Should I Get A Pre- or Post-Event Massage?

Sports Massage is designed and performed to both help repair and prepare anyone who is competing in a sporting event. The difference between ‘Pre-Event’ and ‘Post-Event’ treatments are their objectives, the times in which they should occur, and their styles. 

‘Pre-Event Massage’ is the lesser known sibling of the infamous ‘Post-Event Massage’ and they, like real siblings like to be different from one another. Pre-event as the name suggests occurs before your sporting event and is a lighter pressure and faster pace to focus on warming and loosening the muscle. This can happen at two common times, the day before an event and the day of the event, although they can be done for 2 weeks running up to the event. The major difference between the two common times reflects the amount of pressure applied in the treatment. 

 

A ‘Pre-Event Massage’ which happens the day before an event can be relatively deep in pressure with a view to loosen-up any well-known tight areas a person may have. For example, before you run a marathon you may know one of your calves tends to tighten up, so a good choice is to have it massaged and stretched out the day before without too much extensive force to release the tightness. A ‘Pre-event Massage’ which occurs on the day of the event is there to assist the muscles in the warming up process. This looks very light and fast in its actions and should be added to your warm up routine not done in replace of it. 

I personally would always recommend a ‘Pre-Event Massage’ the day before to really help release the commonly tight and prone to niggles area. 

 

If you would like to book one of these pre event massages you can book here 

‘Post-Event Massage’ is the more commonly known and done, massage of the two. This is the one you see at every race/sporting event, we go to alot of these events to help support our local races and raise money for local charities. You cann’t miss us, we normally under ‘The Big Red Tent’ whilst lots of red-faced tired but happy people are lying there getting a well deserved rub down! 

 

The objective of this treatment is to recover from the hard effort you’ve just put in, and more specifically help the muscle tissue relax and lengthen, so it doesn’t tighten-up and cause restriction and injury. This massage is always best done straight after the race or as soon as possible post the race as you can to help release tight areas and remove any tissue build up which may have been created. 

 

‘Post-Event Massage’ can also be coined as a ‘Maintenance Treatment’ and is commonly used intermittently between the persons events and/or training. This is a massage where most work to the muscle can be done. It is where it is safe to go the deepest and therefore get the most out of a treatment. The best time for this sort of treatment is in-between training days, and/or racing/event weekends. 

 

We highly recommend getting regular maintenance treatment if you have a big race coming up. It really is the best way to stay injury free and get the best results on race day. 

 

Check out our online boking to get yourself race ready!