What is percussion massage (massage guns)

Percussion massage is described as rapidly striking or applying pressure to your muscles, which in simple terms just means driving something into your muscles like a jackhammer. Professionals have been using vibration massagers that sit on the surface and send in vibrations for decades, so how is percussion different? Before buying one you need to ask:

• how is percussion different,
• does this give extra benefits or is it just a marketing gimmick, and
• is it safe?

CONTENTS

Comparing vibration and percussion
A look at genuine vibration massagers
References

Why vibration massage is an excellent therapy

1. Because the pad just sits on the surface and sends in vibrations it is very safe
2. Just like ultrasound the vibrations can penetrate very deeply
3. Therapeutic vibrations have a host of proven therapeutic effects, including relaxing muscles, increasing blood flow and speeding healing. For more details please see our article  The scientifically proven effects of vibration massage- with clinical applications

Percussion does not help penetration

The marketers claim that driving the head in increases penetration. However, just like ultrasound (vibrations at a different frequency) therapeutic vibrations can easily penetrate deep into your muscles without needing the head to penetrate. The marketer’s claims are a deceptive gimmick, which as we will see makes their machines a lot more dangerous.

Percussion is not proven in clinical trials

While marketers are telling you that having the heads of their machines drive in (percussion) is a great thing, when conducting clinical trials they modify their machines so they don’t do this. As an example in one clinical trial the researchers chose head one in this picture. As you can see it is designed to “give” rather than drive in. The scientists conducting the trial would have understood that using the penetrating heads would transfer less therapeutic vibrations and be more likely to hurt patients. Of course the marketers will not tell you that the reserachers did this.

There are serious safety concerns with percussion

Genuine vibration massagers have a pad that sits on the surface and just sends in vibrations, so they are very safe. However, is modifying a massager so it hammers it’s head into your muscles safe? For this we need to look at:

1. the hard plastic heads, and
2. driving the heads in in general.

The hard plastic heads

There can be no question that driving a hard plastic head that would look at home on a jackhammer is potentially dangerous, especially if the user did not know anatomy and drove the head into something like a nerve or blood vessel

Driving the heads in general

As previously mentioned driving anything up to 16mm into your muscles very fast is a dangerous
idea. There is even a journal report of a person nearly dying from internal bleeding after using a
massage gun to recover after riding an exercise bike (9)⁠ In another case a massage gun user suffered hemothorax, which is a collection of blood around the lungs that usually results from blunt force trauma (10)⁠. This is why a survey found that most professionals with massage guns used them on slow or medium speed (2)⁠, which as previously mentioned makes any vibrations well outside the optimal therapeutic vibration frequencies

Ease of use of a massage gun

Like a real gun massage guns need to be pointed into the muscles to get the intended effects. However, as this diagram shows with their gimmick shape and aerosol can shaped handles you cannot do this for a lot of your body.