5 Reasons To Get a Massage while Exercising

1. It enhances your post-workout recovery

A good, therapeutic massage helps loosen up your muscles after an intense workout, which in turn allows you to recover from the impact better and faster than you normally would. You spend your time tightening and toning your muscles doing weight work and they start to feel like they’re going to snap, they just get so tight. Massage helps restore some pliability.

2. It soothes the pain of sore muscles

Those muscles can really ache after you put them through the ringer at the gym or while pounding the pavement during a run. But, massaging and stretching them can help work out the knots, flush out the toxins that contribute to the “ouch” factor and get the blood flowing again so they don’t hurt so much. 

3. It makes your muscles work better

Regular exercise not only puts a strain on your muscles, ligaments and tendons, but it also messes with those connective fibers under the skin known as your fascia — which help the muscles work smoothly and efficiently when they’re in good shape.

The fascia can get really gunked up with repeated exercise, and that makes it harder for muscles to slide past each other easily. Massage helps by loosening up those fibers so the muscles are doing what they’re supposed to with much less effort. And then, bingo! Your workouts get a nice boost.

4. It can increase flexibility

Massage can help loosen up the muscles and restore some flexibility. Unless you continually stretch to keep your muscles lubricated, you will get stiffer with age. But a massage, especially one that includes some stretching exercises, can reverse at least some of that process and give you back a bit of the incredible flexibility you had as a kid.

5. It helps you feel better, mentally

If you’re just beating yourself up with high-intensity classes or weight training, that’s not going to be completely beneficial. Massage can give you a nice balance with the happy endorphins from working out. It’s a cortisol reducer as well — a stress reliever.

Instead of saying, ‘I’m going to get the best body, damn it,’ and push push pushing yourself, remember to give yourself care. Massage can be a nice part of that. You need both the exercise and the maintenance. That’s part of a well-rounded fitness regimen.