Mandatory Massages: Get Deep With Your Muscles

Elementary
Mandatory Massages: Get Deep With Your Muscles

Massage Therapy (via elementfitness)

I have a massage therapist. But not because I'm a spa girl. I have one because I work out.

I'm on the table last week, and I finally get around to asking massage therapist Anthony Gittens, my go-to guy at Element Fitness, why his combination of Swedish, deep tissue, and energy palpation leaves my muscles so much softer. The relationship between massage and fitness is symbiotic, he explains while working out my shoulders.

"Fitness gives you defined, sculpted muscles by breaking down tissues through contractions," he says. "When you work out, the contractions cause waste products like heat and lactic acid to form." Massage works that lactic acid out.

That amazing relaxed feeling after a massage comes because, as Anthony tells me, "Massage removes swelling, revives muscle tissues, and calms nerve tissue." Your body can do all that on its own, but if you're working out as much as I am (thank you New Year's Challenge), massage can really help speed the healing process.

I'm enjoying my reframed thinking. Stretching after a work out helps to alleviate swelling and stiffness but sometimes that's not enough, and massage isn't an indulgence anymore, it's a health and fitness must. Good thing it feels so nice.