Effective Recovery – Tunturi Massage Gun

If you are reading this post it is potentially because you are a fitness enthusiast who wants to optimise your training. Your body only rebuilds, upgrades and improves during rest and recovery, therefore it is essential that you develop a recovery strategy to speed up the regeneration process and provide an opportunity for training based adaptation to take place.  Read on to discover how massage guns can fit into your bullet proof recovery plan. 

‘Failure to recover sufficiently from the continuous demands and stress of life, training and competition can lead to a cycle of impaired performance and accumulated fatigue.’

Nick Grantham- Performance Enhancement Specialist and Author of The Strength and Conditioning Bible.

How It Works

Massage therapy has become increasingly popular within the sport and conditioning industry, being used as an effective recovery strategy within sports clubs to reduce fatigue and speed up athlete recovery. 

Training is catabolic (muscle breaking) and therefore creates both psychological and physiological stress on your body, disturbing homeostasis (stable equilibrium) at a cellular level. If you cannot adapt to cope with these demands you may quickly become exhausted, over trained and injured. 

This inflammatory response can sometimes linger in your body for up to 5 days; potentially compromising your immune function and leaving you susceptible to illness and infection. Therefore, it is vital to ensure you recover efficiently, creating an anabolic (muscle building) environment and restoring the body into homeostasis. 

This is where the Tunturi massage gun comes in handy, visiting a massage therapist after every training session is not a luxury that we all have at our disposal and may incur a significant cost.  

The massage gun allows you to deliver instant vibration treatment to muscles, fascia and skin, very useful for getting away from soreness and in helping restore movement capabilities.

Why Use A Massage Gun?

The physiological demands of sport and exercise play their toll on the body, resulting in fatigue and tissue damage (dead legs, bruising, microtrauma) especially if you participate in high intensity plyometric based training due to the eccentric loading patterns. 

Physiological benefits of massage include:

• Increased blood flow
• Enhanced oxygen and nutrient delivery to fatigued muscles 
• Increased removal of lactic acid
• Warming and stretching of soft tissues 
• Increased flexibility
• Removal of microtrauma, knots and adhesions
• Improve body awareness

Not only can massage be both therapeutic and regenerative but may also positively impact mood and perceptions of fatigue – this will ensure you are both physically and mentally rested and restored for your next training bout.

How To Use A Massage Gun

The gun delivers brisk, bouncy percussive movements, effective on fleshy, muscular areas. You might use it as part of your warm-up to deliver blood and oxygen to working muscles, increasing both joint mobility, stability and soft tissue flexibility. In addition, you may decide to add this to your cool down routine to improve muscle relaxation, remove waste products, reduce muscular soreness and provide a period of adjustment between exercise and rest.  

The purpose and efficiency of these light springy percussions can be altered by manipulating the speed setting on the gun.  In general level one will offer a more slower calming percussion (warm up) and as you progress through the levels percussion movements become very stimulating (deep massage).

Massage Your Feet

Try massaging the soles of your feet with the bullet attachment. Not only does this feel amazing but doing so will:

• Diminish plantar fasciitis (foot pain on bottom of foot).
• Trigger point to increase hamstring flexibility.
• Increase range of motion at the joints.
•  Positively impact performance.

If you hit a hot-spot, stay on it. Contract and relax, slowly building up pressure by increasing the level of the percussions. This is extremely advantageous if you are a fan of barefoot practices.

Final Thoughts

Training is a stressor and recovery and regeneration are a vital stage in any progressive programme to ensure adaptation takes place. This is why I stress the importance of developing an effective recovery strategy, to speed up the regeneration process and provide an opportunity for training based adaptation to take place. The massage gun can fit in nicely to a well-rounded recovery plan, ensuring you are fulfilling your basic lifestyle guidelines:

• Sleep – Sunlight, regulate circadian rhythms
• Nutrition – Food, digestion, water
• Recovery – Active rest, passive rest, massage, flexibility, cool-down

References

Grantham, N. (2015) The strength and conditioning bible: How to train like an athlete. New York: Bloomsbury Sport.