Post Marathon - how massage is integral to recovery
The Virgin London Marathon is nearly upon us, athletes will be planning their training and race tactics thoroughly and with care. However, it is just as important to plan your post marathon recovery to ensure that injury is dealt with or avoided, and your body heals itself as efficiently and quickly as possible. It may seem very tempting to do very little after running the 26.2 miles, the ultimate test to the body, but evidence shows that reverse tapering is probably the best training for recovering from such an enduring race - ie a mirror of the training that you did preceding the marathon day. Some people say it takes two to three weeks to recover from a marathon, or one day per mile ran. We know that nutrition, exercising carefully and massage all play an important part in helping the body repair itself and getting ready to train for the next event or fitness goal!
9 reasons why massage helps recovery
Immediately after the race a light massage may be very helpful, if you can stand it, to reduce the amount of waste metabolites around the muscle. This would be more like a light rub down of 10-20 minutes as the muscles will be very stressed, any deeper massage could actually be more damaging than beneficial.
It is common to have delayed muscle soreness about 24-48 hours after running a marathon. Massage has been shown to reduce the amount of pain felt in the week following the race. Scheduling your post-race massage is most beneficial 24-48 hours after crossing the finishing line.
Massage can help reduce the swelling often seen after enduring exercise. Inflammation of the muscles is very common and a recovery massage can reduce swelling by getting rid of waste build-up.
Regular massage after the marathon will help with any over-use injuries such as ITB pain (runner’s knee) or plantar fasciitis. These conditions, and others, can be assessed by your therapist and a plan for recovery made.
Stretching the muscles is an important part of the recovery process - it is likely that after the marathon you will be doing little in the way of exercise, gently walking and resting your way to healing. Massage is important to stretch those muscles which feel tight, especially hamstrings and quads.
Massage promotes healing to the soft tissues and extends the overall life of your sporting career.
Relax! You did it! You ran a marathon! Massage is a wonderful way to relax and take time out of the day to feel pampered after such a gruelling training regime and race.
Post-marathon blues are common but it is important to give both your body and mind a chance of deep recovery before starting training for the next event. Massage is an excellent way to improve mood, reduce anxiety, lower blood pressure and increase all the feel-good chemicals in the body such as dopamine, oxytocin and endorphins.
Massage therapists can help you understand your own body, its limits and helping you prevent injury. This is very much a part of future training programmes - although many people say they would never run a marathon again straight after the race, a week later the pain is forgotten and we can start working together for the next goal.
Good luck to all the runners this year!
Timo
Timo Massage Therapy
Monday, 8 April 2013
