Massage and Endurance Sports: What’s the Benefit?
The owner working on a client at the “24-Hour Race” in Tucson
For the last decade, I’ve practiced sports massage with various types of athletes in endurance sports, weight lifting, and team sports. Each sport requires a different type of athletic effort and benefits from different types of massage. In this article, I’ll focus on endurance sports such as cycling, running, and triathlon, and how massage can best benefit athletes competing in these sports.
Today sports massage is a widely integrated aspect of Olympic-level and elite-level athletic training across the world. Because of the sheer amount of hours that endurance athletes spend training each week, day after day with little time to fully recover, well-applied sports massage helps them recover faster and more completely. Faster recovery equals an increased level of output each day. In my experience, I’ve seen endurance athletes get the most “gains” out of their training when they’re receiving 30- to 40-minute flush treatments once per week during low-impact training, and every other day or even every day, during their intensive training and competition season.
Not all massage therapy is good at all times for all competing athletes. Because different types of touch bring about different physiological responses, there are certain applications of massage that are good for athletes in the throws of intense training or competition and other types that are counter-productive during that time.
I’ve come across many people who think that deep tissue work is good for athletes during competition season. The belief seems to be that elevated training intensity requires deeper, more intense massage. The truth is that yes, deep tissue can be good for athletes, but only at certain times during their training, or when it’s needed. In order to support the best outcome for the athlete, we need to pay close attention to how they’re feeling and what phase of training they’re in before we decide what type of touch to apply. When an athlete is training or competing on a daily basis, their time for recovery is very short. While they’re pushing themselves to new heights of athletic ability day after day, their bodies are going through multiple physiological processes to support the need for heightened physical output. The body is literally undergoing a daily metamorphosis. When we as massage therapists work on someone during this building and recovering phase, it’s important that we apply touch that supports the quickest recovery possible, instead of creating a new process that puts further stress on the body, as in the case of deep tissue massage.
In order to explain the processes that an athlete is going through and the appropriate massage approach to support them, I’d like to go over three different systems of the body.
The first and most important is the nervous system
During intense training and competition, an athlete’s nervous system spends a lot of time in the “fight or flight” state. During this time, the body sends most of its energy to the cardiovascular system and skeletal muscles to produce as much energy and strength as possible. The athlete will stay in this state until the body can metabolize the hormones (adrenaline/ epinephrine and noradrenaline/norepinephrine) that were released during the “fight or flight” stage of training. The sooner a massage therapist can administer the type of touch that helps calm the nervous system down and flush blood out of tight areas, the more the athlete will be able to recover before they hit the road again.
When a massage therapist puts their hands on a client, they’re communicating with their nervous system. They can either keep the athlete in a state of fight or flight by applying painful touch, or help them transition to a “rest and recovery” state by administering calming, integrative touch or touch that takes tension off of the nerves.
Calming and integrative touch is not super light, nor heavy. It’s in between, with the intention of calming the system and taking the pressure out of tense muscles. Long, broad strokes or firm but gentle and kneading strokes will tell the body that it’s safe to move into rest and recovery. There are also some friction strokes that will help calm down overly tight muscles that are still holding from the day’s athletic effort. These strokes will also affect the Cardiovascular System, immune system, and/or lymphatic system.
The cardiovascular system
During heightened athletic output, especially endurance activity, the body increases blood volume. This helps bring more hydration to all the tissues of the body. Increased hydration helps the body cool down, transport hormones, electrolytes, nutrition, and oxygen to the muscles and other tissues. With increased blood volume and muscle contraction combined, the muscle tissue becomes harder and slightly swollen. I like to picture the muscles at this point as hyper-active factories, bustling with people constantly delivering and picking up packages. It’s a traffic jam of sorts for the muscle tissue and joints. It can take days for the body to flush out all of the excess fluid, unless we help speed up the process with foam rolling, scraping, and/or massage. Sports massage techniques can help to dramatically speed up the body’s process of absorbing this extra fluid and using it to release toxins built up during extreme effort. The massage therapist will gently knead the muscle tissue, picking it up and putting it down rhythmically. It’s like shaking out the laundry, and helps the tissue process the fluid it’s holding onto, much more quickly. Foam rolling and scraping will also help to soften tension that was built up during athletic effort. This is crucial for heart health, stress, and tension. When we build up tension in the body, the hardening of tissue actually creates resistance for the heart and blood flow, making the heart work harder in order to get blood to all of the tissues and joints in the body. When we administer massage after athletic training and competition, we decrease the pressure that resists blood flow throughout the body. This supports the heart and cardiovascular system, leaving us less fatigued, and making future efforts less exhausting for the body.
The immune system
When an athlete pushes themselves to new levels of physical performance, especially during competition, one of the most impactful things their body is doing is shredding old muscle fibers. This happens so the body can create bigger, stronger muscle fibers that will support the new, heightened levels of athletic performance of intense training. It’s the body’s way of adjusting output capacity to the athlete’s need requirement. When these muscle fibers are shredded, this leaves behind microscopic remnants of damaged tissue. It’s the immune system’s job to come in and take the damaged tissue away from the “injury” site so that the body can prepare to build new muscle. The immune system cells use the blood and the lymph in order to travel through the body, collecting waste and bringing it to the liver and kidneys to be discarded. Tissue repair brings inflammation and adds volume to the increased blood plasma circulating in the body. This can create a feeling of pressure or stiffness in the limbs and joints being used most. The process of tissue repair is part of why the athlete becomes fatigued. The body is undergoing so many processes at once, to support the activity as well as clean up after it and prepare for the next bout of activity. What well-applied massage therapy does for endurance athletes is it helps circulate light, oxygenated blood to the tissue, and filter out the heavier blood of intense activity. This also helps to flush out inflammation, hormones, and immune system cells so they can all be metabolized by the body in a quicker manner than when allowing the body to recover on its own. Seasoned athletes and sports massage therapists call this type of massage a “flush”.
So, while our touch is helping an athlete’s nervous system move from fight or flight to rest and recovery, it is also helping to flush fluids through the tissue. This type of massage therapy feels very relaxing for the client, and may even put them to sleep. This is a good thing. When the client deeply relaxes and even falls asleep, the body focuses all of its energy on recovery. The athlete is much more likely to be alert and ready the next day when it’s time to get back out on the training field. Their muscles, connective tissues, and joints will have lighter, oxygenated blood in them instead of heavy, hormone- and immune system cell-laden blood. There will also be less lactate build-up in their muscle tissue because massage speeds the repair process up for them.
One can easily see why massage therapy is mistaken for a relaxing treatment after athletic endurance because it IS relaxing for the client. However, simply calling it “relaxing” sidesteps the power behind the process. Though sports massage has gained a lot of popularity as time has gone on, I believe that many people still have much to learn about how impactful it is for endurance athletes, and how necessary it is for athletes who want to reach their peak performance.
If we begin to see what sports massage can do for an athlete physiologically, we will understand why those who receive regular treatments have fewer setbacks, recover faster, and reach greater performance heights. Perhaps we will even consider it a non-negotiable part of training and competition.
