If you’re thinking about buying a massage gun, then watch this entire video before you
MAKE THE BIGGEST MISTAKE OF YOUR LIFE.
Okay, a bit dramatic, and probably false, but this video will definitely help you make
a more informed purchase, or non-purchase, of one of the top trending fitness products
today.
For those of you unfamiliar, a massage gun is one of these things.
A gun-shaped device fashioned with a head attachment, usually a dense rubber ball, that
when switched on, the head repetitively flutters in short and forceful motions.
When placed directly onto muscle, it can provide a form of deep tissue massage.
As of late, massage gun use has deeply permeated mainstream fitness.
But the big question is, how exactly useful is it?
On the spectrum of trendy fitness products, will the massage gun become a mainstay like
foam rollers, or fall by the wayside like oddly oscillating dumbbells?
To find out, we first gotta look at the benefits that companies claim massage guns provide.
Popular massage gun brands generally claim benefits like improving range of motion, reducing
muscle soreness, improving recovery, and of course…
giving good vibes.
Essentially, the beneficial claims are not so different than the claims made by basically
any other massage-related products, like with the foam roller.
Unfortunately, and just like the foam roller in its early stages, the hype for it has far
outpaced the actual science directly supporting it.
Nonetheless, we can try to work with the little data we have, which at the very least gives
us a general idea of the direction the evidence is taking.
Let’s tackle these claims one by one, starting with improving range of motion.
In this case, the data is quite consistent, and that’s consistently showing an improvement
in range of motion with massage gun use.
One study in 2020 showed that dorsiflexion range of motion, or range of motion of the
ankle, had a moderately sized 18.4% increase after using the massage gun on the calf muscles
for just 5 minutes beforehand.
Also, other studies showed flexibility improvements in areas like the knees, hips, and back extensors.
As far as how this happens, researchers believe that it’s not much different to how it works
for other massage tools.
Just like a foam roller, a massage gun might be able to increase blood flow to reduce muscle
stiffness, reduce pain perceptions at higher ranges of motion, and even make people feel
more psychologically relaxed during stretches.
That said, the improvements only tend to happen when you compare massage guns to nothing else.
When compared to something more common and much less expensive like static stretching,
a massage gun does NOT perform any better.
Now, for the next claim, reducing muscle soreness, unfortunately we see a different type of consistency
here.
And, as mentioned earlier, that’s the consistent lack of direct data.
Now, research on similar therapies, like conventional massages, foam rolling, and something called
localized vibration therapy, have shown at least some modest improvements in both acute
and delayed muscle soreness when implemented after exercise.
It’s reasonable to speculate that we can expect similar results with massage guns,
but obviously we cannot make more definitive assertions without direct experimentations.
So, soreness is a maybe but needs more data.
And unfortunately, much of the same can be said about the claim of improving recovery.
Direct data, again, is quite lacking.
However, this time, there is one direct study in 2021, but I’m not sure if its exactly
relevant.
The researchers found a 13% average increase in total reps completed across 4 sets of bench
press when a massage gun was used on the pec muscles in between each set.
So, this only covers partial and acute recovery.
But the real tricky part was the training methodology.
Here, they employed a movement velocity-based threshold to determine set discontinuation.
If that just sounds like a bunch of random words to you, then the results probably don’t
mean much to you either because it is a specific use-case primarily in sports training rather
than general fitness.
But again, research on conventional massage and myofascial release therapies have shown
to modestly reduce muscle recovery times and it’s not unreasonable to expect similar
results with massage guns.
But more direct data would be great.
Now, I do also wanna quickly address something that, in fairness, was not a claim made for
massage guns.
If you were wondering, performance, in both muscle endurance and strength, is largely
unaffected by massage guns and massage therapies in general.
The same can be said about muscle growth.
And finally, no data has shown that massage guns have any statistical impact on “good
vibes.”
So, now that we have the evidence, I wanna share my thoughts on whether a massage gun
is worth it.
Despite the data, or lack of it, I’d say that, if you have the disposable income, then
a massage gun is not that bad of a purchase.
I, myself, own a massage gun and use it quite a lot, but I can’t say for sure if it does
anything for me outside of it just feeling nice for very brief moments.
And that’s where things really fall.
If you maintain reasonable expectations and not run around thinking that a massage gun
is any more magical than other massage therapies, then that’s totally fine.
Now if you already own something like a foam roller, you put it to good use, and enjoy
using it, then you probably don’t need a massage gun.
That said, a massage gun can be slightly more convenient and might be able to target more
specific areas that a foam roller cannot.
Ultimately, a massage gun, good tool but not essential, needs more data, but also not the
worse thing you can buy for your fitness.
That crown belongs to BCAAs.
If you enjoyed this video, please give it a myofascial thumbs up and share it with your
massage-loving friends.
Subscribe for more and let me know what you think in the comments.
As always, thank you for watchinig and don’t forget to get your PROTEIN!.