“As often as you can, you should be getting a massage,” says Mendez. “Competitive athletes do it one to two times a week. The average person should aim for once a month or every other month.” Moy believes it's better to start with more frequent treatments for the first few weeks.

Although they are different, these two types of massage both serve their function when it comes to overall wellness. While medical massage therapy is more geared toward fixing a specific problem, wellness massage helps clients relax and provides stress relief, which is very therapeutic.

A wellness massage is different than an orthopedic massage in that the focus is on you as a whole, rather than solving any specific areas of pain or dysfunction. The focus is to balance the whole body, calm the nervous system and increase circulation. There are many benefits to wellness massage.

Another key difference between sports massage and deep tissue massage is that deep tissue is often administered as a full body treatment rather than focusing on a specific part of the body. Sports massage however has a targetted approach that focuses on the areas of the body that are heeling or need relief.