Massage for overuse pain in archers: Prasetyo 2025

Twenty male archers aged 15 to 20 with overuse pain were split into two groups of ten: one received Swedish massage, the other deep tissue massage. Pain on a 0 to 10 scale started high and similar in the two groups, 7.8 and 7.6. After treatment it fell to 2.3 with Swedish massage and to 4.8 with deep tissue massage: 5.7 points lower against 2.8. Both reductions were significant (t = 21.85 and 10.844), as was the difference between the groups at the end (t = −9.93, p < 0.001). The authors conclude that Swedish massage is better suited to before and during competition, and deep tissue massage to afterwards.

Participants were chosen purposively, not at random. After the first pain rating they were ranked by score and allocated in turn to the two groups (ordinal pairing), so that both started with the same level of pain. Swedish massage combined effleurage, petrissage, tapotement and friction, with pressure suited to the superficial muscles; deep tissue massage worked with the forearm, fist and elbow on the deeper muscles. In both cases sessions lasted 15 minutes, with 3 to 8 repetitions of each manoeuvre. Pain was rated before and after on the 0 to 10 numeric scale. The groups were analysed with paired t-tests within each group and an independent-samples t-test between them, after checks for normality and homogeneity of variance.

The number of sessions changes from one part of the paper to another: six over two weeks in the methods, four meetings in the abstract, three 15-minute treatments in the table and results. We do not know what each athlete's problem was: "overuse pain" says nothing about where, for how long or who assessed it. There is no untreated group, so part of the fall may come from time and rest; pain was self-reported by athletes who knew which massage they were getting, and we are not told who collected the ratings. The reductions are also presented as "5.7%" and "2.8%", but they are points on the scale, not percentages.

The conclusion about the best moment for each massage, before or after competition, was not studied: nobody was measured in competition. The discussion contains passages that seem to come from other studies, such as a fall in blood pressure after massage and an effect on lower-limb muscles, which have nothing to do with these data.

For an archer with overuse pain the study suggests that a lighter massage is no less useful than a deep one, and in this sample it reduced reported pain more. The result fits the idea that heavy pressure on muscles that are already sore brings no extra benefit, but the study is small, not randomised and unclear about who the athletes were and how many sessions they had.

It says nothing about shooting: it does not measure score, return to training or recurrences. The authors' advice, Swedish before competition and deep tissue afterwards, is an opinion their data do not test. Overuse pain that keeps coming back remains a signal about training load, which massage may ease but cannot correct.