Integrating Sports Massage into Your Personal Training Career

Introduction to Sports Massage and Personal Training

So you’re a Personal Trainer, Group Fitness Instructor, or whoever else has had the fortune of coming across this blog, and you want to learn something about combining personal training and sports massage therapy?

Great, well let’s get cracking, we’ll take it One Thing at a time and we’ll cover some basics that will let you work out if this is something for you and if so, how to make it happen.

Benefits of Sports Massage for Trainers and Clients

Believe it or not, sports massage and personal training are quite closely linked, they have some things in common, and they have some quite different things that compliment them well. When we’re working with a client or a class to make them fitter, stronger, bigger or smaller, we are exercising the body and pushing it ever so slightly beyond its comfort zone - this ladies and gentlemen, is what we love to call progressive overload.

It’s necessary, hard work and sometimes an outright graft to make it happen. But let’s take pause and think about what that actually means, well simply, we’re taking muscles past what they can actually cope with, albeit safely. This means that our clients will experience DOMS (delayed onset muscle soreness), tightness in the muscles, and perhaps even adhesions in the muscles (this is what we call knots).

Are you catching on yet? Adding Sports Massage to your skillset not only allows you to work your clients hard in the gym, but you can actually help fix them up between sessions.

What’s that I hear, double revenue calling?

Now, like most Personal Trainers and Sports Massage Therapists out there, I’m incredibly grateful to have my clients in my personal and professional sphere, they’re fantastic humans and being able to offer them another service means two things; I can provide them with an even better outcome and I am more likely to retain them as a client for longer.

What other benefits does this have for us as fitness professionals? Let’s take a deeper dive into who we are, if you are a results driven personal trainer who is set on helping their clients achieve an easily measurable goal, then providing sports massage therapy to your clients will help to reduce the chances of injury, and help keep them fresh on the gym floor for longer meaning that running both products as a complimentary service will let you get better results faster.

If on the other hand, you are a more holistic personal trainer, perhaps focussed on overall wellness or happiness, well it’s still the thing for you and here’s why. You have more time to spend with your client, providing them with value, and moreover you are able to deepen the working relationship that you have with them.

Key Techniques and Skills in Sports Massage

In sports massage, for a level 3 practitioner, you would be expected to be able to do some key techniques such as:

1. Effleurage - warming technique often used to prepare an area for deeper work
2. Petrissage - a technique that involves lifting the skin and moving it, usually in a kneading manner
3. Frictions - a technique which is applied to a very localised area to alleviate a specific issue in the soft tissue
4. Tapotement - these percussive techniques involve stimulating the muscles, usually in preparation for sport performance
5. Assisted Passive Stretching - you’ll most likely already be familiar with this one, but basically we’re helping the client stretch by controlling the position and depth of stretch, usually from the massage table

Once you have mastered these techniques and you can pull them out of your toolbox comfortably, there are lots of directions for you to go, including pursuing a Level 4 qualification in sports massage and various CPD skills that you can pick up such as Functional Integrated Cupping Therapy, Acupuncture and Kinesiology Taping.

Alas though, let’s dial back the excitement and focus in.

These massage techniques can work wonders for your clients both in helping them recover, attain a sense of wellness and even significantly reduce the chances of injury occurring.

If we think about it, those three things are powerful and form a strong argument for carrying out sports massage treatments:

• Providing a sense of wellness
• Boosting recovery
• Preventing injury

I don’t know about you, but if I was to offer those three things to my clients in addition to the personal training services I offer, I suspect they’d be keen to see what the fuss is about too.

Incorporating Sports Massage into Training Programs: Strategies for integrating massage into client workout plans.

Let’s take our previous thoughts a little further shall we?

We’ve discussed how it can benefit both you and your clients to include sports massage in your offerings and what that entails, so let’s think about how we go about that.

For most active people who don’t report issues with pain, movement, it would be recommended to include sports massage in their training programmes once every 2-4 weeks to promote recovery and reduce the likelihood of them becoming injured. This is what we would refer to as a maintenance schedule, there’s nothing in particular you’re trying to fix, you’re just trying to keep your client in a good place.

For clients who report frequent tightness in muscles, or even sore and aching muscles as a result of their hard work in the gym, it would be recommended to get them booked in for a weekly appointment until the the muscle tightness or restriction has eased. Then you’d move them onto a maintenance schedule.

Building sports massage into a client’s exercise programming can be referred to as an integrated physical training and recovery programme. Have a think, how much better does it sound to suggest to a client, “Let’s get you onto an integrated physical training and recovery plan to help keep you injury free while we work towards your goals.” Rather than saying, “Let’s get you on a gym programme and gain/lose that weight?”

If you’re like me, it sounds much better, rather than doing what every other personal trainer in the world is doing, you’re going a stage further, you’re supporting your client’s recovery as well as their physical progress - you are now selling a much more complete product.

Certification and Training for Sports Massage: Discussing the pathways to gaining sports massage qualifications

As with many things, there are a number of routes one can take to get into sports massage, some of these routes will be of a higher quality than others and some will even depend on your geographical location.

The best bit of advice I can ever give you is to do your research. Look into exactly the kind of thing you want to do with sports massage and find the place that suits you and your needs best.

When you begin to look into the options that are out there, you’ll see a whole range of Level 3 and Level 4 sports massage qualifications that are readily available from a range of providers. When you Google, “Sports Massage Course”, you’ll find a lot of results, some of which will give you good information and some of which will give you information that is a little questionable, especially when you see that a result is sponsored, so take care with these results.

In short the only things you need to get hands on with your first sports massage client is a Level 3 Diploma in Sports Massage Therapy and relevant insurance. Depending on your Personal Training insurance, you might be able to add sports massage at no extra cost.

The level 3 Diploma in sports massage covers all of the basic techniques above in addition to anatomy and physiology, understanding how to carry out a consultation with a client and screen the issues that they have along with understanding all of the legal and ethical considerations that you need to be aware of.

At Motion Fitness Education, we specialise in tailoring your sports massage education to your needs; each and every member of the sports massage team operates their own successful clinics and is able to advise on everything from the trickier side of anatomy and physiology to marketing your services and retaining clients.

All of our sports massage learners are able to access one-to-one support with a member of the team, (usually me, as I’m overly passionate about sports massage and physical therapies) for support and conversations whenever you need it. This support time, is used to direct your learning in a way that works best for you, we have experience working with every type of person and with an array of additional support needs, so you can rest assured that we’re able to support you with bespoke learning plans and support. Most importantly though, the one-to-one support time, is your time to get the best out of and we’re always happy to chat through your business plan with you, and point you in the right direction with things.

Lastly and perhaps most importantly, you’ll get to experience the sports massage practical days, where we meet up with you and other learners local to you and provide hands on support for learning and honing the massage techniques covered in the course, and to help you start building a network of other therapists around you. Running a sports massage day is always the best part of what I do, and it’s always great being able to get to know everyone a little better.

Building a Client Base with Sports Massage Services: Tips on marketing sports massage as a part of personal training services.

This is the stuff we really want to know, how do you get clients through the door for sports massage?

You might be tempted to offer free sessions to people, and while this has its place, at Motion Fitness Education, this is typically something we advise against.

Instead, we’d recommend engaging your existing personal training client base and letting them know that you’d be more than happy to offer sports massage treatments as part of their programme, this is the tried, tested and most successful approach. As I’m sure you’ll already know, the conversation around fees and payment can be an awkward one, but give your clients a reasonable number and provide them with plenty of value and it’ll be okay!

The exception to the rule for giving away free sessions, is loyalty and rewards schemes, for example, if your clients refer a new client onto you, give them a free 30 minute session, they’ll love it and be motivated to send more people your way. But be cautious with this approach as you can easily end up giving several hours of free treatments across a week and this can actually damage your bottom line despite having more overall business.

The next thing I would recommend, is engaging with prospective clients online, if you’re au fait with how to run your social media channels, get some content out there, explain the benefits of sports massage, why you might benefit from a treatment if you are either new to the gym or even if you’re just progressing your training.

If you are brand new to whole personal training and sports massage routine, check out the Motion Fitness Education Business Hub; where our expert team chat through business basics, how to get started and how to begin to grow your brand.

The key take away for this section, there is an endless list of things that you can do to be successful in this industry and naming them all would be a nearly impossible task, but we are here for you. Even if you’re not quite ready to take the plunge, drop us a message, or request a all and we’ll be more than happy to chat with you around what you want to achieve and give you some helpful advice.

Balancing Personal Training with Sports Massage: Managing both aspects for a comprehensive career

The working hours and effort of personal trainers is a hot topic at the moment, with terms like ‘Burnout’ being thrown around like a hot potato.

Being a successful personal trainer and sports massage therapist at the same time doesn’t mean you need to be married to your job and it certainly doesn’t mean you need to compromise your health by being burnt out, let’s look at some ways that can help you manage these issues.

First and foremost, diary management. Carefully plan out your ideal week and I’ll be very clear here, your ideal week is not the week that lets you cram as many sessions as possible in, the ideal week is the week that allows you to work enough, rest enough, and enjoy your life enough.

How does that look, well that’s where you come in, everyone’s life is a little different, but here are some non-negotiable things you should consider:

1. The human body needs around 8 hours of sleep per night, before you sleep you need to wind down, eat your food and sort out life admin - make sure that you don’t compromise this
2. You need to ensure that you have time to see your friends and family, social health is every bit as important as physical and mental health
3. Plan time off, you need to wind down and do things that you want to do in life

For some people this will look like an 8 hour 9-5 work day, for others it’s a split shift that lets you pick the kids up from school and for others it means taking your days off during the week and working the weekend. Whatever you need out of your working week, set your non-negotiable things and stick to them.

Now that we’ve covered some basics, let’s talk about integrating sports massage and personal training into the same diary. Have dedicated times for your regular personal training sessions and dedicated time for your sports massage sessions. If you need to change this up at some point, that’s okay, the point of the structure is to give you a healthy balance.

To make diary management easier on yourself, make your working times clear to your clients, post it on your social media, drop a WhatsApp Broadcast to your clients at the start of a month to let then know when you’ll be accepting personal training sessions and when you’ll accept sports massage sessions and where you possibly can, stick to it.

Conclusion: Summarizing the synergistic benefits of combining sports massage with personal training.

As always, you’ve been a lovely audience, thank you for your time and energy reading this article today, I really appreciate it!

There are plenty of benefits to you combining sports massage and personal training in your professional practice ranging from giving your clients more value and therefore retaining them to being able to open up a new revenue stream, we’ve touched on how you can become a qualified sports massage therapist and how you can begin to build your business.

Even with all of that, there’s plenty more that we can offer you, if you have any questions or you’d even just like to chat about your career, drop an enquiry and we’ll be more than happy to help - you’ll always be met with a friendly voice.

Much love,

Blair

Team Motion