The ultimate success of an athlete is largely due to the total and efficient recovery of his or her priority muscles. If a runner would take 10 minutes before exercising and couple stretching with massage of all priority muscle groups, true warm up would be far more effective. We can look at an unprepared muscle as a dry sponge. Recovery Workouts or races produce micro-traumas and tears to muscles. Recovery is nothing more than the healing of these tears as well as the body's flushing of the waste products that have accumulated in the muscle from the exercise.
Many elite athletes have the luxury of receiving massages once, maybe twice a week.
Secondly, an exercised muscle is much like a clenched fist after a workout. IT will not only bring greater volumes of fresh blood to the muscle, but will also force relaxation of the muscle to allow greater absorption of the much needed circulation and recovery drink an athlete may have taken. In sports today, all experts are becoming very aware of the impact of trigger points. . I now agree. Trigger points are involuntary contracted muscle fibers that are a by-product of muscular activity.