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THE MASSAGE AMONG SPORTSMEN, AN ALLY BEFORE AND AFTER THE EFFORT
Literary search and editing by CATCM's team

Whether you are a Sylvie Fréchette or Bruny Surin, or a sportsman of Sunday, the massage therapist can, by his manipulations, help you before and after the effort. He will be able to also help of the compulsive athlete, who pushes the sporting practice until harming his health.

The sport and its consequences

Nobody could dispute the benefits of the sport. On the other hand, all the sportsmen, professionals as well as amateurs, know the " tiredness of the sportsman" at one time or another. One defines this tiredness as the transitory reduction in contractile qualities of muscle fiber. This tiredness appears in various ways. Feelings of ache or even of frank pain are often associated there they constitute the principal reason for consultation in massage therapy.

Falls, collisions, clumsy movements abrupt can cause muscular tear and breakdown, dislocation, sprain, distorsion, luxation. Frictions, stretchings and overloads can, for their part, lead to tendinitises, bursitis, lumbagos and micro traumatisms of all kinds. These sporting consequences constitute as many other good reasons to consult a massage therapist.

Certain sportsmen push obsession until becoming compulsive about it. All their life is centered on the sport that they practice. The training becomes their first concern, at the detriment of any other activity, and they often impose themselves an irrational diet. Compulsive athletes consult a massage therapist only when they cannot function any more because of a wound generally caused by an excessive request of muscular tissues, bone or cartilage.

Massage therapy and sport

Sport massage is an approach, which has as a base the traditional Swedish massage and Kinesitherapy. From the one it borrows the manipulations, from the other, the assessments muscular and articular and different other operations. The targets of this type of massage are to prepare the sportsman for the effort, as well on the psychological level as on the physical level, to prevent the wounds and, after the sporting practice, to treat the lesions as well as the wounds and their after-effects.

The massage therapist takes care of establishing the medical check-up of his client: he notes the wounds and the lesions, current, passed or repeating, and the possible causes of limitations of movement. A muscular and articular assessment makes it possible to the massage therapist to measure the forces and the weaknesses of the muscles which are requested by the sport that its client practices. This assessment also enables him to detect the compensations caused by the weakness or the unsuspected contraction of certain muscles during precise movements.

The massage is however not an end in itself. Amateur or professional, the sportsman must also learn how to relax, to concentrate and had a good nutrition. In addition of the operations that he makes, the massage therapist must inculcate these basic rules to the compulsive athlete fine psychologist, it will do it by establishing a relation of assistance to lead it to cure of his " obsession"

Benefits of the massage

The person who is stressed before a sporting performance will benefit a great deal from the massage which makes fall the tension. The preparatory massage to the effort is also stimulating and one invigorating: it prepares the organism for the action and reheating the muscles by blood surges. The manipulations used at this stage are effleurages, the major slipped pressures, petrissages, the frictions and the percussions.

After the activity, for the period of restoration, the massage therapist has recourse to effleurages, the major slipped pressures, petrissages, the frictions, the sanding of the trigger points and to shakings. The relaxation which the massage gets makes it possible to the sportsman to get better sleep and thus to recover, with for consequence which it gets up in better form the following day, ready again to start the day.

 

 

 

 

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