage

Why Athletes Love Sports Massage

Who doesn’t love a great massage? While everyone could benefit from the tension-relieving benefits of a relaxation massage, massage therapy goes beyond relaxation by using treatment-specific techniques to relieve deep muscle tension, relieve pain and facilitate healing. For athletes and highly active individuals, sports massage not only helps mitigate injury but can also help improve performance. Read more to learn what makes sports massage unique.

What Sports Massage Is + Its Benefits

While all massage treatments address varying degrees of muscle tension, sports massage specifically targets areas of the body affected by activity-related tension, wear, or injury. This targeted approach helps facilitate tissue health and healing in the following ways:

  • Relieves pain and muscle tension
  • Increases circulation
  • Stimulates the movement of superficial lymph
  • Reduces swelling and inflammation
  • Relieves muscle fatigue, cramping, and stiffness
  • Improves flexibility 
  • Improves endurance and efficiency of movement
  • Improves range of motion and muscle response
  • Improves tendon flexibility
  • Encourages proper body & muscle fibre alignment
  • Improves recovery
  • Facilitates healing from overuse trauma and injury
  • Helps prevent and relieve DOMS (delayed-onset muscle soreness)

Sports massage can benefit anyone who lives an active lifestyle. Athletes in particular love sports massage because of the double-duty benefits it can deliver. While reducing muscle tension, sports massage can also help improve athletic performance, recovery from exertion, muscle endurance, efficiency, and performance. 

For example, muscles and tendons that are tight and rigid are prone to a limited range of motion, forcing the alignment of the body to and other muscles adjust to compensate. Over time, this can lead to inefficiencies in performance, suboptimal movement patterns, and overuse injuries. For competitive and high-performance athletes, even the slightest advantages count, and so maintaining optimal body mechanics is paramount.

What to Expect During Your Treatment

Your initial sports massage treatment will start with an assessment. During your assessment, a registered massage therapist will note your health and athletic history, any prior injuries, and assess areas of your body experiencing activity-related pain, tension, wear, & tear. 

During a sports massage, a registered massage therapist may utilize various massage techniques, including deep tissue, lymphatic drainage, pressure point, and myofascial release, to address specific areas of pain, tension, stiffness, or swelling. 

It’s not unusual to experience a bit of momentary discomfort or soreness during your treatment—especially during pressure point application or myofascial release, but you shouldn’t feel sharp pain. Thus, continual feedback between you and your RMT is essential to the overall success of the treatment.

Patients typically report feeling immediate improvement in pain, tightness, and tension following their sports massage. You will also likely notice increased warmth and circulation. Depending on your specific condition and the techniques used during your treatment, you may also experience mild tenderness immediately following your treatment. 

Signs It’s Time for a Treatment

  • A feeling of tightness and heaviness in your extremities
  • New pain or discomfort that doesn’t resolve itself following rest
  • Prolonged DOMS (delayed onset muscle soreness) and swelling following exertion
  • Prolonged recovery post-activity
  • Limited range of motion and muscle fatigue
  • Persistent muscle “knots” and cramping

The Best Time to Schedule Sports Massage

While sports massage treatments can be carried out on an as-needed basis, some athletes prefer a more systematic approach, scheduling their treatments to take place surrounding athletic events as follows:

Leading up to activity: To help prepare the muscles and tendons, improve range of motion and endurance, and prevent strain and injury.

Intermittently during activities: To relieve muscle soreness, fatigue strain, and cramping.

Immediately following activities: To encourage recovery, reduce swelling, and preserve muscle and tendon flexibility.

Throughout on and off-season: To help facilitate recovery and as part of their seasonal conditioning and rehabilitative work. 

The ideal approach to sports massage is when your practitioner tailors your treatments to your specific needs and goals. 

Take the Next Step

Whether you are an athlete or lead a highly active lifestyle, to find out if sports massage is right for you. Contact Diversified Health Clinic about booking a sports massage assessment & treatment with one of our registered massage therapists. Call (250) 382-0018 or book an appointment online.

We offer direct billing and weekday and weekend appointments. Please view our hours of operation and location details here.

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Private Victoria Rehab Gym Helps You Recover From Sports Injuries

Private Victoria Rehab Gym Helps You Recover From Sports Injuries

Few things are harder for athletes than being stuck on the sidelines due to illness or injury. Prolonged recoveries are especially hard on the psyche and your hard-earned physical conditioning. When sports injuries hold you back from the activities you enjoy, it helps to have a game plan for moving forward and an environment conducive to healing and mobility. Here’s how our private Victoria rehab gym can help you get back in the game. 

Recovery-Centric Environment

Our guided training not only helps you recover from sports injuries but helps prevent new ones while improving your overall performance. 

It can be tempting to continue with your regular training while injured, but you run the risk of directly or indirectly aggravating any pre-existing injuries further. When training with an injury, it’s also common to place undue stress on other areas of your body with movements that can lead to muscle imbalances and mobility issues. This is why physiotherapist and kinesiologist guided training is vital. 

At our Victoria rehab gym, you’ll be working with experienced practitioners that will guide you through exercises, stretches, and treatments specifically tailored to helping your body repair and recover from injury while preventing new ones. 

We’ll guide you through recovery-focused movements designed to increase range of motion, improve mind and muscle connection, and stimulate specific stabilizer muscles that haven’t been firing optimally. For example, recovery for a common MCL strain may include physiotherapist-guided training that focuses on activating and strengthening stabilizer muscles and correcting incorrect movement patterns to treat injury and prevent re-injury. 

Multidisciplinary Experts at Hand

As part of Diversified Health Clinic in downtown Victoria, our Victoria rebab gym is reserved for Diversified patients only. This means you’ll never have to wait in line for equipment, and you’ll receive expert-guided training throughout your workout. You’ll also have direct access to our multidisciplinary practitioners and treatments, including physiotherapy, massage therapy, chiropractic care, acupuncture, IMS/Trigger Point Dry Needling, and more. Our patients benefit from our combined approach to helping you heal from sports injuries as quickly and comfortably as possible. 

Learn More About Our Victoria Rehab Gym and Sports Injuries Treatments

Take the first step on your road to recovery by booking an appointment with one of our physiotherapists today at (250) 382-0018 or book an appointment online. We offer direct billing and weekday and weekend appointments. Please view our hours of operation and location details here.

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Sport Injury Prevention | health care victoria

Below is a list of sport injury prevention tips on how to help prevent sport sprains and strains.

1. Make sure that you are using the proper fit and correct size of sports equipment.

2. Make sure that the equipment is approved by the organizations that governs each of the sports.

3. Maintain equipment and check the maintenance of the playing surfaces that you will be playing or practicing on.

4. Ask if the team coaches have training in first aid. Make sure that someone in the facility or at the sporting event has first aid.

5.  If you are new to a sport and just starting to play, make sure that you pick a team or league according to  your age and skill level.

6. Have proper preparations – make sure you know about the sport, how it is played and understands the rules.

7.  It is important to do warm-up exercises and to stay hydrated.

8. One of the most overlooked prevention tips is to stay alert and mindful during any sporting event. This is not the time to be daydreaming or distracted.

These tips will go a long way to keeping you safe and injury free.

However, even by following all the above tips on Sport Injury Prevention,  accidents do happen. The most important factors after a accident is to see your health care practitioner as soon as possible.

Please call our clinic at 250-282-0018 for more information on Sport Injury Prevention  | Health care Victoria

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