With the dream of summer long gone and the heating turned up to the maximum, the winter months can be anything but filled with good cheer – especially once Christmas and the New Year are out of the way.
With snow and ice building up on your car and the roads becoming treacherous, you’ve probably thought about getting your vehicle in for a check-up – or, at the very least, giving that radiator fluid a top-up and adding a bit of anti-freeze to the washer fluid.
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But what about your body? You may not think it, but now is the time to be paying even closer attention to recovery. If you’re a footballer or rugby player you’ll be closing in on the business end of the season and now is not the time to be sidelined through injury or poor form. And sports massage can be crucial to making a difference when the competition hots up and the conditions cool down.
There are three key benefits to regular sports massages:
Injury prevention
Sports massage loosens muscles, improves circulation and helps to eliminate the build up of waste products in the body, which cause fatigue and prevent valuable oxygen and nutrients from making it to the muscles to repair torn tissues.
Injury rehabilitation
Athletes who have already suffering from an injury or just a minor niggle can speed up recovery – getting them back to full fitness and out on the field of play while others are struggling to keep up the pace.
Fitness gains
One of the most crucial developments in sports science in recent years has been a greater understanding of the role that recovery plays in optimising an athlete’s performance. Taking the time to get a sports massage after matches can be more beneficial to an individual’s conditioning than cramming in an extra gym session that will place strain on already-fatigued muscles.
A sports massage can at improve circulation, eliminate the build-up of lactic acids and ease tight muscles to provide all of these benefits. What many amateur sportspeople don’t know is that maintaining the fitness developed during those gruelling pre-season sessions is as much about managing recovery as it is about piling in more exercise hours at this point in the year.
If you would like to try and improve your recovery and rehabilitation with the finest massage therapy in London, why not give us a call at Physio4Life?
Don’t let your aerobic engine grind to a halt mid-season or have your body pack up on you when you need it most. Regularly service your body with the help of sports massage Putney and you’ll still be able to hit top gear – even deep into extra time.