What is a Sports Massage?

Many hear the term Sport Massage, but what exactly is it?  

Sports massage is similar to other types of western massage techniques in that it stimulates circulation of the blood and the lymph fluids and can improve stretching of tendons and connective tissue.   But it also provides specific benefits ideal for athletes such as relief of muscle tension and increasing muscle blood flow. It can also speed up muscle recovery and remove lactate after exercise. There are four types of sports massages:

Before The Event -- A short, stimulating sport massage given before a sports event for the parts of the body to be involved in the activity.

After The Event -- A sport massage delivered within two hours of the event, to help normalize your body's tissues.

Restoration -- given during training to allow the athlete to train harder and with less injury.

Rehabilitation -- Designed to alleviate pain due to an injury as well as returning the body to health.

Here at Thai Sport Massage, you benefit from the rehabilitative approach to Sports Massage, since we are rarely near a major sports event.  Our intent is usually two fold - help aid recovery and reduce/manage scar tissue from an injury.

By the way, we employ these methods to anyone who can benefit from a Sports Massage.

During our Sports Massage session, we start with effleurage, which means "to skim" or "to touch lightly on", is a series of massage strokes used in Swedish massage to warm up the muscle.  Then we move to pettrisage, which means "to knead" and are massage movements with applied pressure that are deep and compress the underlying muscles. We may also do wringing, skin rolling and pick-up-and-squeeze motions.

These actions are all performed with the palm of the hand, the surface of the finger and also the thumbs., compression, with broadening strokes and range of motion, which is deeper tissue massage.

Whether you experience a Thai Sport Massage or a Thai Therapeutic Massage, we use the same Sport Massage techniques.  The only difference is that with Thai Therapeutic we will add the benefits fo Myofascial or Active Release technique.  This more advance technique is very useful to relief painful movements of the arms and feet.

At Thai Sports Massage, you get the benefits of Thai Massage coupled with a Sports Massage and more, depending on your needs.  We are truly a fresh and new approach to massage therapy.