EXERCISE, SPORTS PERFORMANCE AND MASSAGE

This is achieved, not just by speeding up full recovery from competing/performing and recovery from injury, but if it is integrated into a training programme, positive improvements will follow.

Training is, of course, essential to good performance but it has its downside too. Even if overuse injuries are avoided, there are often minor strains, small muscle tears and other microtraumas that develop in training which, if they go undetected and untreated can adversely affect performance days (and sometimes weeks) later and can be made worse by performance and subsequent training. Indeed many soft tissue problems encountered in later life begin with undetected and therefore overlooked minor injury when younger.

Massage is also a vital part of the 'rest' phase of training. Adequate rest is crucial in a balanced training programme and with massage helps to alleviate the non-training stresses which are increasingly accepted as a negative factor in overuse injuries. It is no accident that world renowned Kenyan 'elite' runners include an hour of massage everyday in their training programme, as it is considered vital to their improvement as athletes.

The England Rugby Union team took masseurs as well as physiotherapists to the 2003 World Cup and the England footballers employed several masseurs at their camp during Euro 2003.

For the 'Weekend' sportsmen and women who maybe don't 'warm down' as well as they should, massage in an excellent way of helping muscles recover from their efforts and prepare for the next challenge. Muscles that retain their tightness and tension cannot be strengthened by weight training until the 'tightness' is eliminated and sometimes this can only be achieved by physical manipulation i.e. massage and stretching. Thus the effectiveness of training can be greatly improved by regular sports massage and it goes without saying that many injuries sustained during exercise and sport can be alleviated by good quality Sports Massage.

The Whitwick Massage Centre offers the following treatments:

• Sports and Remedial Massage
• Hot Stones Massage
• Reflexology
• Holistic Massage
• Indian Head Massage