How to become a sports massage therapist

How to Become a Sports Massage Therapist: Get the Facts!

In the last several years, the medical field has recognized the importance and efficacy of massage therapy. While massage has roots in ancient Chinese medical practices, its contemporary medical applications have helped massage grow by leaps and bounds. Within this dynamic field, sports massage is one of the most popular, due to its combination of challenging yet rewarding work in the athletic world.

What Is Sports Massage?

Sports massage is one sub-field of massage that entails the manipulation of muscles, tendons, and soft tissues to encourage better health for athletes. Practitioners work to release tension and maximize healing while minimizing pain, stress, and bound-up muscles. The core methods are Swedish and deep tissue techniques, with additional specializations in infant massage, acupressure, and connective tissue massage, among others.

Within this range of modalities, sports massage requires the application of massage's fundamental principles to caring for patients who actively engage in physical activity. This can include the management and support of any number of activities, from regular workouts to Olympic training.

What Do Sports Massage Therapists Do?

Massage therapists specializing in sports massage may work in public or private venues, from weekend athletic events to college and professional sports training. In all cases, individual treatment is based on the beneficial effects of hands-on stimulation, including circulation, relaxation, and warming of the body's soft tissues.

A sports massage therapist's work will vary based upon each client's condition and goals, from infants to the elderly and from injury recovery to joint mobility. Sports therapists, in particular, focus on achieving peak performance for individual athletes. At the same time, they work to prevent injury and support any needed rehabilitation process. Professional athletes' often brutal regimes, though, do require some extra training to further reduce risk of injury.

Job Opportunities for Sports Massage Therapists

While massage therapists may work anywhere from spas to hospitals and private clinics, they are expanding into long-term care facilities, wellness centers, and drug treatment programs. At the same time, with greater recognition, the kinds of people who come to massage therapists for help has expanded to include the elderly, infants, and anyone in need of their healing touch.

Sports therapists thus work with any physical active people, from kids' sports teams to amateur competitors and professional athletes. Most practitioners will work part-time due to the physically demanding nature of massage, but they are generally part of the healthcare team of physicians, physical therapists, and medical caregivers.

Becoming a Sports Massage Specialist

Becoming a specialist in sports massage requires professional training, although standards vary from state to state. Most require some kind of formal program and examination, with university coursework involving around 500 or more hours of practical training. Sports therapists start from a foundation in anatomy, physiology, kinesiology, and courses on the fundamental principles and values of safe practice and professional integrity. Additional coursework then focuses on basic and advanced training in sports massage, as well as training in running a business. All will be essential in learning to simultaneously provide high quality customer service and patient care. Later on, therapists will need to pursue continuing education courses to maintain their training and regularly renew their licenses.

Take the First Step by Becoming a Massage Therapist!

To take the first steps toward your future in massage, consider ECPI University. Our curriculum fuses together the art and science of massage therapy in their program on the clinical instruction and practical work of this field, including an externship and additional hands-on experiences. This specialized program provides accelerated and adaptable learning that allows the achievement of an Associate of Applied Science in Massage Therapy in as little as 15 months.

Get in touch today to learn why ECPI University's College of Health Science is the choice of so many budding massage therapists. It could be the Best Decision You Ever Make!

Learn more about ECPI's College of Health Science TODAY!

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