Sports & Rehab Massage

Specialized Sports Massage Therapy for Rehabilitation

Aruna rehabilitates athletes at professional volleyball matches, rugby tournaments, frisbee tournaments, 5k and 10k races, and more! She has set up her table at the designated health services tents, prepared to prep the athletes before the game/event, and then helped the athlete’s muscles repair and restore effectively after the events. Aruna has experience working with high school and college athletes representing their sports teams in baseball and football. We appreciate the parents for trusting in our work so we can help those young athletes excel in their sport by improving their range of motion. When we work with professional triathletes we integrate rehab therapy services in the routine before the event and post-event. We feel honored to be part of their success process!

Sports Massage for Athletes

How is a Pre-Sports Massage and Post-Sports Massage Different?

Before the sports event, we help the athletes prepare for the event using short, quick, invigorating strokes to stimulate their muscles and use positive imagery/reinforcements to ensure the athletes are psychologically prepared as well. After the sports event, we use longer, slower, more sedating strokes to flush out metabolic wastes from the muscle tissue and begin the repair-and-restore process.

How Does Therapeutic Sports Massage Help Athletes?

Therapeutic Sports Massage requires an understanding of the physiological basis of techniques used along with a good understanding of major muscles, their origin, insertion, and action.

As a therapeutic sports massage therapist, Aruna has to decide which technique to use in a given situation for each particular athlete.

Sports massage improves athletic performance. We help the athlete achieve this by increasing flexibility through stretching and releasing tension in muscles caused by the trigger points that can negatively affect the athlete’s performance.

Sports Massage Techniques

The technique we use depends on the kind of sport the athlete is involved in.

Sports massage is valuable to the athlete since it helps them recover from the post-event soreness and resume training for participating in the next event.

For all clients who work out regularly, they appreciate the sports massage since it reduces their post-exercise muscle soreness. This way they can continue to exercise and keep themselves healthy. It also keeps them motivated in their fitness regimen since their muscles are not feeling sore from workouts.

When a client gets injured during their sports activity, we do a complete assessment (which includes the client history, areas of pain, muscle testing, etc) prior to creating a treatment plan.

Each of our clients responds differently to different sports and rehab massage therapy techniques. A technique that works well for one client might not work for another client. We customize the therapeutic sports massage to our athlete based on the sport they are involved in.

Kinesiology Taping with Rock Tape

Kinesiology is the study of the principles of mechanics and anatomy with human movement. Kinesiology taping following the customized massage reinforces Aruna’s massage therapy to more properly address not only the site of discomfort but also the cause. The rock tape we use for kinesiology taping is latex-free and wearable for up to 7 days.

The rehabilitation techniques work together with the specialized taping methods to help your body heal, and improve function.

Kinesiology taping has been shown to help:

• Reduce pain
• Positively affect fluid mechanics
• Improve posture and muscle function
• Speed up recovery
• And improve sporting performance

Today, you’d be hard-pressed not to see the colorful, cool-looking tape on amateur and pro athletes in various sports, as well as people leaving physical therapy appointments at which they’ve been treated for common ailments such as knee replacements, shoulder injuries and low back pain.

This rehabilitative taping technique provides support and stability to muscles and joints without restricting the body’s range of motion

Not all Tape nor Taping Education Programs are Equal

There are many brands: RockTape, Spider Tech, and Kinesio Tape, among others, and a few schools of thought on how to apply it. Thanks to some forward-thinking people, the evolution of application and successful client outcomes have led to a more global and more effective method of taping.

How Does Rock Tape Help?

The elastic properties of the tape produce a vertical lift of skin from the underlying tissue, thus decompressing the space between skin and muscle. This direct effect on the subcutaneous layer promotes improved blood and lymphatic flow in the area where you apply the tape, thus creating speedy removal of injury waste products and pain-generating chemicals, which in turn promotes healing and increases range of motion.

The fluid effect is induced by the elastic properties of the tape. These are the exact changes that massage therapists aim to create through massage.

Because the skin contains more mechanoreceptors than any other part of our body, we customize our massage technique specific to our clients. Then combine that with a tactile feedback mechanism like kinesiology tape and the customized treatment can have incredible results that last long after you leave the treatment table.

When taping athletes, we can invoke movement re-education – think:

• Posture correction
• Patterning corrections
• Muscle activation
• Reduced pain and inflammation
• And increased sports performance and recovery, all while reinforcing the work done during massage therapy

All of this can be accomplished without restricting range of motion, and in about five minutes or less.

Why Do You Want to Opt for Tape?

The site of pain isn’t necessarily the root of the issue and other contributing factors need to be addressed. Once these underlying issues are discovered, kinesiology tape can reinforce our massage therapy to more properly address not only the site of discomfort but also the cause.

With taping, we can send our clients home with the benefits of movement feedback, postural awareness and correction, stabilization and pain reduction. Stronger, stickier and stretchier than the competition, RockTape is the world’s best kinesiology tape.

Who Might Benefit From Kinesiology Taping?

Common ailments seen in the therapy office, such as:

• Rotator cuff injuries
• Whiplash
• Shin splints
• Knee issues
• Low back pain
• Upper trapezius pain
• Plantar fasciitis
• Back pain
• Runner’s knee
• To treat sports and non-sports injuries
• Expecting pregnant moms

All can benefit from kinesiology taping!

Aruna is FMT (functional movement techniques) certified by Rock Tape.

References:

Massage Magazine – “RockTape is a global leader in sports medicine products and education. Located in Silicon Valley, RockTape helps patients and athletes “go stronger, longer” with the world’s strongest brand of kinesiology tape, powerful pain-relieving topicals, unique evidence-informed education seminars, mobility tools, and joint support accessories. RockTape’s products are proudly designed in the United States of America. For more information, visit www.rocktape.com”