Can sports massage benefit teenage athletes?

The most important factors to consider to reduce the chances of getting sports injuries in young athletes are:

1. Optimal Recovery Time.
2. Good Sleep ( at least 8 hours per night ).
3. Optimization of the training load.
4. Training Personalization.
5. Correct Sports Nutrition.
6. Preventative Sports Therapy (before the pain). 
7. Regular Stretching Training Sessions.

The principal rule to prevent sports injuries in young athletes is to balance training and recovery time.

The right recovery time between training sessions is fundamental to give the musculoskeletal system the time to adapt to a certain amount of training and recover from it.

Good sleep for young athletes means at least 8-10 hours per night.

During sleeping time muscle growth reaches its peak and it is important the right amount of time as it is a lengthy and slow process.

Optimizing the training load for your athlete is a very important factor as overtraining is the most common cause of sports injury.

Always in terms of training load, training personalization could be necessary as not all young athletes can take the same load training for different reasons such as age, body type, body weight, and technical ability.

Sports Nutrition is a very important factor to consider to optimize both sports performance and recovery time. In fact, the nutritional needs of young athletes have to be tailored to different factors such as:

1. Type of sports (aerobic, anaerobic, mixed aerobic-anaerobic exercise).
2. Hours of Training.
3. Athletes anthropometrics (weight, height, BMI, Fat, Free Fat Mass ).

The amount of calories, macronutrients, micronutrients, and vitamins a sports diet is composed of, can change from different athletes and types of sports.

Preventative sports therapy such as sports massage before the young athletes develop symptoms (inflammation and muscle pain ) is advisable. When athletes develop pain from inflammation, it is only the last part of a muscle tension build-up process which has started weeks before.

So it is crucial to treat athletes before they develop pain as it will prevent the building of new muscle tension up and therefore prevent the chances of getting inflammation or sports injury.

We advise all our athletes, young and adult, to practise regular stretching sessions to reduce muscle tension and improve muscle flexibility.