Massage therapy is most often perceived as a luxury service because of its association with spas and resorts which offer a pampered experience with steep prices. Nothing wrong with that! I enjoy a good spa massage from time to time because to me, there’s nothing more relaxing than having a eucalyptus mask and hot towel over my face while someone rubs the tension out of my feet. Non-spa oriented massage on the other hand offers therapeutic sessions catered to each individual where the goal shifts from relaxation to relief and wellness. As another deep tissue practitioner once told me, “A good massage should hurt a little.” And although he left some impressive rug burns on my shoulder from a towel assisted myofascial massage which hurt more than just a little at the time, the tension was gone and I could feel the added length in my arm’s extension that night at fencing practice.

Massage isn’t always comfortable, but just like many circumstances in life, it can be rewarding to ease into discomfort. I’m reminded of this every time I work with Dr. Acoba, or DocDwayne as he prefers. He also reminds clients to relax through their strained cries, pain sweats, kicking feet, and hands gripping the underside of the massage table when administering his brand of soft tissue manipulation. After years of working at the back of the same crossfit gyms, veteran members there to workout hardly glance over at the tortured souls across the room where DocDwayne has set up his massage tables. When the client’s muscle releases, DocDwayne will usually say “there it goes” as he eases up and off of the client, gently massaging the muscle to calm the somatic nervous system after an intense bout of trigger point work. Not all of Dwayne’s clients are that intense, some of them are just there to relax! We always work within our client’s comfort zone, never leave bruises, and usually see our clients again for their regularly scheduled appointments. That being said, people have a wide range of pain and pressure tolerances, and athletes in particular are some of the most tolerant bunch I’ve ever worked with if it means making gains in muscle and wellness. But what kind of gains are we talking about exactly?

Most professional athletic teams and schools employ massage therapists to help maintain the health and performance of their athletes. Even corporate offices will hire chair and table massage therapists as a wellness benefit. The biggest advantages one can gain from regular massage therapy are related to improved circulation, reduced muscle tension, and increased mobility and flexibility. 

• Improving circulation helps deliver more oxygen and nutrients to muscles while evacuating metabolic waste like lactic acid. The buildup of lactic acid ​​is a byproduct of anaerobic metabolism, which occurs when the body cannot supply enough oxygen to meet the energy demands of exercising muscles. As lactic acid accumulates, it leads to a decrease in pH levels within the muscle cells. This drop in pH, or increase in acidity, interferes with muscle functions and contributes to fatigue and weakness. By applying slow and even pressure to a muscle towards the heart, a massage therapist helps circulate out the metabolic waste to make room for nutrient rich blood to flow in. You can think of your muscle as a sponge and the metabolic waste as gunk: squeezing the dirty sponge expels the gunk, then loosening your grip under a running tap allows the sponge to absorb the clean water all around it.

• Reducing muscular tension and working out fascial adhesions, also known as knots and trigger points, allows muscles to recover and perform to their full potential. A muscle’s power comes from its elasticity. If a muscle’s fibers are tense, they will not be able to fully lengthen nor contract, resulting in a reduced power output. Massage helps muscles regain elasticity through stretches and applied pressure, using the stretch effect and interacting with the golgi tendon organ (GTO) to relieve muscle tension. Stretching helps lengthen muscle fibers, while GTO activation sends inhibitory signals to the spinal cord causing a reflex relaxation of the muscle. The GTO is like a pressure sensor which sends an inhibitory signal when the tension from a muscle contraction is strong enough to trigger it, hopefully before a muscle or tendon tears. However, massage therapists can safely ‘hack’ the GTO into activating using applied pressure.

• Increasing mobility and flexibility can reduce the risk of injury and improve athletic performance by allowing for greater freedom of movement. By addressing and bringing awareness to suboptimal tension agreements like muscle imbalances, asymmetries, and compensatory movement patterns, massage reduces the risk of overuse injuries. By promoting mobility and flexibility, the body can enlist broader muscle groups to perform movements more optimally and relieve the strain for smaller and weaker muscles.

Whether it's stress relief, pain management, athletic performance enhancement, or injury prevention and recovery, regularly scheduled therapeutic massage offers benefits beyond treating oneself to a pampered experience. Massage therapy is an effective form of preventative health care, and can save you a trip to the doctor’s office for more serious stress injuries. If strain and tension aren’t addressed, they can develop into tendonitis or muscle and tendon tears which could require surgery. Unfortunately, western medicine tends to focus on interventional and intensive care rather than preventative care. If you want to read more about why the American healthcare system seems to deprioritize preventative care, I’ll talk about it in my next post! In short though: illness has been monetized, and preventing illness isn’t as profitable as of yet…