There are many sports massage courses that offer the expectation of a successful career. This suggests that you only need their certificate to succeed but can it really be that simple? In reality, clients don’t come to you because of the certificate on your wall and probably won’t know what it means or how reputable it is anyway. The only thing that really matters is the true quality of the treatment they receive.
You will only become a successful therapist if you get good results helping clients overcome injury and improve their physical wellbeing, and this takes real skill and knowledge. And you can only acquire this through good quality in-depth training, and the better the training the more likely the success. It’s that simple!
I have spent over 30 years trying to lead by example, improving the standard and quality of training with our own qualification. But without Statutory Regulation in our profession few others, if any, have followed my example. Instead, I have seen a general decline in the quality of sports massage training in recent years because so many courses have become shorter, with less underpinning theoretical content and more remote online learning instead of proper classroom sessions.
You cannot learn how to be a good hands-on therapist by watching videos. You may think you are doing something in the same way as shown but it is hard to spot your own mistakes. Even if your hands are doing the same thing, what about the rest of your body? Even if you do manage to copy the video exactly this probably won’t be right either. Therapists come in all shapes and sizes with their own strengths and weaknesses so the demonstration you watch on screen may not be so suitable for you. And if you don’t have a wide range of different people to practice on at home then your learning experience will be very limited
The only truly effective way to acquire the skills and knowledge you need is in a proper traditional classroom environment where you can practice with a wider range of fellow students and have tutors observe and guide you. They will share their clinical experience with you, answer your questions and give you more individual help.
Of course it is tempting to do a quicker and cheaper course because you want to start working with it as soon as possible. But we get many people coming to us saying that these were actually a waste of their time and money and they now want to start again with us to get the proper training they need.
If you want a stimulation and rewarding lifetime career in Soft Tissue Therapy, which is much more than just Sports Massage, LSSM and ISRM is the best training provider in the UK that is doing this.