Soft tissue therapy is the assessment, treatment and management of soft tissue injury, pain, and dysfunction of the musculoskeletal system. Your soft tissue therapist will use deep tissue massage skills to treat you along with manual stretching, myofascial release and trigger point therapy.
What is the difference between Soft Tissue Therapy and Sports Massage?
The soft tissues of the body refer to muscles, tendons, ligaments and fascia. Therapy of these soft tissues requires management, manipulation and rehabilitation to any individual regardless of whether they are involved in sport or not.
Patients will benefit from safe, effective and efficient results following treatment with a soft tissue therapist. The session differs to a general sports massage in a number of ways, firstly, clients are not all from a sport background, we treat everyone. Secondly, in your soft tissue therapy session a variety of other techniques may be used by the therapist to provide an appropriate treatment. These techniques include: muscle energy techniques, soft tissue release, assisted stretching, Deep Tissue Friction, Myofascial Release, Trigger Point Therapy, cupping and Acupuncture. Therefore we are not limited by the title of sports massage and will provide a treatment that is right for you.
When do I need STT?
STT can help you through a variety of injuries, aches, pains and stresses. We can help if you:
Have an achy back or neck due to sitting at work / at a computer
Recovering from injury
Want to avoid injury
Training for an event
Cycling to work
Have tight or tired muscles
Are returning to sport
Want to maintain flexibility
Going skiing / returning from skiing
Changed your training activity
You want to get stronger
Are following a training programme
How often should you have STT?
This will all be individual and depend on your external influences such as, how often you train, how intensely you train, how long you sit, how your body responds, and other factors. However, your therapist will be able to advice more accurately after the first assessment session and discuss an ideal management pathway for you.
What is the benefit of regular STT?
Think of your first STT assessment as your body MOT. How well do you look after your car? Or should you look after it? Compare that to how often you look after your body. Think it deserves more?
It is great that we are thinking about exercising more but we are also leading busy active lives taking for granted the toll this takes on the body. You don’t have to put up with those niggles and annoying stiff muscles. Making you feel much older than you are. A STT session will help to ease those symptoms enabling better recovery of your musculoskeletal system so you perform daily functions with ease and lessening risk of injury.
The frequency of treatment depends on individuals but can relate to how long you have had the issue and how your body responds. Regular STT ranges from twice a week to monthly as good protocol.
Training hard and working full time? You are basically a full time amateur athlete. Athletes look after their body with regular STT,s o why shouldn’t you? In fact you are cramming in more in your day with your work / family life / sport, when is your recovery time scheduled? With busy lives it is easy to miss out stretching sessions and cool downs. Therefore manual STT sessions will help you to gain maximum effect from your training sessions by promoting recovery and strength of your musculoskeletal system.
