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. 2020 May 7;6(1):e000614.
doi: 10.1136/bmjsem-2019-000614. eCollection 2020.

Effect of sports massage on performance and recovery: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Holly Louisa Davis  1 , Samer Alabed  1 , Timothy James Ainsley Chico  1
Affiliations

Effect of sports massage on performance and recovery: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Holly Louisa Davis et al. BMJ Open Sport Exerc Med. .

Erratum in

Abstract

Objective: Massage is ubiquitous in elite sport and increasingly common at amateur level but the evidence base for this intervention has not been reviewed systematically. We therefore performed a systematic review and meta-analysis examining the effect of massage on measures of sporting performance and recovery.

Design and eligibility: We searched PubMed, MEDLINE and Cochrane to identify randomised studies that tested the effect of manual massage on measures of sporting performance and/or recovery. We performed separate meta-analyses on the endpoints of; strength, jump, sprint, endurance, flexibility, fatigue and delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS).

Results: We identified 29 eligible studies recruiting 1012 participants, representing the largest examination of the effects of massage. We found no evidence that massage improves measures of strength, jump, sprint, endurance or fatigue, but massage was associated with small but statistically significant improvements in flexibility and DOMS.

Conclusion: Although our study finds no evidence that sports massage improves performance directly, it may somewhat improve flexibility and DOMS. Our findings help guide the coach and athlete about the benefits of massage and inform decisions about incorporating this into training and competition.

Keywords: DOMS; endurance; performance; physiotherapy.

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Conflict of interest statement

Competing interests: None declared.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
A flowchart demonstrating the search strategy used to identify eligible studies for the meta-analyses.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Forest plot demonstrating the results of the meta-analysis of the effects of manual massage (with 95% CIs) on (A) strength performance (overall effect: p=0.17) and (B) jump performance (overall effect: p=0.39). Std., standardised.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Forest plot demonstrating the results of the meta-analysis of the effects of manual massage (with 95% CIs) on (A) sprint performance (overall effect: p=0.27), (B) endurance performance (overall effect=p=0.91) and (C) fatigue (overall effect: p=0.22). Std., standardised.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Forest plot demonstrating the results of the meta-analysis of the effects of manual massage on (A) flexibility (overall effect: p<0.01) and (B) delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS) (overall effect: p<0.05).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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