Whilst we know that many professional sports men and women receive regular massage as part of their overall program this does not mean it is specifically sports massage. In fact what most people consider sports massage is in fact Deep Tissue Massage and Sports Massage more correctly refers to the type of treatment carried out pre and post event. As an example of this George Kousaleos, founder of the Core Institute, tells of one of his fellow students who on there graduation as practioners of structural integration traveled to california and set his table up at the side of the track where the Santa Monica Track Club trained. He waited a few days before anybody finally came over, this was about 1977, and asked what he was doing. He explained what he did and asked if he'd like to try it. The athlete did, liked it and before long he was treating the whole team. Who was the that first guy? It was Carl Lewis, multi olympic gold medal winner, and the guy himself became the team massage therapist.

The type of work carried out pre and post event is primarily designed to increase the blood flow, as part of the warm up, through the musculature to be used during the exercise and to remove the waste products afterwards. For the sportsperson, not only does massage help to achieve this both pre and post exercise, it improves the conditioning of the muscles. This assists flexibility and eliminates any congestion in the musculature, thus allowing you to both perform better and lessen the likelihood of injury.

The athlete will also receive regular massage of the type that we all tend to think of as Sports Massage. This is essentially Deep Tissue or Advanced Remedial Massage the main difference is that the approach is  ofetn more general than when coming with a specific problem, assuming they get regular treatment. An assessment is still done, though shorter and more general than if it was in the initial stages of a treatment cycle. This is due to the regular nature of the treatment resulting in a much greater familiarity with the specific problem areas of the person involved. The treatment is more focused on maintaining the flexibility and preventing adhesions from occurring than in more remedial treatments that occur in the first few visits of any new client. This is the form of treatment that you would receive once recovery from an injury had been achieved and you were receiving regular maintenance appointments. This is because once we have estabilished your specific problem areas we an give you some simple exrecises to perform to help you address these problems and allow us to zone in on anything unusual that may crop up as you develope better awareness of your body.