How Routine Massage Can Support Your Fitness Goals
Each year presents us with the opportunity to hit the refresh button on living our best life. We can harvest fresh inspiration and renewed commitment to healthy change by participating in the annual ritual of creating New Year’s resolutions. Fitness goals are a popular and important part of resolution making. Lack of exercise is now considered a global pandemic with serious consequences on mental health, physical health, aging, and overall quality of life.
Planning and following through with a fitness plan doesn’t have to be overwhelming, intimidating, or in any way self-defeating. In fact, setting fitness goals should be approached with an attitude of self-love—of giving priority to your wellbeing and summoning the courage to live your one wild and precious life—in spite of the world’s unquenchable demands. Creating your fitness plan should feel fun, meaningful, energizing, and empowering and it should prioritize and protect your right to live a life of uncompromised health and happiness.
An often overlooked but key ingredient to breathing life into a fitness plan is incorporating routine massage. Regular massage is perhaps the best way to show gratitude to your body and a ritual that will help you to develop and maintain a positive relationship with your body. It’s both a yummy and practical way to sustain your inspiration and reward yourself for meeting your weekly wellness goals. Both exercise and massage are optimal ways to care for your body, but are you aware of how well the two compliment each other?
Clinical research has emphasized for decades the role of massage in obtaining peak physical performance and enhancing the benefits of exercise. Therapeutic massage improves performance and prevents exercise-related injury by promoting healthy circulation and muscle conditioning, improving soft tissue function and joint mobility, breaking down scar tissue, relieving stiffness and soreness, and strengthening body awareness. Regular massage is also a proven weight-loss tool, reducing the release of stress hormones and facilitating detoxification and elimination.
By combining the release of massage with increased strength and control through exercise, the body becomes less painful and restricted, stronger and more mobile, and less likely to be injured. And, truly, what better incentive to keep the spark of your fitness goals alive than a monthly date with a therapeutic massage?