Sports Therapy

sports therapy

What is Sports Therapy?

Sports Therapy aims to help treat, rehabilitate and prevent injury, allowing you to function at your best at work, manage day to day activity and for optimum sporting performance and recovery.

Functional and postural assessments, muscle, joint and ligament strength and stress tests as well as a range of hands on treatment approaches:- Soft Tissue Release, Muscle Energy Techniques, Trigger Point Therapy and Sports Massage are used to cover a wide range of requirements from neck pain to preparing for a marathon.

What is Soft Tissue Release?

This works to reduce pain by reprogramming signals to and from the muscle to the central nervous system, break down scar tissue and increase flexibility by functionally lengthening the affected area of muscle.  Specific pressure is used at the location of a problem area whilst the area is stretched either actively (you perform the movement making your muscles actively work) or passively (the therapist controls and performs the movement). 

Its popularity amongst athletes finding a method that allowed them to quickly return to sport has now transferred to being used as a successful treatment approach in non sporting contexts as well. 

What are Muscle Energy Techniques?

These are resisted active stretching techniques to functionally lengthen tissue, reprogram muscle tension, help restore muscle function, stimulate repair, increase joint range of motion, balance groups of muscles acting on and around a joint, oxygenate and remove wastes from all corresponding tissues.

What are Trigger Points and What is Trigger Point Therapy?

These are hyperirritable/sensitive taut bands within muscle which may be painful, tender to the touch/pressure or produce referred pain (pain away from the site) when stimulated. Active trigger points are ones that produce pain without pressure. Latent trigger points may only produce pain on pressure and satellite trigger points may be on a referred pathway of pain.

Trigger point therapy applies concentrated and specific pressure at trigger points to change the neuromuscular pathway and thus break cycles of muscle spasm and pain.

 

Sports Massage

sports therapy

This is a vigorous treatment that is best known for promoting the health of muscles, tendons and ligaments through increasing blood flow, releasing lactic acid and breaking down scar tissue.

It also works to promote general health through blood and lymph circulation and effecting beneficial changes in the nervous and hormonal systems.

Treatment involves advanced massage techniques incorporating strong kneading, stripping and stretching movements and specialised stretches.

Excellent for helping recovery post activity or injury. However you don’t need to be involved in sport to benefit as its great for general health, helps prevent injuries, reduces pain and general muscular tension.


 

Events and Training

sports therapy

"When I re-evaluated the whole Marathon experience, I truly believe that my regular visits with Sangi not only stretched & re-aligned the physical/muscular, but focused my mental well-being which proved to be a very important factor in my success!!"

Sports Therapy/Massage can be valuable as a pre event check/treatment, post event and for general maintenance and injury prevention.

Pre event treatment can be anything from a few days to a few minutes before an event and the timing establishes the depth and nature of treatment.

A few days before the event, a deep treatment will help prepare your body by improving the functioning and conditioning of muscles. This is via specialised hands on techniques and massage to help circulation, break down and realign scar tissue and functionally lengthen/stretch body tissues.   It mitigates for the increased stress and in some cases greatly increased demands compared with that of training for e.g. a marathon.

It allows for a pre event assessment to check areas of weakness or injury and treatment to overcome these problems and prevent further ones. From a day to the actual day of the event a light treatment to help stimulate blood flow and boost alertness can act as a catalyst to warming up and mental readiness to perform at your best


Post event massage is fantastic as soon as the event/race is finished up to 2 days afterward for maximum benefit. This is to pick up any early damage, break down excessive scar tissue and flush out the wastes built up that would prevent normal muscle function. Also the increased circulation oxygenates and feeds the much depleted tissues. The specialised stretching both via massage and Muscle Energy Techniques, Soft Tissue Release and Trigger Point Therapy enable any soreness and stiffness to be reduced and flexibility and range of motion restored.

Ongoing Maintenance/Injury Preventative Treatment

Sports Therapy /Massage is excellent as an ongoing maintenance or M.O.T for your body, to prevent overuse injuries and help identify weakness with the prescription of sports specific warm up/injury preventative exercises.  The ongoing sessions increase your self-awareness through an enhanced sense of your weaknesses/problem areas. As maintenance, 3 weeks to 6 weeks is the usual recommended period.

 

Injury Treatment

For injuries whether sports related or occupational or a mixture of the two I have a unique approach for short term ease and long term benefit which generally consists of:

  • Functional assessment testing movement and integrity in affected areas
  • Craniosacral for fine assessment and helping to accelerate natural healing
  • Sports massage to break down/realign scar tissue and stimulate circulation
  • Soft Tissue Release, Muscle Energy Techniques and Trigger Point therapy to reprogram and lengthen any muscles affected,
  • Fascial unwinding to overcome holding/compensation patterns as a result of the injury that affects the whole body.

  • sports therapy

    For injuries that have been picked up within the lastcouple of months, 3-5 sessions are usually needed as minimum but to fully resolve those issues and for true restoration of health more may be advisable.

    At the beginning, sessions close together for e.g. 1 week apart are necessary to avoid the body reverting to old patterns particularly if aggravating factors persist for e.g. driving as an aggravating factor when experiencing lower back pain.

    For a minor injury that has been picked up a couple of days before treatment, only one session may be necessary to accelerate healing and help overcome the injury but to integrate the injured part with the rest of the body, more time may be allocated.

    Chronic injuries (more than 6 weeks ago) may require more than the standard sessions depending on type and severity.


     
       
    Sangeetha Anantha © 2018 | Privacy Policy | 07735 258 465