Bodywork - More than a Massage

Sports massage is probably one of the best known and accepted modality of bodywork. Its beginnings go back as far as 30,000 years ago, where recent discoveries in France, Africa and Australia indicate that sports massage was used as a ritual in ceremonial activities. Popular sports in China's early history (4000 BC) were gymnastics and acrobatics. Monuments to the Pharaohs of ancient Egypt depict a range of developed sports, such as swimming, fishing, high jump and wrestling. And in 1778, when Captain Cook arrived in the Hawaiian Islands, he witnessed surfing.

The Mayan, Inca and Aztec cultures all left evidence of distinct sports played and valued in their cultures. The most common is Tlatchil, an Aztec game played with a rubber ball approximately the size of a bowling ball, and two rings suspended eight to ten feet from the ground. Tlatchil was often used as a means to settle disputes, and skilled players were revered, much like skilled athletes today.

The ancient Greeks are the most frequently acknowledged culture in reference to sports. They also founded the Olympic games, which continues to this day, being separated into the Summer and the WInter Games, as it's unlikely the Greeks were around a lot of snow. During the games, peace was promoted and emphasis on the games was the honoring of the Greek Gods, which today is still emphasizing peace and my guess would be a loyalty to one's country and representing athletes.

Because sports paralleled daily activities, it is suggested that ancient cultures used sports to develop and test human skills in order to respond to nature and the environment, which ultimately produced useful approaches and abilities assisting in the development, defense and progression of their societies.

Sports have become over the centuries increasingly more organized and available to more spectators. The development of horticulture and the industrial revolution largely influenced a growing amount of leisure time, which opened up sports participation to more people, and increased spectator sports as well. Increased leisure time and communication technology have supported the growth of professional sports in today's culture.

Modern sports massage history begins in the 1900's with the founding of the Finnish School of Massage, which used Swedish massage strokes to develop a timely and systematic system useful for athletes. In the 1924 Summer Olympics in Paris, Paavo Nurmi (the first "Flying Finn") won 5 Olympic gold medals in one day, with only a thirty-minute break between events. He cited his massage treatments as a credible part of his training regime. This period, between 1924 and 1930, saw Russian Sports massage developed by Dr. I.M. Sarksov-Sirasini, where it was then taught at the Central Institute of Physical Therapy in Moscow.

The early twentieth century saw the emergence of pharmaceutical drugs; this combined with the association of massage therapy with brothels and prostitutes, produced a decline in massage therapy in general. (Personal note: If I could go back in time, I'd single-handedly strangle all those perverted people for causing such a negative and unprofessional connotation to be associated with massage therapy that is still very strong today.) Its resurgence in the sports world began as a result of the second "Flying Finn", Lasse Viren, who set a new world record in the 10K and a new Olympic record in the 5K at the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich. When it became known that Lasse Viren received daily massages, an interest in sports massage began to develop in the United States.

The current success of sports massage is the result of Viren's timely runs, and a concurrent rise in the 1970's of highly influential people who began receiving massages and supporting the claim that massage therapy provides a series of physiological benefits to the body. Since then massage therapists have become prevalent in many sporting events for Olympic, national, professional, and local athletes.

The definition of sports massage is the application of a number of techniques to an athlete in a timely and systematic fashion in order to manipulate soft tissue to support function, performance and the overall well-being of an athlete. General benefits of sports massage are: increased circulation, which assists in repairing micro-tears in sore muscles and decreases recovery time; affects the Central Nervous System, which stimulates specific muscle groups involved in athletic function; lengthens or broadens tissue, supporting flexibility in the range of motion of the athlete decreasing the chance for injury; creates feelings of well-being, which overal supports positive coping strategies and motivation; and relaxation, which decreases overall muscle tension and returns the tissue to a tone conducive to resting and recovery.

From my current understanding of sports massage, there is the warm-up period, the stretching period, the pre-event massage, and the post-event massage that an athlete may take advantage of for reasons of health, performance, flexibility and recovery.

*** Note: I would like to point out that my information of sports massage comes mainly from the UCMT Family of Schools manual of Sports Massage for Massage Therapists. It saved me many hours of Googling and compiling.