At Baltimore Sports Recovery we are excited to bring our Owings Mill resident athletes the opportunity to experience powerful relief from chronic pain and tissue damage with deep tissue massage therapy. Deep tissue massage – as the name suggests – targets the deepest layers of muscle, fascia, connective tissue, and tendons in the body where athletes tend to hold tension. It is not a “full body” workover: rather, our Owings Mill massage therapists will focus on specific areas of the body to release the deep-seated tensions that reside there and reduce pain. Massage therapists will use friction techniques or long, slow strokes that work across the grain of the muscle. They might even make use of knuckles or elbows to offer powerful tension relief, getting into the smallest spaces between muscles to reach “knotted” muscle tissue or to soothe scar tissue on the muscle.
What sort of benefits could I experience from my deep tissue massage session?
Deep tissue massage has a host of great benefits, some of which you’ll feel right away and some of which might require multiple sessions to take full effect. For anyone suffering from chronically tight muscles, repetitive strain, problems stemming from poor posture, or who need help with recovery from injury, deep tissue massage can offer notable – and fast – relief. Owings Mill, Maryland patients can also use deep tissue massage sessions to address:
- Limited mobility/limited range of motion,
- Osteoarthritic pain,
- Conditions brought on by repeated motion (such as carpal tunnel syndrome),
- Sciatica, and
- Pain brought on by Fibromyalgia.
Owings Mill athletes might particularly benefit if their sport creates tension in the body due to repeated motions (for example, tennis players’ repeated swings can result in tennis elbow). Yet anyone whose normal day-to-day creates muscle knotting and tension can stand to gain from the relief brought on by deep tissue massage therapy – even those experiencing simple neck or back pains as a by-product of their posture or who’ve suffered from chronic pain due to past injuries can benefit.
I’m going in for my first session: what can I expect?
The deep tissue massage therapy session will typically start with the therapist applying light pressure in order to gently loosen your muscles. He or she will then apply firmer pressure to your targeted areas of tension using any combination of the following techniques:
- Stripping: a firm, gliding pressure that’s applied along the length of target muscles using the massage therapist’s elbow, knuckles, thumbs, or forearms.
- Friction: pressure applied across the grain of the muscle to relieve knots, soothe adhesions and help realign muscle tissue fibers.
Our Owings Mill-based massage therapists might also make use of their fingertips, palms, or thumbs to deeply penetrate those hard-to-reach knots and the tight muscle layers far below the skin. While your therapist applies this firm pressure, be sure to continue breathing deeply so that you remain relaxed and do not add to the tension. Otherwise, the touch could be a tad painful. Let your therapist know if you do experience pain during the session: most often, so long as your therapist has begun the session with lighter pressure and then escalates to firmer pressure and you continue breathing throughout, this should not be the case.
Baltimore Sports Recovery is committed to helping athletes like you get the most out of available therapies, and is there to help you understand the unique benefits of each one. Give us a call today at (443) 455-1984: we are more than happy to discuss what receiving deep tissue massage in Owings Mill could do for you. We’ll work together to find you the best way to get your body quick relief, so you can get back on your feet!