Massage for Physique Development

Massage: Can It Really Help Enhance Performance and Physique Development?
By Suzy Devers

Many think of massage as a luxury for pampered, touchy-feely types (pun intended). The fact is, massage offers a whole range of therapeutic benefits, especially if you’re trying to develop your physique or enhance your performance!

Building Better Bodies Through Massage
To grow, you have to continually put more and more stress on your muscles. This is known as the overload principle. Your goal is to force your muscles to continually adapt to heavier weights or greater intensity. Effective training means overloading your muscles and then allowing them to recuperate.
Sounds simple, but it’s a fine line. If you don’t push your workout intensity enough, you won’t grow. But if you push the intensity beyond your ability to recuperate, you get hammered with an injury. And even a small injury can contribute to loss of performance in the long run.

An Ounce of Prevention Never Felt So Good!
Massage may help prevent all sorts of traumas, such as strains in muscle and connective tissue, spasms and pain that restrict movement, swelling and edema, and metabolic waste buildup that can slow recovery and cause muscle fatigue. In other words, massage can help you stay healthy and flexible so you can push your workout intensity safely.

Let’s look at two scenarios. In the first, you develop a muscle spasm but ignore it. Eventually, the spasm becomes inflamed. The fluid (edema) accompanying the inflammation forms a thick, glue-like liquid that binds the muscle fibres into an adhesion. Now you’ve got a double whammy: fibres in spasm that are immobilized by edema. This prevents the free flow of blood, oxygen, and vital nutrients to the area. Without these healing substances, that muscle spasm isn’t going away. Soon it’s hard to even move your arm, let alone lift weights.

The second scenario starts out like the first: You develop a muscle spasm. But this time, you immediately get a massage. This improves your circulation and promotes blood flow to the area being massaged. This allows oxygen and nutrients to rush to the site so it can start repairing itself right away. This prevents the muscle spasm from becoming sore and inflamed so you prevent trouble and stay flexible.
Let’s also say exertion produced a lot of metabolic debris. Instead of building up and making your muscles toxic, the massage quickly flushes that debris from your body. Massage has this amazing ability because it increases lymph drainage. Lymph is a clear fluid that flushes metabolic wastes out of your system. Because lymph is circulated by gravity or by muscle contractions, massage gives it a “push” to enter the bloodstream up to 25 percent faster!

Recover Faster and Get Back to Your Workouts!
These scenarios illustrate massage’s preventative effects. But massage also helps you heal faster after an injury so you can get back to your workouts sooner. That’s because increasing lymph drainage and improving circulation also speeds recovery.

In a 1990 study, subjects performed leg extensions until they couldn’t continue. One group received a 10-minute massage; the other rested for 10 minutes. The group that simply rested showed a significant decrease in strength, while the massage group showed an increase. Another study in 1990 showed that both exercise and massage were more effective than simply resting for recovery, but massage’s effects lasted far longer than exercise alone.

Improve Flexibility and Keep Growing!
Another important benefit is increased flexibility. Intense exercise puts a lot of stress on your body. In cases of severe stress, connective tissue can thicken and become more rigid. This thickening starts at the site of an injury. But because connective tissue is interconnected, a trauma in one area can result in a trauma in a remote area as well. Once these injuries pile up, it gets hard to apply the overload principle. To keep pushing the intensity of your workouts, which you need to do to keep growing, flexibility is key. Massage helps you stay flexible because pressure, stretching, and friction all raise the temperature of your tissues. Even this slight increase in temperature generates enough energy to promote a more fluid substance within the tissue. This reduces rigidity, facilitates waste elimination, and promotes the transport of nutrients into the muscles, so you can move without pain.

Promote Healthy Scar Tissue
Massage can also promote strong, supple scar tissue if you do injure yourself. As scar tissue develops, collagen fibres form a weave to repair tissue damage. Initially, this weave or patch is arranged randomly. Trouble is, later it can rearrange itself along the pull in the muscle, so instead of a parallel scar, you’ve got a transverse scar that pulls on your muscle, restricting movement. But deep-friction massage can help the scar tissue arrange itself in a more parallel fashion, cutting down on those limiting transverse connections. It also breaks down adhesions and fibrous crosslinks that can restrict range of motion.
Increase Mental Alertness and Energy

Fast surface massage such as kneading helps boost mental alertness necessary for competition or for a tough workout. In one study, massage boosted mental alertness in office workers who received 20 minutes of chair massage three times a week. Participants showed brain waves consistent with enhanced alertness. They also had less fatigue and improved cognitive skills. It’s as if stimulating the skin’s tactile nerve endings sends a wake-up call to your brain.
Massage also boosts energy levels by helping supply the muscles with enough oxygen and nutrients. When the body can’t supply these key ingredients, muscle fatigue sets in. Muscles also become fatigued when lactic acid builds up. Massage increases removal of cellular waste, such as lactic acid. In addition to speeding recovery time, this boosts muscular energy.

Release Beneficial Hormones
Studies show the caress of another person releases hormones that can speed healing, ease pain, and even clear your mind. Over a decade ago, child psychologist Tiffany Field showed that premature infants massaged for 15 minutes three times a day gained weight 47 percent faster than their preemie counterparts given standard intensive-care treatment. And it’s not because the preemies with the healthy weight gains ate more; they were processing food more efficiently. The massaged babies were also more alert, slept better, and scored higher on mental and motor tests. Chances are pretty good massage is beneficial for adults too!

How Often Is Enough?
So how often should you get a sports massage to experience all these benefits? That depends on your goals and the intensity and frequency of your workouts. Some Olympic and elite athletes receive sports massage at least twice a week during peak training. Certainly, all athletes can benefit from a weekly sports massage to help maintain performance and prevent injury.

Everyone is different, so let your stress load, work load, and pocketbook be your guides. But anyone who’s serious about their sport should consider a minimum of one massage every three weeks. Also consider getting a massage after your hardest workout of the week for even better results.

Sports Massage vs. Massage for “Everybody Else”
There are different types of massage, and some may be better for athletes than others. Sports massage, or athletic massage, uses many of the same techniques as other forms but focuses heavily on injury prevention. It’s also meant to help athletes break through plateaus, boost performance, and extend their careers. Although sports massage incorporates the basic techniques of Swedish massage, it focuses specifically on contracted muscle areas. Another thing that sets sports massage apart is it’s typically performed at specific times with different goals in mind.

Pre-event massage is a warm-up massage that’s fast-paced, stimulating, and superficial. The focus is on enhancing circulation.
Inter-competition massage is performed during breaks in the event. It’s short and light and focuses on relaxing muscles that are being used or are about to be used.

Post-event massage, or the warm-down massage, is deeper and focuses on reducing muscle swelling and soreness, promoting relaxation, and reducing recuperation time.

Tips and Techniques
If you’re serious about incorporating sports massage into your training routine, look for a certified sports masseuse with a thorough understanding of anatomy and physiology. However, you and your partner can share some great basic massage strokes at home. They’re not meant to address specific injuries as an actual sports massage would, but they’ll offer the benefits of relaxation as well as improved blood and lymph circulation. In other words, they’re very therapeutic.

Sliding, also called “effleurage,” involves sliding your whole hand, palm and fingers, across the skin with steady pressure. This technique is great for spreading oil over your partner’s body and for helping relax surface muscles. Use long, gliding strokes 10 to 20 inches in length. And make sure your strokes are always gentle and reassuring. Use your palms for larger surfaces and your thumb and fingers for smaller areas. Set up a pace of about 15 sweeps per minute. Increase the pressure as you move towards the heart.

Kneading, also called “petrissage,” involves rhythmically squeezing, lifting, and releasing the muscle. This is typically done on groups of muscles, rather than on individual muscles. Use two-handed kneading for larger muscle groups such as the quadriceps. Squeeze and lift with one hand, then with the other. Keep up a moderate tempo as you continue along the middle of the muscle, rather than near the tendons. Alternately loosen and tighten your grasp on the tissue. Limit strong kneading to five minutes and keep to well-padded areas such as the buttocks and thighs.

Compression is one of the major strokes used in sports massage. It’s a simple technique performed with either the palms or the fingers. Here’s a compression stroke using your palms: overlay one palm on top of the other; using your body weight, gently and repeatedly compress the tissue beneath with the heel of your hand. Movements involve a rhythmic straight up-and-down pumping action directed towards the bone. The idea is to compress the tissue and then reduce the pressure.
Friction is one of the oldest massage techniques; it’s even mentioned in ancient texts. It’s often used to increase blood flow for a warming effect.

Circular friction is done with one finger or with the same finger of both hands. Move your finger(s) in a circular direction, but cover no more than one square inch. Apply enough pressure so your finger doesn’t slide across the skin but rather the finger and the skin move together as a unit. Continuous rhythmical repetitions feel like a singular movement. If you use two fingers, draw little circles in opposite directions with each finger. Don’t exceed 10 minutes in any one area.

Skin rolling is great for tight areas such as the back. It increases skin pliability and improves circulation. All you do is pick up the skin and gently pull it away from the muscles beneath it. To move along the skin, you can alternate hands or use two hands, moving sequentially across the skin. Before performing skin rolling, warm up the skin with a soft stroke. Also, keep in mind if skin circulation is poor, this method can be painful unless you’re really gentle.

Percussion encompasses a variety of techniques that use fast, rhythmic movements with the hands or fingers. It’s great for increasing circulation. Usually several techniques are intermixed. Here are two popular strokes: Slapping—use the palm or pads of your fingers to lightly slap the area. Cupping—press the thumb and forefingers together and flex your hand, so it’s slightly concave (like a shallow cup). Strike with the outer rim of the cup, including the heel of the hand, but don’t use the center of your palm.

Conclusion
Massage isn’t just for touchy-feely types. In fact, athletes may be the only people who can truly appreciate this great pleasure. So next time you’re feeling guilty about wanting a nice back rub, just remember, you may be enhancing your performance while just lying there!