Les Croupiers Running Club Forum

I realize that lots of runners now use sports massage as part of their regime so just wanted to make people aware of some things regarding injuries.

There are a few posts up in this section regarding certain injuries, and massage crops up now and again. This post is along the lines of what I wrote on the old forum about 'Foam Rolling', but let's stick to massage.

This is NOT an advertisement.

Massage (including sports massage) is fantastic for maintenance when you are in ok shape but maybe generally tired and the legs (or anywhere else) need a 'pick me up'. But, if you have 'niggles' or an outright injury,then massage alone is not the answer.

Example, if you are getting back into training or have upped your mileage and are feeling tired or heavy legged, then a massage session is great. It can reduce adhesions of tissues from performing repetitive movements, improves blood flow to tissues and also helps remove waste products built up from training. Massage itself will stretch tissues to a certain degree and help return them to 'normal' length.
The therapist can also detect when tissues are excessively tight/knotted and sort this out before this escalates to injury status. And let's face it, if you don't mind being touched, it feels great.

But, if what you are suffering from is more than this heavy legged tiredness, something that is stopping or hindering you from training/racing, then massage in isolation is not the answer.

You will generally suffer from one of two injuries: direct trauma or referred imbalance.

Direct trauma will be falling off a kerb and twisting knee or ankle, falling over when drunk and bashing your knee or wrenching you shoulder (sound familiar?). Or it will be from someone kicking you in football or being hit by an implement. You know the cause.

Referred imbalance is where one or more muscles switch off and one or more other muscles then take on the function of the weakened muscles in order to compensate. Almost NEVER will the cause of this issue be where you feel pain (important point!). It generally comes on over time and you don't know what caused it.

The discomfort you will generally feel is tension from the muscle working overtime. This is because it is trying to do it's own job and the job of the weakened muscle(s) and is becoming tight to survive. If you just massage and stretch the 'tight' area, you may get some short term relief but it will almost certainly return as you haven't addressed the weakened or switched of muscle(s).

As an example, you have tightness and/or pain along you ITB along your outer thigh which may be causing lateral knee pain also. The ITB won't just go tight for no good reason. Something else has turned off - possibly due to over use or even under use. So if you simply massage or foam roll the ITB, you treat something that is compensating for another muscle, and now you have no muscles working! That ITB is providing stability and function because something else isn't. In this example, it could be that the smaller gluteal muscle of the pelvis are not functioning, or that the hip flexors have been over worked and decided to switch off. You 'treat' the ITB and now nothing is working which could lead to more serious issues for the knee or hip.

If you have any type of injury, you should get it assessed to determine what is testing weak and what is testing strong. Then you can use massage, stretching, foam rolling or whatever to release the overly strong area but then strengthen the overly weak area.

If you simply massage out the problem, you will only have short term results. The cause of you pain is rarely where you feel it unless it was direct trauma...

Sorry for this being long but hope it is helpful