The best massage for DOMS and sore muscles

Why you get sore muscles after a workout

Post exercise soreness is also called DOMS or Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness. Lets look at what happens to your muscles to cause this.

What your muscles need to do to help recover faster

Understanding why your muscle get sore and won’t perform normally after a workout, the main ways massage can help is by:

1. relaxing the muscles (removing tension and removing pressure from the blood vessels)
2. increasing blood flow (helping remove wastes and bring in fresh nutrients)

Your massage options

As discussed, you’ve two main types of massage: using professional therapists, and self massage. Lets look at your options for each.

Professional massage therapy

Professional therapists are widely used for post exercise recovery, and are often employed by sports clubs. They often describe their services using terms like those listed below.

• Sports massage
• Remedial massage
• Swedish massage

However, we recommend that you not worry too much about what the massage is called. The reality is that they all use the range of techniques listed below. Different styles may emphasise certain techniques or may be more forceful in their approach, but the massage you receive will depend more the skill and experience of the therapist, and whether he or she is performing a more remedial or relaxation massage.

The type of massage used in clinical trials

Most of the clinical trials we consulted used one of these terms to describe the type of massage used. However, when we read the fine print to see what was actually done the descriptions were very similar, using a mixture of the techniques below.

Massage techniques

• Effleurage (stroking along the muscle fibres)
• Petrissage (kneading)
• Friction (rubbing across the muscle fibres)
• Pressure (pressing on spots): eg trigger point therapy or acupressure)

Self massage options

For self massage you have two main types to choose from: manual massage and vibration massage.

Manual massage

There are a wide range of contraptions such as balls and rollers that are designed to help self apply the techniques professional therapists use.

Vibrating massagers

There are two types of massagers that vibrate.

• vibration massagers
• percussion massagers

Looking at the effectiveness of each

Now we’ve seen the options, lets look at what the scientists have found about each.

What the science says about using balls and rollers

Clinical trial results

Balls and foam rollers are widely used as a way get practically unlimited self massage. Their marketing material often refers to studies showing them to be effective. The reality is though, as we discuss in our article Do foam rollers work we found a total of 11 clinical trials and the actual results were either minimal or none. They were certainly no where near those achieved in the trials where professional therapists were used. Further, as discussed in the same article we believe that the real world results from using balls and rollers would be even worse, and in my experience as a Chiropractor for 27 years a lot of people hurt themselves with these for very little benefit.

Lets look at:

1. why clinical trial results for balls and rollers were no where near as good as those achieved by professional therapists, and
2. why real world results would be even worse.

The reason real world results are less than those in clinical trials

Clinical trials are a perfect world scenerio. Patients are excluded if using balls or rollers would not be suitable or be unsafe. They are then given excellent instructions and supervision. On the other hand in the real world people use balls and rollers without instruction or supervision, and sometimes on conditions where this therapy is inappropriate or unsafe.

Vibrating massagers

There are two types of vibrating massagers available for self use. We’ve summarised the differences below, and got full details in our article Percussion Massage vs Vibration massage.

What the science says about vibration massage and post exercise recovery

Proven benefits

We found 11 clinical trials of vibration massage for sports and exercise recovery, summarised in the appendix. All but three gave excellent results, which included those below. Please note that these cannot be applied to massage guns or percussion massagers.

• reducing post exercise soreness (DOMS or Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness)
• reducing the amount of unwanted chemicals such as lactic acid,
• reducing the loss of strength and endurance, and speeding recovery.

The speed of vibration massage

Trial results show that vibration massage is much faster than manual massage. Where the two were directly compared (5)⁠ five minutes of vibration gave better results than 15 minutes of massage. This means a typical 30 minute pre or post exercise massage would only take about 10 minutes. Later we discuss how we have developed a vibration massager with four powerful application heads that is much faster still, and could do the equivalent of a full hour massage in minutes.

The three that didn’t give good results

Why did three trials produced poor results? In our article How to choose a massager we give the appropriate specifications for a therapeutic vibration massager in order to give effective vibration.

Effective specifications

1. the vibration frequency should range from 30-55 Hz (cycles per second).
2. The vibrating head needs to go up and down from 3-5mm

All the clinical trials where massage was applied massage using these specifications gave excellent results. On the other hand, as shown below the three trials that gave very poor results used massagers that were totally inadequate to deliver effective therapeutic vibrations. I have emailed each or the researchers offering them the use of effective machines should they ever do further studies.

Ineffective vibration massager used in three trials

• Trial one: 73 Hz, 0.5 mm
• Trial two: 120 hz, 1.2 mm
• Trial three: 50 Hz, 0.9 mm

When to use vibration massage: before exercise, after or during recovery

Some trials used the vibration massage before exercising, some used it after, while others used it after exercising then daily during recovery. From these results:

1. vibration before and after are both effective, but before is slightly more so, and
2. applying vibration massage after then daily during recovery gave excellent results.

The practical reality is that if you have your own massager the optimal solution would be to to use it both before and after, then daily during recovery.

How long to apply the vibration for

We noted that in the trials the researchers used applications ranging for one minute to 30 minutes. From our knowledge of massagers the usage time required would depend on a lot of things including:

• the size of the muscle(s) being massaged,
• the power of the massager and the size of the application head, and
• the condition of the muscles.

However, we can generally say that the trial results were consistent with our clinical experience. The recommendations we advise in our usage guide would be a good start.

Our recommendations: the best massage for DOMS and sore muscles

Which massage is best for DOMS and sore muscles? Based upon the clinical trials and other scientific evidence, we make the following recommendations.

Recommended

1. massage by professional therapists, and
2. self applied vibration massage (much faster, less cost)

Not recommended

1. Massage guns
2. Balls and foam rollers

An overall strategy to reduce DOMS and muscle soreness

In the next section we discuss our recommended massage options, but massage is only part of an effective strategy to reduce post exercise soreness and speed recovery. It is important to get adequate sleep, rest, hydration and nutrition. There are also other therapies that may be useful. For a complete strategy please see our Practical, science based guide to post exercise recovery. Please also note that this is for general information only, to be discussed with a professional familiar with your own specific needs.

Vibration massagers

As we’ve seen vibration massagers are highly effective. Also because basically all you need to do is sit the head of the massager on the site to be massaged and allow the machine to do the work vibration massage can easily and effectively be self applied. For how to apply vibration massage please see our vibration massage usage guide for more details.

When to use vibration massage

Vibration massage was shown to be useful before exercise, after exercise, and during recovery. If you have your own vibration massage unit the optimum might be to use it before exercise, after exercise, and each day during recovery.

The problem with multi head see-saw mechanisms

There are also a lot of other multi head machines that use a see saw mechanism. As shown in the following diagram they have exactly the same problem, except that they rock from side to side rather than bounce up and down.

References

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