Sports massage therapy on the reduction of delayed onset muscle soreness: A systematic review and meta analysis

Background: DOMS (Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness) is a condition where muscle pain appears shortly after activity, usually occurring shortly after doing sports or activities that exceed the usual capacity. It can also be caused by doing sports or activities he has never done before. DOMS usually appears in a healthy person but mainly occurs in athletes. A sports massage intervention is recommended to reduce the DOMS in the recovery process.Purpose: To determine whether sports massage can reduce DOMS and provide recovery effects on a person.Method: This research is a systematic review and meta-analysis using the PRISMA diagram. Performed article search with eligibility test with PICO. Population: people with DOMS. Intervention: Sport massage. Comparison: control treatment. Outcome: pain reduction. The articles used came from 2 databases, namely PubMed and Science Direct. The keywords in this article search are "DOMS," AND "Recovery," AND "Sport massage." The inclusion criteria in this study were full-text articles with a Randomized Control Trial research design. The relationship measure used is Mean SD. This article was analyzed using the Review Manager 5.4 application.Results: The eight articles reviewed were from California, Canada, Spain, the USA, South Africa, and Brazil. The results showed that sports massage could not reduce DOMS effectively and significantly. A person with DOMS who received sports massage had an average pain score of -0.19, lower than someone who received control treatment (SMD= -0.19; 95% CI= -1.93 to 0.10; p=0.19).Conclusion: Sports massage cannot reduce DOMS in the recovery process effectively and significantly.