Relaxation and opening muscles knots, are maybe two the most common reason why people seek massage therapist help. But, if we eliminate relaxation and tight muscles, is there are any other reasons to for the massage. Often people wait until something is wrong and they suffer pain, should you wait that long? No!
We don’t always feel muscles knots, or tight muscles, especially if we have suffered them a long time, our body is getting familiar with them and doesn’t complain as it thought it’s the normal state to be. Our body still might send us signals to tell that everything is not right, these signals might be headache, visual disturbances, dizziness, numbness of hands or feet, etc. There are tons of symptoms that might be caused by tight muscles, and sometimes symptoms are in different location than tightness. Tight muscles can squeeze our blood vessels and nerves, which cause signal to body.
Massage help open those knots and release tightness, but it’s not only help prevent them. Massage affect circulation by increasing it, which improves waste elimination. If you are training a lot (and stretching), your muscle contract plenty of times during exercise, there are shortening and lengthening movement. Once you stop your exercise, your muscles feel pumped up, as they are a little bit shorter as they normally be. You might know that next day feeling, after leg work out when walking is feeling ridiculous, your muscles shrunk themselves to shorter length as its feel more comfortable, couple days later you feel better and train them again, same thing again they shorten, this movement eventually lead that your muscles used to be short state, when the blood and all the waste in your circulation can flow freely, which leads, worse performance, you might start to struggle to lift heavier weights.
When to go massage therapist? It really doesn’t matter when you go to massage, but there are several thing to consider. If you are about to race weekend, it might be the best decision go to massage just before it, if you are don’t the therapist and how your muscles will react to massage. It’s normal that muscles might feel sore couple days after the massage, especially if you are not used to going massage or there been a long break. The best thing is to find therapist who you like and stick to it, communicate, tell when you have been training and competition, what kind of training, so the therapist know how to massage. As race season massage differ from training season or off season massage. And using one therapist, he/she gets to know how your body react to it, this guarantee better results.
If you train every day or don’t find time to go massage on your free day, do your exercise before the massage, as your muscles and nervous system might not work as properly as normally right after massage, and training straight after lower the effect of massage.
How often should you get massage? This is very personal, it depends your body state, how often do you train, your jobs, your feeling, and of course money. But if you are very tight, it could be a good idea take intensive series at the beginning, as it rare that all the tightness are released at once, and muscles tend to shrink them back to the starting point as they are used to being in there. So, you might have to go, 3-6 times in short period of time (about every four days, but less than week. Once the tightness is released it’s good to go massage once in the month or twice. You will learn the good space, but don’t wait that long you feel tight again.
Remember, massage don’t and shouldn’t hurt every time!