In boxing, injuries come with the territory. The rigorous movements exhibited by both your upper and lower body means it’s inevitable wear and tear is going to develop at some point.
However, there are measures which can be taken to prevent injury occurring and one of them is sports massage therapy.
Of course, sports massages are not just beneficial in the world of boxing. Across all forms of sport and from world-class professional athletes to weekend joggers, the technique has proven to be extremely useful in first preventing injury, and then also as part of rehabilitation for when issues do pop up.
Given this author is participating in ExpatBloke’s White Collar boxing fight night next weekend, though, in order to be able to perform at my maximum potential, it was necessary for me to iron out some underlining issues from before the process commenced and some which have reared its head from the exhaustive training.
So, sports massage therapist Paula Ralph, who has been on hand to assist, not just myself, but all of the competitors, applied her more than two decades worth of knowledge and practice to get my body firing on all cylinders this week.
As you can well imagine, there are specific areas which have been under immense stress from the aggressive and explosive movements while boxing, so Ralph focused largely on my back and shoulders.
Feeling grey: Alex Rea feels the pain during a boxing session.
Now, there’s no skating round the edges, sports massages hurt. A lot. In fact, as a big grown man, stemming back tears occupied much of my thoughts during the hour-long session but it’s crucial to understand that this is a pain for gain procedure.
“I tend to see people after they’ve been injured so when I’m telling people what I do I really make a point that this is all about prehabilitation, keeping your body in tip-top condition and not waiting for those injuries to strike,” Ralph explained.
“You leave a knot unnoticed and what happens is that muscle eventually switches off. It stops working because it’s used so much energy it’s like ‘I can’t do this anymore’. When a muscle is in a knot state, it’s now permanently working and it’s permanently switched on so it has no time to relax. It fatigues faster and then switches off which is bad news.”
What exactly is a knot, though?
“A muscle is made of muscle fibres and within those muscle fibres there’s spindles and they slide over each other to create energy,” Ralph said.
“What happens is the spindles slide over each other but they don’t slide back, they get stuck. As they get stuck it kind of backs up.
“If you think of a train crash where everything comes into the centre and backs up and backs up, everything is then stuck. Where the muscle is, a little ball emerges and then another bigger ball next to it until a knot forms.”
All elbows: Feeling the strain.
My back and shoulders were knotted as tightly as tangled shoe laces but in just one session the improvements were immediate.
Yes, there’s a lot of grimaced facial expressions as elbows sink into the tender muscle tissue but when you rise from the massage table, you feel lighter and looser.
For anyone participating in regular physical activity, sports massage therapy is a great addition to your normal regimen. Depending on your budget and level of activity, how frequently you see a professional massage therapist will range from every week to once a month.
Ralph insists once a month should be viewed as an absolute minimum while every two weeks is best. One of the biggest barriers in encouraging people to get this necessary help is the pain factor. But Ralph says that’s just a temporary road block.
“It’s really important to get across how beneficial sports massages are,” she added. “I’m telling clients constantly that they just have to grin and bear it because tomorrow you will be flying. I repeat that your mobility will increase so much more so I just keep reiterating how much better they’re going to feel.
“Also, I just keep reminding clients to breathe and relax because if you’re tightening the muscle which I am trying to loosen off then the pain factor increases.
“The pain is a big barrier but once people see the benefits they understand that it’s worth going through it.
“I have a trick though. I’ll do the nasty stuff and then I’ll do a bit of a nice stuff so you forget how nasty it was when you come off the bed.”
Here’s hoping when the nasty stuff arrives in the ring next week, I’ll be best placed to get a nice win.
What: Sports massage therapy
Where: Body Elite International
For bookings: Contact Jamie McMorrow on 0568340196 or
[email protected]
