Sports Massages from Knoxville Spine and Sports
We now offer massage therapy here at Knoxville Spine and Sports! However, before you book, we want to make sure you know what type of massage you’re booking. Massage therapy covers a wide gamut of styles and needs.
You may want to experience a massage solely for the purpose of relaxing and relieving stress, or you may be seeking deep tissue massage in an effort to work out muscles that are exhausted from training. Some massage is performed using aromatherapy and other might be performed using hot stones or sugar scrubs.
Before diving into the specific type of massage therapy we promote here at Knoxville Spine and Sports, we want to give you a brief overview of just a few different massage modalities you might find.
- With Swedish massage, one of the primary goals is to relax the entire body. Though it can involve a wide variety of strokes, it primarily involves many longer, more gentle and gliding strokes which focus on sending blood flow back to the heart.
- Deep tissue massage is similar to Swedish massage in many ways, but it typically involves deeper pressure strokes which are beneficial in releasing chronic muscle tension. The focus is on the deepest layer of muscles, tendons, and fascia (which is the protective layer surrounding all muscles, bones, and joints.)
- Sports massage is a form of massage geared toward athletes and is generally used to help prevent injuries, prepare the body for athletic activity and maintain optimal condition, and to help athletes recover from workouts and injuries.
- In shiatsu therapy, pressure with thumbs, hands, elbows, knees or feet is applied to pressure points on the body. This form of massage also focuses on rotating and stretching limbs, joints, and pressure points, or meridians, as they're called in traditional Chinese medicine.
Myofascial Release in Knoxville, TN
At Knoxville Spine and Sports, you won’t experience only one of these, but essentially a combination of many of them. Our primary focus is myofascial release. Myofascial release is a treatment that attempts to release tension in the fascia due to trauma, posture, or general inflammation. Fascia is the connective tissues surrounding muscles, bones, nerves, and organs of the body. Our massage is somewhat a compilation of multiple types of massage therapy. All massages are patient-focused. We spend time focusing on the areas that contribute to your pain or discomfort, either caused by repetitive movements or actual injury.
Essentially, our ultimate goals are to create space in the body and decompress joints, thus improving joint mobility. Our massage techniques are focused on reducing sheer, torque, and compression around joints. Those are the three forces that create degeneration, so we are working to combat that process. We aim to decrease inflammation and increase blood flow, move lymph through body, and decrease muscle tone. One of our primary aims is to restore the gravity line for optimal efficiency of transferring and absorbing forces.
It’s always a fantastic addition to have quiet music, aromatherapy, or hot stones during a massage, but we want to be honest that you will not find those here. We will, however, guarantee you will leave feeling more grounded, your joints will feel less compressed, and you will feel much less restriction overall. You will have no doubt you’ve had a productive massage session!