Sports Massage
Sports Massage Therapy London and UK. |
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Sports massage derives from the commonly known massage therapy first used by ancient Egyptian, Chinese and Greek civilisations. Hippocrates, said to be the father of medicine, noted the benefits of "rubbing" on the human body in 460BC, however it wasn't until the early 1900s that the beginnings of sports massage techniques were developed.
The first system of sports massage originated from Swedish massage (developed in the 1700s) and was initially used at a massage school in Finland. During the 1924 Olympic Games, Finnish athlete Paavo Nurmi won five gold medals and attributed his success to sports massage during his training regime. The therapy's focus then switched to Russia where a physician developed sports massage methods for the Moscow Institute of Physical Therapy and Russian athletes have used the therapy effectively in their training ever since.
The first published book on sports massage was written by American Jack Meagher in 1980. Having been an athlete during the 1940s, Meagher wrote about the effect sports massage has on increasing performance and endurance and he's credited with popularising the therapy in the United States. Over the last three decades, the therapy has become popular in the UK and the Sports Massage Association was founded in 2002.
The SMA holds a national register of sports massage therapists. The Institute of Sports and Remedial Massage (ISRM) also provide a national register of fully qualified sports massage therapists who have been professionally trained and are members of the SMA. The ISRM were the first to establish a network of schools teaching a validated qualification in Sport and Remedial Massage.
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