The Benefits of Cupping for Girls and Womens Soccer Players
Cupping therapy. Have you heard of it? You may remember Michael Phelps with those circle marks on his back in the Olympics. Or maybe you’ve had a physical therapist do some cupping on you in the past while rehabbing an injury.
Cupping is a controversial topic, with research not backing it up. There are various types of cupping. However, there are many people and athletes that swear by cupping.
Here are a few reasons it is used to increase performance, heal from injury, and aid in recovery:
- promoting the skin’s blood flow
- changing the skin’s biomechanical properties
- increasing pain thresholds
- improving local anaerobic (without oxygen) metabolism
- reducing inflammation
- boosting cellular immunity
In athletes, cupping can improve their functional recovery and maintain soft tissue health, as stated in a National Institute of Health study. This would make it a great option for players to integrate into their off-season strategy or even during the season to aid in recovery. Imagine feeling some relief from the midseason-heavy, sore legs that never seem to go away.
Reduced pain, muscle regeneration, and increased blood flow are a few good reasons to give cupping a chance. Various experiments have been conducted, some on professional athletes as their subjects, to test whether these effects are consistent.
This study found that “sufferers of chronic neck pain reported lessened functional disability and pain intensity, and greater physical quality of life, after receiving cupping therapy.”
It also compared cupping with heating pads and found cupping to be a more effective way of improving neck pain and function even at 3-7 weeks after treatment.
In addition, the same study highlights that cupping had positive impacts on chronic back pain, saying, “patients who received cupping therapy experienced a decrease in lower back and cervical pain than those who received no treatment at all.”
All of that information and my own experience are enough for me to highly recommend any Soccerista try cupping to manage pain, heal from injury, recover your body, and feel more mobile all year long, no matter what season you’re in.
How your body feels and functions will directly relate to how it performs. Try new things. See what works. And if you end up loving cupping so much, you can purchase your own little kit, which is easy to use. Just make sure to do some research on proper use. I hope this helps you win more games, score or save more goals, recover, practice, and perform at top-notch!
Featured image via Adobe Stock Images
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