UpClose & Personal - Mike McGillicuddy

I am always amazed when I travel around the country and ask Massage Therapists who advertise Sports Massage to define Sports Massage. While visiting a Spa in the Orlando area I saw Sports Massage listed on the Spa Menu. I asked a therapist what they did when someone asked for Sports Massage? The therapist replied, " real deep work."

I have attend numerous workshops where the presenter explained that the type of massage being taught would help athletes perform better, so they considered it to be Sports Massage. Many Sports Massage workshops are offered by various presenters who also have very different views on what constitutes Sports Massage.

I was lucky to have some great Sport Massage instructors like Benny Vaughn, Jack Meagher and Aaron Mattes early in my education. I always followed a personal philosophy of listening to a presenters Sports Massage concepts and then set out to apply them to see if they worked for me.

So what is Sports Massage?

I would like to share with you my definition of Sport Massage. Sports Massage: is the specific application of massage techniques, hydrotherapy protocols, range of motion/flexibility protocol and strength training principles on athletes to achieve a specific goal.

I definitely found that to perform Sports Massage properly it required an understanding of distinct concepts that differed from other types of massage. One extremely important area of education necessary for providing appropriate Sports Massage is understanding exercise physiology.

There are three key principles for understanding what type of Sports Massage is appropriate to apply to an athlete at any given time. I call them the when, what and why of Sports Massage. They are Timing, Technique and Intent and they all require an understanding of what physiological changes in the tissue you are trying to create for the athlete when you provide Sports Massage.

Timing refers to whether the massage is a Pre-Event, Post-Event Recovery, Maintenance or when an athlete has an injury or requires rehabilitation.

Technique includes effleurage, friction, pettrisage, vibration, shaking, compression, broadening strokes, direct pressure, cross fiber friction, range of motion and stretching.

Intent includes warming up, increasing blood flow, aiding recovery from exertion, increasing flexibility, improving strength, improving posture and, at times, irritating tissue.

Lets look at a few examples of how Timing, Technique and Intent work. If you needed to provide a Pre-Event Massage, and the intent is to warm-up and increase blood flow, some of the techniques I would use would be friction, compression, shaking and stretching. If your focus is to provide a Post-Event Massage and the intent is to aid recovery from exertion, some of the techniques I would use would be effleurage, pettrisage, compression, broadening strokes and range of motion.

So you can see Sports Massage could never be as simple as learning one technique or one type of modality or just working deep. It requires that a therapist have a thorough understanding of the sport the athletes are participating in. Have an understanding of the athletes mind set required to play the sport and a Sports Massage Therapist must be able to arrive at an accurate assessment, design a proper treatment plan and monitor the results.

I believe the questions every Sports Massage therapist should always ask are: What is the intent of the massage I am providing?

What physiological change in the tissue am I trying to create?
What massage techniques are the most efficient at creating the physiological effects desired?
Did I get the physiological change in the tissue that was desired?

You can see that it is very difficult to define exactly what Sports Massage is. It take years of education, years of experience and a love of athletics to begin to master the multi disciplined approach to the art of sports massage.

E-mail: SpiritMcG@aol.com