Sports Massage
If you compete professionally, participate in sports clubs, or workout on your own, you are an athlete. Athletes are trained muscle machines. Sports massage can help improve your muscle performance, and keep your body in peak condition. It can be performed before or after physical activity, or while training for a specific event such as a marathon. Sports massage can benefit people at every age and physical level.
At Chicago Sport Massage, we use strokes that focus on the belly of the muscle. Working on the belly of the muscle promotes the distribution of oxygen throughout the entire muscle. Oxygen energizes the muscle and waste products that interfere with muscle function are encouraged to leave the body through the blood and the lymphatic system. The results are improved circulation and greater endurance. It also helps prevent injuries by warming up muscles and repair injuries caused by repetitive use. Depending on your specific needs, we apply Swedish, deep tissue, trigger point therapy, and stretching techniques to help you reach and maintain your performance goals.
Benefits of sports massage include:
- Alleviate stress
- Decrease fatigue
- Help recovery
- Improve circulation
- Lessen muscle tension
- Prevent injury
- Promote flexibility
- Reduce swelling
- Relieve pain
Therapeutic Massage
Therapeutic massage is a result-oriented treatment, specifically focused on helping clients with medical conditions. It is a part of the overall plan of care to calm muscles and decrease spasm and dysfunction. Acute medical conditions occur immediately following an injury or sudden pain. Therapeutic massage helps reduce acute pain while the original injury heals. Sometimes your body creates a pain cycle with leads to long-term chronic pain. Chronic medical conditions are those conditions that do not heal, such as arthritis, or take a long time to heal. For chronic issues, we focus on stimulating your body’s immune system and normalizing nervous system function.
At Chicago Sport Massage, our ultimate goal is to help your body heal itself. Depending on your medical condition, our therapeutic massage includes lymphatic drainage, muscle energy techniques, assisted stretching, myofascial release, joint manipulation, and Swedish massage techniques that focus on the entire body or concentrate on the area of discomfort. We work with you to develop the most appropriate treatment plan for your needs and lifestyle.
Therapeutic massage can help relieve symptoms of:
- Arthritis
- Back pain
- Bone fractures
- Burns
- Bursitis
- Carpal tunnel syndrome
- Diabetes
- Edema and lymphedema
- Fibromyalgia
- Headache and migraine
- Hip pain
- Hypertension
- Joint pain
- Knee pain
- Neck pain
- Nerve impingement
- Neuropathy
- Rotator cuff pain
- Sciatica, sciatic pain, and piriformis syndrome
- Sleeping disorders
- Spondylopathies: Ankylosing spondylitis, spondylosis spondylolisthesis, and spondylolysis
- Sprains and strains
- Tendinitis and tendinosis
- Thoracic outlet syndrome
- Whiplash
Relaxation Massage
It is difficult to maintain a healthy work-life balance with the challenges of an active lifestyle, which can lead to stress build up and fatigue. Stress affects all body systems and causes many types of physical, emotional and mental problems. Any substantial change, good or bad, in your life that forces your body to adapt causes a state of stress. It can be triggered by specific events, conflicts, relationships, environmental or social problems. Relaxation massage can relieve stress, boost your immune system, increases circulation and lower blood pressure. In addition, it stimulates the secretion of hormones and stimulates the autonomic nervous system function. Relaxation massage also can cause positive changes in mood and excitement levels, and can induce relaxation and restorative responses.
At Chicago Sport Massage, our relaxation massage incorporates the gentle gliding and kneading strokes of Swedish massage with deep tissue techniques to help relieve your symptoms of stress. Using both hand and forearm, we follow the direction of the muscle and dermatome pattern, which focuses on the areas most affected by stress. Direction, amount of pressure, rate and rhythm of strokes, frequency and duration of the treatment, depth of pressure and respective position of the patient are factors that allow us to customize the perfect relaxation massage for you.
The effects of stress include:
- Allergic reactions
- Breathing disorders
- Depression
- Fatigue
- Headaches
- Heart disease
- High blood pressure
- Insomnia
- Muscular disorder
- Ulcers
- Upset stomach
- Worry