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Home » News on Massage, Health and Wellness » Blog » Self Care Tips » Massage for Sports Injuries: What is Scar Tissue and How Can Massage Help As We Age?
If you are into sports now, odds are you started playing team sports when you were young. I remember my first soccer tryout at 9. I also remember my first sprained ankle from getting slide tackled at 11. There were a lot more sports injuries where that came from between then and now. Soccer, track, cross country, cycling, swimming, and later aikido. And that one ill fated parkour class during which I sprained my ankle. I wish I had known about massage therapy for sports injuries a lot earlier!
Along the way I’ve sprained both ankles more than once. And severely torn a hamstring muscle twice. I've smashed fingers and toes, and torn a rotator cuff. I've gotten a bone spur on my wrist, had shin splints, plantar fasciitis, hip pain, low back pain, and herniated a disc in my neck.
To keep moving I've had a lot of bodywork, acupuncture, physical therapy, and chiropractic work since my mid 20’s. Without it, I’d be taped together with duct tape just to function. And probably would have needed a few different surgeries (currently surgery free at 48).
Like most of you, I’ve got the scars to prove my sports history. Unfortunately, as I get older, all of these old sports injuries make it even more likely that I’ll re-injure myself. So I’ve learned the hard way to be more cautious and create a regular self-care routine.
Update Sept 2020: After a 4 month shutdown and high period of intense stress due to COVID-19 I'm definitely feeling some of my old injury sites "show up" more than usual. I'm really happy that our studio has been able to reopen and that we are able to practice safely. And to get some much needed massage for my own body 🙂
Each time we sustain sports injuries (or any other injuries) our body has to make a decision. It has to decide whether it has time to heal itself with properly functioning replacement tissue or with scar tissue. The more severe the injury, the more likely the body will use scar tissue. If it doesn't, it could "bleed out."
Building replacement tissue takes time. If you are bleeding internally (or externally) time is a big factor. Your body has to make a choice:
We all have scar tissue in our bodies. Those of us with a sports background likely have a lot more of it. Can you list all the injuries you’ve had?!
Our bodies are basically a bunch of functional pieces glued together. The glue is called “fascia.” Fascia is non-living tissue that our body makes to stick stuff together. It’s made of mostly water and collagen fibers.
Scar tissue is also non-living tissue that sticks stuff together. And it’s also made of mostly water and collagen fibers.
In healthy fascia, the collagen fibers are woven together in a cohesive way like fabric. It has structural integrity that allows for some movement and stretching in certain directions and also limits movements in others. When healthy, it acts like an ACE bandage already built into your joints, muscles, tendons, and ligaments.
In scar tissue, the collagen fibers are thrown into place like a pile of pick up sticks. The body has to stop the bleeding from an injury quickly. It doesn’t have time to carefully arrange the collagen fibers for structure and healthy movement. If you have any noticeable skin scars you can attest to the difference. Healthy skin moves and stretches, while a scar feels hard and immobile.
Scar tissue can show up in big ways and also in little ways. Push things too hard and you end up with tiny “micro” tears in the muscle tissue. Most of these will be healed with properly functioning muscle but a few may be just too much for the body to handle without plugging it with scar tissue. Over time these micro-tears add up to restricted movement.
The more scar tissue we have the stiffer and more limited our movements become.
And once scar tissue is formed it’s there for life. The idea that you can “break down scar tissue” and that the body gets rid of it is a modern wellness myth. However, a good massage therapist can help to work into the scar tissue and make it more pliable.
With bodywork and regular stretching the scar tissue can form a better alignment and act more like healthy fascia. So you can usually get most of your range of motion back.
Check out this Washington Post Wellness article if you want to read more about this: Click here!
The first bit of advice I can give is that we all need to readjust our definition of “injury.” I ask hundreds of clients every year about their injuries and many will say, “oh I’ve never really gotten injured….” Which is interesting considering that they are coming to me because they are in pain.
We think of sports injuries as broken bones, torn ACL ligaments, sprained ankles that lay us out for weeks, etc. These absolutely are sports injuries, and major ones. It’s the minor ones we gloss over.
Pushed too hard at the gym yesterday and are feeling a little pinchy “tug” in you hip when you walk up the stairs? That’s an injury; it needs time to heal. But hey, you’ve got to keep to your exercise schedule or you’ll (insert self judgement here). So you go right back to the gym and do another hard workout.
At the beginning the hip is screaming at you, but it “warms up” during the workout and actually feels a bit better now.
The next day it’s yelling at you even more….. And wouldn’t you know it, but your shoulder feels a bit “off.” Yet most of us go back to the gym again anyway.
Your body has some amazing tools to be able to function while injured. These include a handy couple of internal drugs called adrenaline (you know and love this one) and cortisol (it numbs pain).
These tools were designed by evolution to make sure that you could keep running or fighting the bear that was chasing you even if it had already injured you. They gave our species a fighting chance and likely saved your ancestors from a bad scrap or two.
Unfortunately, most of us are overusing and addicted to these life saving internal drugs. We mostly use them to bolster our ego and to avoid dealing with the emotional impact of growing older.
We aren’t going to “bounce back” like we used to. We can either accept this or break ourselves against the wall of reality. Your choice 🙂
Here at Bodyworks DW Advanced Massage Therapy, all of our therapists are highly trained to handle sports injuries in their many varieties. We’ll be able to look at your form and see if an older injury is throwing your alignment off and really find the source of the current pain so that you can get back to it quickly, with more knowledge of how to prevent a relapse. We’ll also be able to assess when you have a more serious injury that may require seeing a physical therapist or orthopedic doctor. Book at sports massage in midtown or fidi!
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