Less pain more brain… sports massage doesn’t have to hurt

Corina and I have taught sports massage for many years. We have taught classes to groups of massage therapists and physical therapists, we have had doctors and nurses in our classes, we have taught reiki practitioners and housewives. Our clients have included Olympic athletes and professional triathletes, we have soigneured for cycling teams and have advised professional athletes, our students have built successful businesses and have traveled the world. One of the most important lessons that we hope our students learn is that a good therapist will be able to achieve the desired outcome from a treatment without hurting the client, this is in stark contrast to the perceived wisdom that sports massage should hurt. We need to question the assumption that a good sports massage should hurt.

Many therapists believe that their treatment is not effective unless their client is flinching and is on the edge of crying with pain. We have heard many stories of therapists who will continue to treat while the client is in floods of tears because of the excruciating pain. There are therapists out there that wear their ability to hurt clients as a badge of honor and openly boast about how much pain they can inflict. THIS IS STUPID AND UNETHICAL.

Any idiot can cause a client to be in pain (offense very much intended). Just because it is painful doesn’t mean that it is therapeutic, in fact quite the opposite. Yes sticking your elbow into spasming muscle will hurt, but that doesn’t mean that it will do the client any good or relax the muscle. Sticking a finger in my eye would hurt but that doesn’t mean it will help my short-sightedness.

Why is it that with sports massage: pain = good?

Would you go to a dentist who prided himself on hurting his patients?

We need to educate ourselves and the public about what is good massage and what is bad massage. It is my belief that therapists too often pride themselves on causing discomfort to build their own ego and to disguise a lack of understanding about how the body actually works and how it responds to the treatment we provide. I taught some of the therapists with this attitude so I accept that some of the traditional teaching styles are to blame for this, but this is a problem with sports massage world-wide.

We have taught courses where we know that some of the students think that once graduated they will be able to go out and work so deeply that they will routinely bruise clients. One time we taught a group of students in Aberdeen, the students were part way through their training, and the students all thought that bruising clients was normal and was even desirable, nonsense. By bruising a client you are causing more damage to the tissue, I am not saying that occasionally bruising a client is the end of the world, but regularly breaking capillaries is not clever or therapeutic.

An experienced, qualified therapist will be able to achieve the desired outcome without traumatizing either the tissue or the client.

There is a very big difference between being in slight discomfort and in pain. Therapeutic discomfort is sometimes unavoidable, just as you would expect your legs to be aching slightly whilst running hard intervals. Pain is different and is a signal to your body that something is wrong. If you feel pain during training you need to stop so you don’t injure yourself more. It is exactly the same in massage, if it hurts STOP. Sports Massage is there to help you recover faster and feel better after training or competition. If it makes you feel worse and it causes you to have to take a few days off training until you have recovered from the massage then it is not doing it’s job. Find another therapist who is capable of providing an effective treatment that makes you feel better and not worse, one size does not fit all.

The days of no pain no gain are gone in the gym, it is time that we as therapists used our brains a little more and our elbows a little less!

Alan