Sports Massage

After my first sports massage on my lower back (which made me feel that all the air was being squeezed out of me) I felt much better and came to enjoy my short sports massages as part of my physiotherapy. So when I went back to physio, this time with my company paying for it, I was very excited about getting six sessions of sports massage. It was so painful that I decided I'd prefer the back pain.

Overall my experience of sports massage has not been good.

Most of the sports massage I have had has felt very aggressive, directly working on the point of injury and was often more painful than the injury itself. I've even been begging one physiotherapist to stop while she told me "it has to hurt to do any good". Now some people may believe this, I do not. I've recently deepened my understanding of deep tissue massage and have found it to have some benefits with some injuries, but I think that we have to be careful in any therapeutic practice to make sure the therapy isn't worse than what we're trying to heal!

I have had blissful sports massages,

but overall I would rather go for a nice gentle massage or, if I choose to have a deep tissue massage, I'll work with massage therapists who I know and trust to listen to me when I ask them to take it easy on me.

Most massage therapists have told me that any massage is good after exercise when you can sometimes overtone and tire muscles (yes, that's me) and I do think that most massages are as effective if not more so than specific sports massage. It seems to me that the one advantage of sports massage is that it is often carried out by a physiotherapist or someone with specific sports massage training so they can have a better understanding of injuries (sports or everyday), but for me nothing beats an intuitive healing massage from anyone who knows how to listen (with their ears or their hands).

As at November 2012

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