Post-Exercise Massage Did Not Change Muscle Stiffness

Massage is commonly administered to reduce muscle stiffness and enhance recovery from exercise. However, the effect that massage has on muscle stiffness following exercise has not been researched. A study from Singapore published in Journal of Sport Science & Medicine examined the effect of post-exercise massage on passive muscle stiffness over a five-day period.

The trial was a randomized cross-over study involving 18 male recreational runners. The runners conducted a 40-minute downhill running exercise on a treadmill.

For each participant, one randomly selected leg received a 16-minute standardized massage routine targeting four areas: quadriceps, hamstrings, tibialis anterior, and gastrocnemius. The contralateral leg received a matching 16-minute (4 minutes for each targeted area) sham therapeutic ultrasound treatment with an inactive probe.

Passive stiffness for four leg muscles (rectus femoris, biceps femoris, tibialis anterior, and gastrocnemius) was assessed using a myotonometry device at baseline, immediately post-run, post-treatment, 24, 48, 72, and 96 hours post-run.

The results showed that passive stiffness for all muscles increased at 24 hours post-run and remained elevated from baseline levels for up to 96 hours across all four muscles. However statistical analysis did not show any significant difference between the massage limb and placebo limb at any time point.

The authors concluded that passive stiffness of major leg muscles increased after a bout of unaccustomed eccentric exercise and remained elevated for up to four days post-exercise. Compared with the placebo treatment, post-exercise massage had no beneficial effect in alleviating altered muscle stiffness in major leg muscles.

Comments

Certainly the results are disappointing for manual therapists.  The effect of post-exercise massage has been a contentious subject. Some studies found massage is effective in alleviating post-exercise DOMS (Delayed-onset muscle soreness) and enhance recovery while other studies found no significant effect.

Research studies on massage on post-exercise recovery did not find significant biomechanical effects, but more of psychological effects. More recent studies showed that post-exercise massage may be more beneficial in acute short-term recovery (5–10 min post-massage) compared to longer recovery periods (>1–6 hour post-massage). Molecular changes occur within skeletal muscle following massage appear to be important.