What Is Sports Massage?

Chapter 2


What Is Sports Massage?




Objectives


After completing this chapter, the student will be able to perform the following:


1 Compare and contrast performance vs. fitness.


2 List the cumulative effects of the strain of peak performance.


3 Identify the experts who work with athletes.


4 List goals and outcomes common for this population.


5 Explain the categories of sports massage.



Key Terms





















Performance vs. Fitness



Objectives




Sports massage is targeted to support fitness, help reduce the demands the sport places on the body, increase the ability to perform the sport, and enhance and shorten recovery time.


Who is an athlete? What is fitness? An athlete is a person who participates in sports as an amateur or as a professional. Athletes require precise use of their bodies. The athlete trains the nervous system and muscles to perform in a specific way. Often the activity involves repetitive use of one group of muscles more than others, which may result in hypertrophy and changes in strength, movement patterns, connective tissue formation, and compensation patterns in the rest of the body. These factors contribute to the soft tissue difficulties that often develop in athletes.


Fitness is a lifestyle. It is a body/mind/spirit endeavor. One who is fit typically lives a moderate life in a relatively simple way. Characteristics and behaviors enable a person to have the highest quality of life, an overall state of health, and the maximum degree of adaptive capacity to respond to the environment, as determined by genetic predisposition. There is a balance in the human experiences of energy expenditure and recovery, and the ease of this reflects one’s fitness.


Fitness and wellness represent relatively the same realm. Fitness is necessary for everyone’s wellness, but the physical activity of an athlete goes beyond fitness; it is performance based. Performance is the capacity to complete sport-specific activity with skill and competence. For optimal performance, fitness is a prerequisite.


Because of the intense physical activity involved in sports, an athlete may be prone to injury. Massage can be very beneficial for athletes if the professional performing the massage understands the biomechanics required by the sport. If the specific biomechanics are not understood, massage can impair optimal function in the athlete’s performance.


When accumulated strain develops for any reason, the fitness/wellness balance is upset. Illness and/or injury can result. For competing athletes, a major strain is the demand of performance. Performance exceeds fitness, requiring increased energy expenditure, which in turn strains adaptive mechanisms and increases recovery time. Fitness must be achieved before performance, and fitness must be supported to endure the ongoing strain of peak performance, the highest level of skill execution.


Those who have become deconditioned and are unfit owing to a bad diet, lack of proper exercise, accelerated and multiple life stresses, as well as other lifestyle habits, will eventually experience some sort of illness or injury. This injury/illness can be acute such as a sprained ankle, or of a chronic nature such as chronic fatigue. There seems to be a genetic tendency for a specific breakdown to occur; this can be considered a genetic weak link. It is likely that we all have these weak links, and that strain will affect this area first.


Traumatic injury is injury caused by an unexpected event. Accidents are a common cause of traumatic injury. Rehabilitation following this type of injury often requires physical training. A person may not consider himself or herself an athlete but may suffer the same results of stress common in athletes—post-activity soreness, fatigue, and joint pain, for example. The goal of rehabilitation is function.



Peak Performance is not Peak Fitness


Contrary to general beliefs, athletes, especially competing athletes, may not be fit or healthy. In fact, they may be quite fragile in their adaptive abilities, both emotional and physical. This means that any demands to adapt, including massage, should be gauged by the athlete’s adaptive capacity. Lack of understanding about the demands placed on athletes often leads to inappropriate massage care. The assumption is that these are strong, healthy, robust individuals, but this is not always true. They may be fatigued, injured, in pain, immunosuppressed, or emotionally and physically stressed and truly unable to adapt to one more stimulus in their life. Unless these stressors are recognized and principles of massage therapy are correctly applied, athletes may be subject to inappropriate massage that includes invasive methods that at the very least are fatiguing and, at worst, cause tissue damage.


Athletes experience body fatigue and brain fatigue. Massage can help restore balance if properly applied. If the body is tired, do not task it more; instead, help it rest. If the brain is tired, do not task it more; help it rest. Often the best massage approach is the general nonspecific massage that feels good, calms, and supports sleep. In physiologic terms, this produces parasympathetic dominance in the autonomic nervous system, which supports homeostasis and self-healing.


Experts specializing in the care of athletes are sports medicine physicians, physical therapists, athletic trainers, exercise physiologists, and sports psychologists (Box 2-1). It is especially important for athletes to work under the direction of these professionals to ensure proper sports form and training protocols. The professional athlete is more likely to have access to these professionals than are recreational and amateur athletes, who may not have the financial resources to hire training personnel and can incur injury because of inappropriate training protocols.



Box 2-1


Athletic Training


Profile of Athletic Trainers



Definition of Athletic Training


Athletic training is practiced by athletic trainers (ATs)—health care professionals who collaborate with physicians to optimize activity and participation of patients and clients across age and care continuums. Athletic training encompasses the prevention, diagnosis, and intervention of emergency, acute, and chronic medical conditions involving impairment, functional limitations, and disabilities. ATs work under the direction of physicians, as prescribed by state licensure statutes.


Athletic trainers are well-known, recognized, qualified health care professionals.


ATs are highly qualified, multi-skilled health care professionals under the allied health professions category as defined by the Health Resources Services Administration (HRSA) and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Athletic trainers are assigned National Provider Identifier (NPI) numbers, and the taxonomy code for athletic trainers is 2255A2300X. Athletic trainers are listed in the Bureau of Labor Statistics in the “professional and related occupations” section.



State Regulation of Athletic Trainers



• Athletic trainers are licensed or otherwise regulated in 47 states; efforts continue to add licensure in Alaska, California, and Hawaii.


• The National Athletic Trainers’ Association (NATA) has made ongoing efforts to update obsolete state practice acts that do not reflect current qualifications and practice of ATs under health care reform.


• Athletic trainers practice under the direction of physicians.


• ATs work under different job titles (wellness manager, physician extender, rehab specialist, etc.).


• ATs relieve widespread and future workforce shortages in primary care support and outpatient rehab professions.


• Academic curriculum and clinical training follow the medical model. Athletic trainers must graduate from an accredited baccalaureate or master’s program; 70% of ATs have a master’s degree.


• 46 states require ATs to hold the Board of Certification credential of “Athletic Trainer, Certified” (ATC).

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Jun 22, 2016 | Posted by in MANUAL THERAPIST | Comments Off on What Is Sports Massage?

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