8 Reasons to Get a Massage the Week after the Marathon

It’s hard to believe that it’s time for your Marathon. After all that training, now is the time you’ve been preparing for. I personally don’t even like driving 26 miles, but I have spent enough time with runners to understand that running a marathon is the ultimate test of strength and endurance. So, what happens on the Monday or Tuesday after you’ve completed the marathon, and how can a massage help? Here are eight reasons to get a massage the week after you complete a marathon:

1. Soreness: Delayed onset muscle soreness kicks in after you have completed a challenging workout. And there is no workout quite like running 26 miles. Runners can expect to be sore beginning 24-48 hours after completing the marathon. Massage has been shown to decrease the amount of pain you can expect that first week after the race.
2. Swelling: Running a marathon is pretty traumatic for the human body. Inflammation and swelling is very common. A thorough circulation-focused massage can really help to flush out your system and get rid of the metabolic waste.
3. Stretching: Chances are that the first week after the marathon you are doing very little physical activity. Instead, you can lay back and let the massage therapist do it for you. A massage therapist can warm up your muscles with massage and then spend time stretching you out. A massage therapist can obviously stretch your hamstrings and quads, but did you know that they can also stretch out your low back, calves, plantar fascia, and hip flexors?
4. Promote Healing: A massage can help promote healthy healing for your soft tissue. After a workout of this magnitude, your body is probably suffering from minor strains and micro-tearing of muscle tissue. Massage therapy can help your body heal in a natural healthy way.
5. Overuse Injuries: Chances are pretty good that after training for a marathon you have some overuse or nagging injury. Maybe you have a little knee pain from a tight ITB, or maybe you have a little back pain from some chronically tight hamstrings or hip flexors. A massage therapist can assess these issues as well as help treat them. Massage therapists do not diagnose injuries, but we can assess the tissue and try to give you relief.
6. Education: A massage therapist can help recommend stretches and exercises that might help you recover more quickly. There are many self-treatment techniques a massage therapist can teach you to do at home or at the gym.
7. Future Treatment: A massage therapist who has experience with runners can be a great resource to guide your future training and treatment. We can give you pointers and tell you what to be on the look out for with your body. When you are training for a race, you want to be preventing injury, not trying to recover from an injury.
8. Special Reward: If you have ever deserved the reward of a full body massage–this is it! You have been making sacrifices for months now to achieve your goal of running a marathon. You have earned this massage and we look forward to pampering you.

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The Athletico blog is an educational resource written by Athletico employees. Athletico bloggers are licensed professionals who abide by the code of ethics outlined by their respective professional associations. The content published in blog posts represents the opinion of the individual author based on their expertise and experience. The content provided in this blog is for informational purposes only, does not constitute medical advice and should not be relied on for making personal health decisions.