Massage is likely helpful for pain relief, but the careful clinical evidence for improving recovery is difficult to find (including finding careful clinical evidence for the _healing_ effectiveness of "trigger point" therapy).
Anyway pain relief without chemicals is a good capability to have available. And the "Placebo effect" is often real, so if you _believe_ it helps your healing, then it might - (but believing in something else might help equally).
The crux of the question is what would be the _mechanism_ for massage to help healing. Usually it is said that it works by improving blood flow thru the damaged tissue. But simply _moving_ the affected muscles or tendons (likely a similar motion to what injured it) does rather well at promoting blood flow.
So most _climbing_ training and injury books do not say much about massage to promote healing climbing injuries. Indeed one long-practicing German authority suggests _avoiding_ massage for the first day or two after some injuries (I assume to first allow the body's normal healing process to get off to a good start).
Seems like the recent findings in Sports Medicine generally are that the most important healing protocol for many injuries (including many previously thought to require surgery) is simply to start _using_ the injured muscles and tendons as in your normal life and practice.
Ken
P.S. I used to be a big "believer" in massage (including trigger point). I purchased lots of devices and books. Got really good at self-massage, spent lots of hours performing it over lots of years. Finally I noticed the lack of careful evidence, so I mostly stopped. Haven't missed it a bit. For pain relief more often now I just take acetaminophen, and use the time I save by _not+ massaging to get some extra sleep.
Post edited at 15:01
