There is no doubt that getting a massage makes you feel great. Even though it’s deep-tissue, a sports massage leaves you feeling amazing afterward. Massage can relieve stress, help you recover from strenuous physical activity or injury, and even reduce anxiety, but can it help you achieve your weight loss goals? Can
Research shows that massage can have a positive effect on your muscle-building abilities and fitness levels, increasing your ability to control or lose weight.
Healthy strong muscles burn calories and give you the freedom to participate in all kinds of sports and activities that can help you burn extra calories and improve your overall fitness and well-being.
Massage has the following benefits that can directly affect your ability to control or lose weight:
1. Massage has been shown to improve circulation and the supply of nutrition to muscles. Massage enhances the exchange of vital substances between blood and tissue cells, which leads to an increase in tissue metabolism. After muscle exercise, they need to be supplied with vital nutrients so that they can recover and rebuild themselves. Massage maximizes the supply of these nutrients and oxygen though increased blood flow, which helps muscles grow and burn more calories.
2. Massage improves the range of motion of your muscles and their flexibility. This allows them to maintain maximum strength and performance while remaining active and burn maximum calories in the process.
Improved range of motion and flexibility also reduce muscle soreness during periods of recovery and muscle repair.
A wide range of motion and maximum muscle flexibility also reduce the risk of sustaining injuries during exercise that can severely limit activity, exercise, and weight loss progress.
3. Massage helps reduce the recovery time required between your workouts. Waste products such as lactic and carbonic acid build up in the muscles during and after exercise. The increased circulation to these muscles helps eliminate the build-up of toxic debris caused by these waste products, and in doing so reduces recovery time.
The shorter recovery time means you can safely exercise more in a given period of time, which means you have the opportunity to burn more total calories in an effort to achieve your personal weight loss goals.
4. Massage can also help reduce your chances of over-training. Massage has a relaxing effect on the muscles and a sedative effect on the nervous system. By helping you relax, which is a very important element of any exercise program, massage can make you less likely to experience over-training syndrome, which tends to limit your ability to build strong healthy muscles. and hence reduces weight with maximum efficiency.
5. Apart from all the above, massage can directly aid in fat loss. According to some research studies, massage is believed to be able to rupture the fat capsule in the subcutaneous tissue so that the fat is released and absorbed. Thus massage along with proper nutrition and exercise can really help in weight loss.
6. As we have already mentioned, massage helps in preventing and healing injuries. By stretching connective tissue, massage improves circulation to help prevent or break down adhesions and scar tissue that result from muscle tears and other common muscle injuries. Massage also affects the excretion of certain fluids (nitrogen, phosphorus, sulphur) which aid in tissue repair. Fast and effective recovery from injuries means you can start exercising sooner after injury and get your weight loss progress back on track.
So there you have it. There are a lot of benefits of massage that can indirectly and possibly directly help you achieve your weight loss goals.
Regular massage is as important a component in any comprehensive fitness and weight loss program as regular exercise and proper nutrition, which is great news for those of us who used to think that exercising and losing weight was hard work! Remember, losing weight is all about leading a balanced lifestyle and massage is an essential part of any balanced lifestyle.
If you haven’t had a massage recently, what are you waiting for? Get on the phone and make yourself a booking. If you have never had a massage before, remember to get your massage from a qualified massage therapist.
If you are unsure of a massage therapist’s qualifications and experience, ask for referrals, professional training information and make sure they are certified by a reputable agency or institution.
And remember, have fun!
Source by Scott Haywood
