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

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.