A massage gun will get you out of that stiff collar or out of that wet swimsuit. Also, if you can spend 50 minutes in a pool, most athletes can spend less than an hour on an elliptical.
Why use a massage gun?
Before we take any athletes to our massage department, I do a test. A 10-minute yoga class is followed by a ten-minute run, and in the following week a massage. Some people may prefer an in-home massage near you to be sourced rather than have to travel to us. Every athlete who has undergone my test instantly knows the difference, which is why every one of my athletes has come to me looking for a massage, so it works. The beauty of a massage gun is it won’t bend or twist, but it will massage to feel better and stronger in that second or second and a half after an exercise, or after a yoga class.
I use my Hypervolt massage guns on everything from the younger athletes to the older athletes, including those who are injured, usually after an injury like a sprained ankle or torn ligament. I use my massage guns on those athletes to get them out of that leg or trunk muscle tightness and to help with inflammation.
Typically, I use it as a preventative measure for minor injuries such as a mild knee or ankle injury, which would otherwise require medical attention from a podiatrist at heartland podiatry or a local clinic. A lot of the injuries I see are in that second or second and a half after they’ve finished exercise, so if I can get that knee or ankle feeling better in that second or second and a half, then I can prevent the athlete from going through a whole season of just recovery instead of training, which makes training that much better and more efficient.
I do get athletes, usually when they’re recovering from a major injury, who have some stiffness in the hip, in the ankle or in a muscle like a hamstring. In those cases, if they have the slightest hint of something, I’ll sit them down and do a physical assessment to check their hip strength, their leg strength and their muscle strength. If I can’t check those muscles in that second or second and a half after they finish a workout or practice, I know I need to put them through a two- or three-hour-long massage.
How much pressure should athletes feel?
There are two different types of massage pressure. A massage is considered high pressure, medium pressure or low pressure. Most massage therapists will say that high-pressure massage is for sportspeople who are recovering from injury and low-pressure massage is for a good way of releasing soreness in the muscles, so it’s really for people who are training and competing and doing a lot of yoga and regular yoga.
If a person is recovering from injury, I use low-pressure massage, and I will usually use around one-third of the amount of pressure that a person would experience with a high-pressure massage. In low pressure, I will usually massage the muscles or joints of the hip, knee and ankle for 20 minutes. In low-pressure massage, I do a lot of moving motions and can help move out inflammation, if I do it for a longer period of time.
