Tennis Ball Massage - Shoulders

Feb 28, 2009

Tennis Ball Massage - Shoulders

Massage therapy has been an important part of high level sports for many years. It has been known to be beneficial for recovery and injury prevention. Although good research to prove this either way is hard to come by, I think the majority of coaches would say yes to regular massage therapy for their athletes. The only downfall is cost and even though one time per month is not an issue for the serious athlete, to go every week may be to much of an economic strain.

Some Reasons for Tennis Ball Massage

✔ improved range of motion.
✔ reduce scar tissue and adhesion's.
✔ relax over active muscles.
✔ supplement your regular massage therapy sessions.

But there is one option to the rescue, the great tennis ball. You can get massage therapy when ever you want for less then $1. It is a great way to work out adhesion's, trigger points or scar tissue on many parts of your body. It is so simple to use, just roll on it and when you find an area that is painful you have just found the jack pot. Generally, the more painful it is the more you need to do it.

For Water Polo, Hand Ball, Baseball and other overhead throwing athletes, I recommend that you focus on the shoulders since this is the most common area of injury

Key Points
✔ start in the standing positions and progress to lying positions.
✔ time needed is directly correlated to your tissue health.
✔ at the beginning you may need ~10 minutes per shoulder.
✔ after a few weeks this should be down to 5 minutes total.
✔ perform 2-4x/week.
✔ can be done before or after training and on days off.

You can see me suffering on the video linked below.

Enjoy the pain!

Be Well,
Mike Reid

http://www.youtube.com /watch?v=8EVxjpiKSqw