In a recent blog we revealed how a sports science team we are working with were robustly testing our new massage gun in the field. If you missed that blog, grab a brew and check it out first here!
As reported in our earlier blog, we are seeing significant increases in joint range of motion after as little as 3 minutes of Pulseroll massage gun therapy. This is great news for any health or fitness enthusiast looking to improve health and well-being or our athletic users who are looking for those all important performance gains.
As we continue to test more people we will keep you up to date with our findings.
Testing the Pulseroll massage gun against the competition
The sports science experts working with our technology are happy that our Pulseroll massage gun was improving participant flexibility, but as always they like to really push the testing process to really understand how well its performing.
There are many research articles in existence that have assessed the effect of standard foam rollers on range of motion/flexibility. The results are ‘equivocal at best’, which means sometimes good results are seen and sometimes not so good. Overall though a recent systematic review stated:
‘The current literature measuring the effects of foam SMR is still emerging. The results of this analysis suggest that foam rolling, and roller massage may be effective interventions for enhancing joint ROM and pre and post exercise muscle performance. However, due to the heterogeneity of methods among studies, there currently is no consensus on the optimal SMR program’
This basically means that standard foam rollers can be effective, but we are not sure how best to use them. With that in mind the science team decided we should test the foam roller in the same way as the Pulseroll massage gun to see which (if any) method is more effective.
Current standings
The study was further developed in that participants now received a second treatment of 3 minutes with a standard foam roller on the other leg, as well as the Pulseroll massage gun therapy. We were really excited to find out that when the standard (non-vibrating) foam rollers were compared to our Pulseroll massage gun, there was a significantly bigger increase in range of motion with the massage gun than the foam roller in almost every case. In some instances, there was over 20% greater increase in flexibility than with a standard foam roller.
Full results will be published in due course as we continue to assess a greater number of people. Sunsport coaching continue to robustly test out Products in the field.
If you have any scientific questions, check them out as they would be happy to help!!
Stuart Percival is head sports physiologist at www.sunsportcoaching.com, a Manchester based sports performance assessment business.
