There are so many reasons a professional massage therapist or bodyworker may want to move his or her career in the direction of massage for sports therapy. These reasons may range from a desire to work with amateur and professional athletes who are serious about their fitness to a certain level of ambition when it comes to the amount of money one makes on a regular basis. For those manual and movement therapists who are interested in the more clinical realm of bodywork, there is no doubt that massage for sports therapy can hold great appeal.
In order to begin working in the world of massage for sports therapy, it is typically necessary to not only have a basic education in general massage therapy, but also to have taken more focused training on the issues and conditions, as well as the relevant techniques and approaches, that tend to play a key role in the practice of sports massage. Many times, the skills one will need to learn to become successful in such a practice will fall into the category of deep tissue massage techniques. In general, massage for sports therapy aims to achieve goals that can range from improving the performance level of an athlete to assisting in the healing process following an athletic injury.
If you happen to be a manual therapist with dreams of moving into the world of massage for sports therapy—or if you are already practicing sports massage and simply wish to boost and enhance your career—the first step toward making this happens may be finding the right massage therapy continuing education. This means seeking out a continuing education course that is focused on topics that pertain to massage for sports therapy and will allow you to learn skills that would be valuable in such a practice. However, before you sign up for any CE program, you need to be sure that both the teacher and the course are of the highest quality.
To begin with, you may want to check to see whether the person or organization through which the continuing education class is being offered is an NCBTMB approved provider. If you are using the Internet to look for a quality CE course on massage for sports therapy, then try typing in the phrase “find an approved CE provider NCBTMB,” and see what comes up in the search results. For athletic trainers who are looking to learn more about massage for sports therapy, checking to see whether the teacher or organization offering the CE program is a BOC approved provider may be equally important.
Fortunately, the CE programs offered through Erik Dalton and the Freedom From Pain Institute are approved by both the NCBTMB and the BOC. Therefore, those professional practitioners who are looking to earn required CE hours or CE credits can rest assured that the time they spend learning with Dalton will not only help to take their careers in the more lucrative direction of sports massage, but also count toward the licensing renewal requirements in most states and regions.
Of course, earning necessary continuing education credits is just the most basic benefit of enrolling in one of Dalton’s continuing education programs. The true value of taking one of Dalton’s in-person, online or home-study CE seminars is that these programs have been carefully developed to deliver the rich knowledge and experience that Dalton has gained in his long and prestigious career as a manual therapist focused on pain management. Each continuing education class teaches students key aspects of Myoskeletal Alignment Techniques (MAT), the modality Dalton created to address the issues and conditions he has seen so often in his own hands-on practice.
MAT works beautifully in a sports massage practice or as part of a larger sports medicine clinic because it is based on addressing pain conditions by mobilizing joints through muscle manipulation. In other words, MAT provides its practitioners with specific protocols for specific issues and conditions, from rotator cuff injuries and sciatica to rib dysfunction and thoracic outlet syndrome. Clients tend to come to a sports massage therapist with these kinds of specific complaints, and the practitioner who can successfully address such issues is almost certain to have a booming business.
