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Massage Improves Post-Workout Recovery

Next time you finish one of those “I’m going to be sore for days” endurance workouts, try a quick massage. Your friends may mock you as a lightweight, but you could be helping your muscles recover faster. In a recent study, researchers put 11 young, healthy men through a strenuous workout—the kind that’s almost too hard to finish. To see the effects of massage on muscles, they took muscle biopsies of both legs—before and after exercise, and after 10 minutes of Swedish-style massage. The massage was given right after the workout. The brief massage affected two specific genes in the muscle cells. The first gene decreases inflammation caused by exercise, similar to the relief you get from certain pain medications. The second gene turned up production of mitochondria in the muscles. These are the power houses of cells. They use oxygen and the broken down products of food to generate energy needed by the cells. As muscle cells become adapted to endurance exercise, the number of mitochondria increases. Massage seems to help this process along. Other studies have shown that treatments for sore muscles—such as ice baths and anti-inflammatory medications—can reduce inflammation. These tend to block muscle repair and growth. Massage, however, appears to not only make you feel better, but also speed up muscle recovery. Researchers also found that the massage did not decrease the amount of lactic acid in the muscles, something often given as the reason for post-workout massages. Still, this research bumps massage up a notch, making it less awkward to limp up to the massage tables at the end of a big race.

Massage to relieve tension

Sometimes it is common for a bad position, especially when you work many hours at the computer, your neck end of the day stressed and sore, so you are told a healthy and natural way to provide relief before going to bed.

In a comfortable position, either standing or sitting, spend an arm across the chest and placing the hands on the neck, gently tilting the head toward the opposite shoulder and tour the area with the tips of the fingers between the bottom of skull and shoulder downward, do this about 5 times and changed arm.

After placing your wrists on the base of the neck and left fingers off on both sides of the column gently massaging the muscles with your fingertips up and pressing gently with the palm of your hands, over the entire area between the shoulders and neck.

Finally and to conclude the massage, you must make the skin soft pinch of course never stretch the muscles on both sides (outside) made pressure with the palms of the hands and then down from the top of the skull to the base of neck.

Striated Muscle

Striated Muscle: also called voluntary muscle, striped muscle, or skeletal muscle , most common of the three types of muscle in the body. Striated muscle is attached to bone and produces all the movements of body parts in relation to each other; unlike smooth muscle and cardiac muscle, striated muscle is under voluntary control. Its multinucleated fibres are long and thin and are crossed with a regular pattern of fine red and white lines, giving the muscle its distinctive appearance and its name.

From Encyclopædia Britannica

Art by Peter Paul Rubens

Sports massage