Anyone who has ever been engaged in sport has certainly had a satisfactory but at the same time annoying feeling of delayed onset muscle soreness. Delayed onset muscle soreness occurs primarily after eccentric exercises and tells us that we have raised our training to a higher level. For this reason, microinjuries appear in the muscles that we try to repair as soon as possible. Delayed onset muscle soreness starts to appear approximately eight hours after exercise and its peak occurs sometime between twenty-four and forty-eight hours after exercise. It can last up to seven days. Scientists and athletes have been studying various types of therapies for many years in order to prevent the occurrence of delayed onset muscle soreness or at least alleviate it to such an extent that the athlete could continue with the training at maximum level without major pain.
The purpose of the thesis was to determine whether massage therapy has any effects on the delayed onset muscle soreness. We focused on twenty-three articles found via PubMed database. They included various types of massage therapy (i.e. sports, classic, therapeutic, ice, deep tissue, myofascial release, etc.), vibration training and stretching exercises.
The thesis focuses on the impact of massage therapy. It was determined that because of massage therapy delayed onset muscle soreness was weakened earlier, the intensity of pain was smaller, from which it can be concluded that faster regeneration was achieved in the test groups. It is recommended to use massage therapy for the prevention of delayed onset muscle soreness two hours after exercise at the latest, since it has the best influence on the muscles in this time interval. The massage therapy should take place from twenty to thirty minutes, while the most effective are therapeutic massage, sports massage and deep tissue massage.
Massage therapy is very useful in relieving delayed onset muscle soreness but it cannot prevent or eliminate it. It can be concluded that massage therapy is an essential part of therapy for professional athletes because it will help with training at a high level. However, additional research should be done as it seems that the highest point in this field has not yet been reached, and in time muscle pain will be possible to control to such extent that it will not affect the performance of the athlete.
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