The Benefits of Massage on Distance Event Training

So you have signed your name on the dotted line and you are officially registered for a long distance race, whether that be a half or full marathon, a 10k or a fun run! You might have already started some preparations for the event or you might not, either way training must now step up a gear.

Preparing for distance events

Whether this is your first event or your twenty-first, your training should be viewed with extreme care and attention to ensure you remain injury free while increasing your mileage. Training should prepare both you and your body for the challenge that is long distance endurance exercise. However, all your efforts could be thwarted by your muscles inability to repair damage caused in training sessions and successfully adapt to new demands.

Stretching

With such a high exercise frequency and training load indicative of long endurance exercise, a few stretches at the end of a run quickly become ineffective at encouraging the muscles repair adequately before your next training session. Therefore, it becomes necessary to further address this issue to avoid hitting a plateau and falling behind schedule.

This is the perfect opportunity to incorporate deep tissue massage into your training regime.

Sports massage

Deep tissue massage has multiple physiological and psychological benefits to those seeking to increase mileage and push towards completing their running event while remaining injury free.

Physiological effects of massage:

• Increased supply of nutrients to tissues improving their health and aiding healing and repair
• Aided removal of metabolic waste products from the tissues assisting in recovery
• Reduced pain by removal of pressure as a result of congestion and metabolic waste
• Increased range of movement and therefore a reduced risk of injury
• Reduction of muscles tension and pain
• Increased functioning of the muscular system

Psychological effects of massage:

• Relaxation from a reduction of anxiety, tension and stress
• Increased feeling of mind-body awareness
• Improved self-confidence and self-efficacy
• Relieve mental stress and promote wellbeing
• Enhanced sleep quality

These benefits of massage will help you prepare for the event, not just during recovery time but also support you to reach your goals when you are out there running and putting in the hard work!

Better performance

This allows you to push harder, run for longer, and run faster in training as well as giving you the peace of mind knowing that you are doing all you can to prepare your muscles, body and mind for the upcoming event.

REMEMBER! Massage can benefit you and your body in the week before a race as a pre-event massage and the week after the race as a post-event massage. These massages help you to optimally prepare for and recover from the race you have worked so hard to train for.

Deep tissue, pre-event and post-event massage is available at all of our clinics. For more information, call us on 03303 334 123 or use our contact form.