Sports Massage in Vancouver

Sports massage is focused treatment for active bodies. Your RMT works the muscle groups your sport leans on hardest — the calves and hip flexors on a runner, the forearms and lats on a climber — easing the tightness that builds with training so tissue stays supple and you keep moving well. A recreational runner nursing tight calves gets as much out of it as someone three weeks from race day.

Recovery is only half of it. Regular sessions are also about prevention: catching the tight hip or grumpy shoulder before it pulls you off your schedule.

Both, for different reasons. A pre-event session is lighter and more invigorating — it primes the muscles, and it works best a day or two out, not in the hour before you compete. Afterwards is a different job: a recovery-focused session helps flush fatigue and settle soreness, though it's worth giving your body a little time to come down from a hard effort first. Either way, tell your therapist what's on your training calendar. They'll tailor the work to it. Plenty of clients fit these sessions around office hours — if that's you, our downtown Vancouver page covers how quick the trip over the bridge actually is.

They overlap but aren't identical. Deep tissue is about firm, deep pressure on stubborn tension anywhere in the body. Sports massage is goal-driven around your activity — recovery, performance, injury prevention — and may use deep tissue techniques alongside stretching and faster, more rhythmic work. If you mainly want pressure on a chronic knot, see our deep tissue massage page.