Maximize Your Diet and Exercise Regime With Regular Massage

If you do your best to keep fit then the chances are you know all about the benefits of following a balanced healthy diet and following a regular exercise program that involves a good stretching session to warm up before you begin in earnest. What you may not know is that whether you are training for a serious sports event or you just hit the gym once in a while to help you lose weight and get (or stay) in shape then adding a regular massage to your routine can make a big difference to its overall effectiveness.

Massage for Gym Rats

Whether you are a serious athlete or not one of the biggest reasons for hitting the gym in the first place is to help maximize your range of movement and increase or maintain the things your body is physically capable of achieving. Warm up stretches are great, but even a lot of those big tough body building blokes are discovering that massage can help improve overall conditioning a great deal.

Even a single massage session improves circulation and mobility and for those who have overdone it at the gym (which happens all the time even to the fittest people) regular massage helps to speed recovery and get an individual's training program back on track faster than rest alone would. Regular massage can also help to break down old scar tissue that is still lingering after older muscle damage which helps and individual's mobility improve even further.

Massage and Dieters

If you were to ask one of those serious body building blokes they would tell you that following a great balanced diet, full of all the right amount of proteins and carbohydrates, vitamins and "good fats" is rarely ever enough to really get the body you want. This is because there are certain hormones found in the body itself that can derail even the most serious dieting efforts. The one that bodybuilders are most concerned about is a hormone called cortisol.

Cortisol is also known as the stress hormone and it triggers what is known as the body's "fight or flight" response. When the body is highly stressed this hormone slows the functions of the digestive system so the body can concentrate on fighting the stress instead. With a poorly functioning digestive system the chance that a person can lose weight is reduced. Massage helps reduce both general stress and the levels of cortisol in the body, meaning effective weight loss is easier to achieve.

Incorporating Massage into Your Health Regime

While getting a massage every day just won't fit into many people's schedules a monthly, bi-weekly or weekly session can make a real difference to your overall fitness levels. Serious athletes and keen gym goers may benefit most from a specialist sports massage session but the simple fact is that adding massage in general to your stretching and healthy eating plan can reap you more benefits than you might have ever thought was possible!