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Melissa Denyer

Nationality

Australian & British / Cairns, Australia

Favourite Stroke

Freestyle & Breaststroke

Bio

Melissa is a highly experienced pool and open-water swimmer from Australia. After a competitive and successful pool swimming career she switched sports to enjoy success at National level in surf-lifesaving and International level in outrigger canoeing. She then found her niche in open-water swimming and went on to complete numerous coastal and bay swims around Australia including the notorious shark-infested Rottnest Channel between Perth, Western Australia, and Rottnest Island. Over the past few years she has completed the Hellespont swim from Europe to Asia winning the female race and has also swum across the Strait of Gibraltar from Europe to Africa. She captained the first Red Top relay to swim across the English Channel and in 2016 successfully smashed the extremely tough swim-run event in Engadin, Switzerland.

Melissa’s “day job” is as a qualified Sport and Remedial Massage Therapist attaining a Diploma from the London School of Sports Massage in 2014. She uses specialist massage techniques to help treat muscle injuries, soreness and pain, allowing her clients to move more freely and to improve posture. She is also a qualified and experienced Pregnancy Massage therapist as well as an experienced practitioner for the treatment of headaches. As a former athlete herself, she has a unique insight into the best methods of massage treatment needed to enhance performance and quality of life.

The type of massage that Melissa is skilled in is not just  for sports people and athletes, it benefits people of all ages and condition, such as individuals who sit at a desk all day, manual workers, pregnant women and new mums! Her range of Sports Massage techniques include deep friction, neuromuscular techniques, muscle energy techniques, soft tissue release, positional release and connective tissue massage . Together these techniques help to prevent injury by monitoring soft tissue and muscle conditions, aid recovery & rehabilitation if injured and increase flexibility and mobility to feel better, especially with age. She is also qualified in using kinesio tape to help athletes with both pre-hab and re-hab strategies and has built up a reputation of being able to apply a deceptively large amount of pressure through her hands and elbows!

Melissa is fully insured with Balens and is a Member of the ISRM. 

Why Swimming

Growing up in Australia it was what everyone did. If you couldn’t swim, you missed out on so much. It’s such an outdoors and beach-oriented lifestyle that it was almost a necessity to be able to swim. Swimming was taught from a very early age in Australia -  I was good at it and enjoyed it! Swim training became a normal way of life and it was much easier to get up early on warm mornings in Australia rather than cold ones in England! Training focus was initially towards pool competitions, but then I found several other sports that used my skills in other ways. Triathlon, open-water swimming, surf-lifesaving and outrigging all kept me in and around the water and encouraged me to swim, but didn’t bore me by just following a black line all day ;-)