One question we often get asked is “how often should I be getting therapeutic massage?” Getting more frequent massage is almost never a bad thing, but how often should you be coming in? It’s hard to say specifically since everyone’s body, everyone’s situation, and everyone’s needs are a little bit different and everyone responds to massage differently. However, there are some general guidelines that you can follow when considering how often you should get massage.
- Pain from an injury. Are you recovering from a specific injury and are looking for a rehabilitative type massage? When I say injury that could mean many different things. It could be anything from whiplash caused by a car accident, an acute injury that occurred while playing sports or exercising, or even a more slowly developing overuse injury from repetitive movements at work. Massage frequency will be slightly different in each case depending on the severity of the injury, the muscles involved, and the depth of the massage, but with cases like this more frequent massage is usually what you need. A good place to start would be to come in 1-2x per week, as advised by your therapist, until you are feeling consistent pain relief and you see other positive signs in your healing such as increased range of motion and less tiredness in the muscles. Once you start feeling this consistent relief gradually start spreading the appointments out to 1x every 2 weeks until your pain and mobility is consistently improved, then spread it out to 1x every 3 weeks or 4 weeks. With consistency you can find quick improvement of your injuries. With these types of injuries, you typically want to continue to get a few massage sessions to make sure the area being worked on is healed as much as possible. Many times, people struggle years later after an injury occurred because they never took the time to properly address and heal the muscles involved. That is why even after you are feeling better we recommend getting regular massage for maintenance which I’ll talk more about in part 2 of this post.
Although it can be a little frustrating, deep genuine healing takes time. But that is why we are here, we want to help you get there and we will do all that we can to make that happen. If you aren’t exactly sure about your situation feel free to ask your therapist and they will be able to advise you. Our therapists will patiently work with your muscles and help you resolve your pain. This is why we hire high quality, highly trained therapists who have a passion to become better at what they do and help them to reach that goal. And that is why when you come to Body Balance you experience the best massage in Utah. In part 2 of this post I will be covering two other situations you might find yourself in and how you might change the time between your massages based on those situations.
