Many of my clients are athletes and get massages to help them recuperate from their workouts. Massages help flush the lactic acid that builds up in the body and causes muscle soreness. Lactic acid has also been known to cause cramping. Flushing the lactic acid promotes muscle recovery and helps your overall performance during training or even a race.
Lately, clients have been asking me, “How often should I get a massage during my training”. My question to them is, what are you training for? Weekly massages of course would always be my first recommendation, but let’s get real! Not everyone has the time or has the budget for that many massages. If a 5k or 10k is the most you will train for, then you could get buy with a massage every 2 weeks or even once a month. However, you must stretch and do some type of yoga! If you are doing any type of marathon training or Ironman training, then I would highly recommend that you get a massage weekly. If it’s not in your budget, then bi-weekly with stretching or yoga in between is a must.
Pre race massages should be scheduled 3 days before a race. If you are very tight and need additional work, I would schedule a deep tissue massage 7 days before the race and then a sports massage 3 days before the race. The sports massage will be used to lightly work out any additional kinks and will help flush any lactic acid and toxins from the body. The post-race massage can be scheduled 1-2 days after the race to help flush all the lactic acid and promote recovery.
It has been my experience that getting frequent massages helped improve my race performance. I expected to be really sore after my marathon and was happy to find that besides a few aches here and there, I really wasn’t that sore!!
