The effect of massage on acceleration and sprint performance in track \& field athletes
original abstract†Abstracts here may not perfectly match originals, for a variety of technical and practical reasons. Some abstacts are truncated for my purposes here, if they are particularly long-winded and unhelpful. I occasionally add clarifying notes. And I make some minor corrections.
PURPOSE: To examine the acute effects of pre-competition massage on acceleration and sprint performance in collegiate track and field athletes.
METHODS: Seventeen collegiate male (n = 9) and female (N = 8) track and field athletes participated in the study. Athletes were assigned to a counterbalanced, repeated measures designed experiment testing four treatment conditions of a pre-competition massage, dynamic warm-up, combination of a massage and warm-up, and a placebo ultrasound.
RESULTS: The reliability between treatments was very high (ICC range: 0.94-0.98) and displayed a high internal consistency (Cronbach α = 0.96). Inter-item correlations for treatments were strong at all time intervals (20-m r = 0.74-0.90; 30-m r = 0.87-0.95; 60-m r = 0.88-0.95). There were no significant differences between the four treatments and performance (p = 0.70). Massage decreased 60-meter sprint performance in comparison to the traditional warm-up, although the combination of the massage and warm-up appeared to have no greater difference than the warm-up alone.
CONCLUSIONS: Massage prior to competition remains questionable due to a lack of effectiveness in improving sprint performance. Further, pre-competition massage may not be more effective as a pre-event modality, over a traditional warm-up.
related content
- “The effects of precompetition massage on the kinematic parameters of 20-m sprint performance,” an article in Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research, 2010.
- “Effect of pre-performance lower-limb massage on thirty-meter sprint running,” an article in Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research, 2007.
Specifically regarding Moran 2018:
These two articles on PainScience.com cite Moran 2018 as a source:
- PS Does Massage Therapy Work? — A review of the science of massage therapy … such as it is
- PS Massage Therapy Side Effects — What could possibly go wrong with massage? The risks and side effects of massage therapy are usually mild, but “deep tissue” massage can cause trouble
This page is part of the PainScience BIBLIOGRAPHY, which contains plain language summaries of thousands of scientific papers & others sources. It’s like a highly specialized blog. A few highlights:
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