Talking About Massage Therapy

Deep Tissue Massage: Triathlon Recovery

Although completing a triathlon can be a bucket-list worthy accomplishment, surviving the training can be the most daunting prospect. The key to making it to race day is finding ways to enhance your recovery from your the accumulation of your tough swimming, biking, and running workouts.

Here's how to incorporate massage into your training plan to ensure that you're healthy on race day.

Periodizing

Optimal triathlon training is all about periodizing the progression of your training intensity and volume. Because it takes your body a few weeks to adapt to a new training stimulus, you can anticipate roughly when your body is likely to feel most worn down.

Mid-cycle Massage: working in reverse from race day, count back 10-12 days. This recovery window should coincide with the height of your training fatigue and acute recovery needs for each 3-4 week cycle of your triathlon training buildup. When you book your massage, you should plan for it to be preceded and followed by an easy day. You will want the workout before and after to be easy so that your massage therapist can break up any accumulated scar tissue without worrying about making you too sore. Also, having your massages planned early can help you and your massage therapist find dates that work with your respective schedules.

Communicating

Your massage therapist will be likely to tell a lot about your sore muscles simply by touching them. However, you should utilize your massage minutes wisely and have your therapist target your most frequently sore areas.

Logging Your Soreness: as you log your training activities, take a few minutes to log where you feel sore. To make this data more useful for your massage therapist, you will likely need to specify how, when, where, and why you might be feeling sore in a particular spot(s). For instance, instead of just noting that your "left calf is sore," you might note "my left calf is sore immediately after I complete longer, harder, runs" or "my left calf is sore when I start my bike sessions but loosens up after I'm warmed up." You can share your training log with your massage therapist the days before your massage sessions, which can help them prepare to target their massage efforts. Additionally, working with the same therapist throughout your training can help you build a trusted ally and can help you monitor any lingering soreness you might feel leading up to your big race.

Speak with a massage professional for more information.