What does a sports massage actually do

The benefits of sports massages summary

Based on the review of over 50 scientific papers you can get the following benefits. Later in the guide we will share with you what to realistically expect, plus the best massage and usage to get these results for each of these benefits.

• prepare muscles and prevent injury
• help athletic performance
• reduce post exercise soreness and help recovery
• help sports injuries and rehabilitation

Types of sports massage

Most people think of a sports massage as a session with a professional sports masseur, but we do have several other options including professional therapists and self massage.

Self applied sports massages

• Foam rollers
• Vibration massage (not massage guns)
• Massage guns

Vibration massage

Vibration massage is where the pad of a therapeutic vibration massager is placed on the surface causing vibrations to penetrate and have their therapeutic effects. As you will see the scientific data shows this to consistently be the most effective therapy so we will have a section on how to use this therapy below.

Massage guns (percussion massage)

Percussion massage is different to vibration. Instead of having a vibrating head or pad sit on the surface and send vibrations deep into the muscles their heads drive in like jackhammers. While these machines are heavily promoted as being able to provide effective therapy the reality is a lot different.

Much less therapeutic vibrations

While these machines provide much less therapeutic vibrations than a genuine vibration massager.

• The “jackhammer” mechanism and heads are far less effective at sending in vibrations
• because driving the head in can be uncomfortable and cause injury they cannot be safely run at the proper therapeutic vibration frequencies.

Trial results

While there is good clinical trial information about foam rollers, convention massage and vibration massage there is not for massage guns (percussion massage). The main issues are:

• although their marketing claims the benefits of vibration, as mentioned above they are very poor at delivering therapeutic vibrations.
• there is no evidence that driving their heads into your muscles adds any worthwhile benefits
• when they do clinical trials they modify their machines so they do not drive their heads in and act more like vibration.

Prepare muscles and prevent injury

Sports massages are said to help prepare muscles and prevent injury by:

• flushing muscles with blood, and
• relaxing/lengthening muscles.

Flushing muscle with blood

Both conventional massage and vibration massage will increase blood flow (1–4)⁠. However, you will probably get a similar or better increase by using simple warm up exercises.

Relaxing/lengthening muscles

Tight muscles are more likely to tear. It is believed that massage will help relax and lengthen muscles, reducing the risk of injury (5,6)⁠. While this has never been tested it seems quite reasonable. Both conventional massage and vibration massage have been shown to relax and lengthen muscles (7)⁠. Foam rollers have been shown to lengthen muscles, but this lengthening lasts less than 10 minutes (8–10)⁠

Practical advice

While massage can be useful, it should be done as part of a complete warm up routine. For more information please see our article Warm-ups: a guide to the best massages, stretches and exercises .

Help athletics performance

When looking at whether sports massage can help sports or athletics performance we need to consider two types of usage.

1. Before exercise or competition (ie will a massage help you run faster or jump higher)
2. Regular massages (ie. will regular massages improve the health of your muscles or remove issues that inhibit performance)

Massages before sports or exercise

There have been a lot of trials looking at performance immediately after having a massage.

Conventional massage

Trials of conventional massages before exercises showed that they did not increase performance (11)⁠

Vibration massage

Trials have shown that the application of 30-60hz vibration before exercise will:

• increase strength (12,13)⁠.
• increase the time taken to fatigue (14)⁠.

Foam rolling

Trials of foam rolling have shown no increase in performance (8,15–18)⁠.

Massage guns

As discussed above there is no evidence that massage guns do anything worthwhile. Marketers make misleading claims and modify their machines for clinical trials.

An overview

If you have had a massage before it is likely that the therapist found parts of your muscles that felt tight, ropy and had tender lumps you didn’t know you had. Very simply: tight, ropy lumpy muscle do not perform as well as healthy muscles, and regular massages will help eliminate these.

The problem in more detail

Those tender lumps are called (myofascial) trigger points or trigger points for short. Trigger points are those tender lumps in your muscles that therapists find. As discussed in our article article on the effects of (myofascial) trigger points on sports and athletics performance they :

• reduce strength,
• cause tightness,
• cause muscles to rapidly fatigue,
• slow the response of a muscle, and
• impair neurological control.

How massages have been shown to help

As discussed in our article Does massage help athletic or sports performance there have been studies where both regular conventional massage and vibration massage have improved performance (19–21)⁠.

The practical way to improve performance

Professional sports people often have regular conventional massage provided, but the self use of a vibration massager makes this convenient and affordable available for all. One of the successfull trials did use vibration massage. Please see the section below on how to use this therapy

Post exercise recovery

How massage is said to help

For a few days after strenuous exercise you will probably suffer some muscle soreness and reduced muscle function. This is because exercises cause microscopic damage to your muscle fibres. Massages are said to help by:

1. relaxing the muscles, relieving tightness and tension,
2. stimulating blood floor, helping remove the breakdown products while bringing in fresh nutiients.

With that, there have been a large number of clinical trial conducted so let us look at what they have found.

Conventional massages from a therapist

There have been a large number of clinical trials using conventional massage after exercise. In summary:

• in over half showed no benefit at all ⁠⁠(22–30)⁠
• a small percentage showed massage to reduce post exercise soreness (31–33)⁠
• a small percentage the massage reduced the post exercise stiffness and loss of function ⁠⁠(34–36)⁠

Vibration massage (not massage guns)

Vibration massage has produced by far the most benefit in clinical trials. We found nine studies where vibration massage was used after exercising. They consistently showed that this:

• reduces post exercise soreness (DOMS) (37–44)⁠
• reduces the loss of function and speed recovery (44,45)⁠ and
• blood chemical analysis shows that unwanted chemical are removed much faster (40,42,44)⁠

Foam rollers

Despite the marketing a recent review of 21 clinical trials found that foam rollers only had minor or negligible effects on post exercise recovery (46)⁠ while others express concerns about the potential damage they may cause (47)⁠.

Massage guns (percussion massagers)

As discussed above there is no evidence that massage guns do anything worthwhile. Marketers make misleading claims and modify their machines for clinical trials.

Practical advice

Rather than just rely on a form of therapy we recommend a complete strategy to help provide everything your muscle need to recover. This includes appropriate rest, hydration, nutrition, plus various other things that can help. For more information please see our guide . The practical, science based guide to post exercise recovery

Sports massage for injuries and rehabilitation

Both conventional and vibration massage are widely used by professionals to help with sports injuries and rehabilitation. For more information please see some of these articles.
Is massage good for shoulder pain
Does massage help healing and recovery
How to treat tennis elbow
Massage and trigger point therapy for low back pain
Massage and trigger point therapy for calf pain

How to use vibration massage

Vibration massage consistently gave the best results in clinical rials and is something you can easily use yourself with the right equipment. In this section we will share with you:

• why vibration massage works
• how to use vibration massage
• the equipment you will need

How to use vibration massage

It is the vibrations that have the therapeutic effects, so basically you just need to sit the vibration head or pad of a vibration massager on the part to be massaged and let the vibrations penetrate. There is no need to use any conventional massage techniques such as pushing in or rubbing. For more details please see our Vibration massage usage guide .

What you do not need

As discussed in our guide Why most massagers are a waste of money , most of the vibrating massagers you can buy are not suitable.

Vibration massagers for personal use

When we were looking for a suitable vibration massager for our patients to use all the effective machines seemed to be "professional" products for therapists to use. These were expensive and not designed for self use. Because of this we built our own that pack the effectiveness of a professional unit into an economical one for self use. They are now used, recommended and sold by over a thousand clinics across half the world (some examples). For information about these and where to get them please use these links.
The General Purpose Massager
The Ultimate Quad Head Massager
Read what professionals say about DrGraeme massagers

Appendix: summary of the actual trial results

Most marketers do not exactly give a fair and unbiased account of the scientific findings so here we will provide an easy to read summary then a list of the actual clinical trials and scientific papers

References

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2. Maloney-Hinds C, Petrofsky JS, Zimmerman G. The effect of 30 Hz vs. 50 Hz passive vibration and duration of vibration on skin blood flow in the arm. Med Sci Monit. 2008;14(3):CR112-6.
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29. Dawson LG, Dawson KA, Tiidus PM. Evaluating the influence of massage on leg strength, swelling, and pain following a half-marathon. J Sport Sci Med. 2004;3(1):37–43.
30. Bielik V. Effect of different recovery modalities on anaerobic power in off-road cyclists. Biol Sport. 2010;27(1):59–63.
31. Young R, Gutnik B, Moran RW, Thomson RW. The effect of effleurage massage in recovery from fatigue in the adductor muscles of the thumb. J Manipulative Physiol Ther. 2005;28(9):696–701.
32. Farr T, Nottle C, Nosaka K, Sacco P. The effects of therapeutic massage on delayed onset muscle soreness and muscle function following downhill walking. J Sci Med Sport. 2002;5(4):297–306.
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40. Kim J-Y, Kang D-H, Lee J-H, O S-M, Jeon J-K. The effects of pre-exercise vibration stimulation on the exercise-induced muscle damage. J Phys Ther Sci. 2017;29(1):119–22.
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51. Bakhtiary AH, Safavi-Farokhi Z, Aminian-Far A. Influence of vibration on delayed onset of muscle soreness following eccentric exercise. Br J Sports Med. 2007;
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