Scheduling Massage: How Often Do You Really Need Treatment?
Scheduling Massage: How Often Do You Really Need Treatment?
Booking a massage is a great way to exercise self care. You can relax, recover from a sport, or release tension from a hard day at the office/ gym and even improve your overall health. But, how often should you be getting some table time?
The Deciding Factors
How often you get a massage depends on several different factors: time available in your schedule and money available in your budget are a couple really big ones. Other influential factors are your health goals, injuries/ pain levels, and your stress levels.
Depending on your lifestyle there could be very little time to get a massage between work meetings, kid activities and school, sports practice and gym classes but it is so very important to try so you can recover from the physical toll the hectic schedule can take on your body and mind. It’s important to remember that chronic pain and stress lower your overall health and well-being and one of the best thing you can do to combat this is get a massage regularly.
So What Is The Target Timing?
For just maintaining overall wellness, the minimum suggested timing for massage is once a month. This is a good option for people short on time and money but looking for the health benefits of massage and not addressing an issue that is new or progressing. It loosens up tension and provides all the benefits to your health without costing your pocket book or schedule to be overwhelmed. After around four weeks your body has built up enough tension and stress that getting a massage feels like a reset without it being too uncomfortable or painful for you.
With chronic pain or an injury that has healed wrong: the ideal timing for massage depends on factors like time and money but in a perfect world you would start out with once a week or more and then slowly add more time between massages as your body recovers and resets to a more normal pattern of movement. Usually, I start seeing a client once a week to address the issue they are experiencing then as their pain levels and tension doesn’t keep recurring quite as often I slow to every other week. This slow down usually takes about a month for most issues. The next step is to get their pain and tension levels to what I consider normal life stresses where they can go to monthly maintenance massages and still be relatively pain free between massages. This step usually takes 4-6 weeks depending on their lifestyles and activities. Sometimes clients never get to the monthly massages and stay at every two to three weeks, it just depends on their needs.
So, what about if I am big on working out or playing a sport? The timing for massage with people who put their body through rigorous workouts and sporting events varies a lot. For just maintaining I usually recommend every two weeks getting a deep tissue massage with some stretching component to help the muscles be at their optimal ability. But if you’re able and desiring a more intense schedule for your sporting and workouts (we are talking competitive level using massage to make their body better at their game) then I usually go for a lengthening and stretching session around 24 hours or less before the event, stretching within 12 hours after the event and then a deep tissue recovery massage 48 hours after the event.
Obviously, these are only general guidelines and any recommendations your therapist gives you about what’s best for your circumstances and activities may differ; but it should give you an idea about what you may see as a schedule for massages.
Can You Have Too Much Massage?
As always with everything in the massage world: there is no one size fits all solution or plan. Talk through it with your therapist and come up with a plan that works for you both in order to reach your wellness goals. :
Stay strong. Stay healthy. Keep fighting for yourself, you’re worth it.
From: Ame Hinman at Hinman Healing
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