Percussion Therapy

Recovery is king and should be an area of focus as important as the training itself. From injury prevention to better mental and physical readiness, to optimizing sports performance, post-workout strategies need planning. Whether it be reducing inflammation, and/or muscle soreness and stiffness, there are many practices proven to have positive effects. While it would be ideal to have a manual therapist available to assist with the recovery, for most, resources typically don’t allow for it as much as the body requires it.

A few recent modalities used in the realm of post-workout recovery are convenient, mobile, accessible, are self-administered and importantly, show promising results. The previous post discussed self-myofascial release with foam rollers and balls, etc. Along the same lines, technology has furthered these helpful practices. As an example, the use of a muscle vibration platform has been shown to reduce delayed onset muscle soreness and creatine kinase concentrations improving muscle recovery (Lu et al. 2019).

Percussion therapy is yet another new modality targeting recovery. Purported benefits include a reduction in pain, scar tissue and lactate, and increases in blood and lymphatic flow, and range of motion (Martinez Rodriguez and Galan del Rio, 2013; Schleip and Muller, 2013). Depending on the region, the athlete, the condition, etc. the intensity may vary however percussion therapy may allow deep tissue treatment. While the research is relatively scant in terms of systematic reviews, as research accumulates, the evidence in favor of its use is growing. A recently published article compared traditional manual therapy to various other modalities and found percussion therapy to be effective for reducing muscular stiffness and compliance and perhaps demonstrating a more cost and time effective strategy for recovering from physical training (Garcia-Sillero et al., 2021).

So far, it’s a ‘thumps up’!