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Mel’s note: You may think massage would be of little benefit to you, but my guest post today, from Elise Degrass, explains why it’s so important to your exercise routine.

Exercise can help us better manage our body and our health, improving fitness levels over time.

However, to make sure you are exercising in the most effective manner, massage is an important addition.

Incorporating massage into your exercise regimen can help you avoid overworking your muscles, or putting strain on your body.

There are five specific ways which show the true massage benefits for helping your exercise routine.

1. Prepares you for exercise
Massage helps to loosen your muscles, which can be essential for a proper, and injury-free workout.

When you exercise, you are at risk of injury if you aren’t conditioned properly. So, along with warm-up exercises, massage can prepare you for a good workout.

2. Alleviates pain in the muscles
As you exercise, your muscles are working hard to achieve a peak fitness level.

And, when you finish your workout, it is important to massage the muscles to help alleviate pain.

3. Prevents tension in the muscles
Working out and stressing your muscles into toning, can cause your muscles to relax during workout, but tense up afterwards.

Massage will prevent this painful tension, allowing your muscles to be conditioned properly.

4. Eases stiffness in the muscles after exercise
As well as extreme tension, exercise can also cause stiffness within the muscles, especially for beginners.

Again, massaging the area will make sure the muscles do not stiffen up, and lead to pain.

5. Boosts immunity
Exercise not only bolsters your physique, but it’s also way of enhancing health and fitness.

In fact, massage has been shown to boost immunity, which is important to help you exercise at the highest levels.

Other benefits
Massage can be a great way of relieving stress, managing anxiety and depression, as well as reducing high blood pressure.

We already know just how beneficial and important exercise is in our lifestyle, but working out in the safest and healthiest way means performing the appropriate warm-up and cool-down exercises, as well as massaging the targeted muscles.

From preparation, to effective alleviation of post-exercise muscle afflictions, massage provides a therapeutic and relaxing, as well as comforting means of ensuring your muscles are conditioned.

Elise Degrass writes about Massage Therapy for MassageTherapy.net