Massage as Recovery Strategy After Resistance Training

Within the routine of resistance training, stimulus are implemented to meet predetermined goals for its practitioners. In order for there to be a balance in the imposed loads, a recovery period is necessary for supercompensation to occur. Recovery is a multifactorial process and to consider an individual recovered it is necessary to respect the integration of physiological, biomechanical and psychological factors, in addition, perceptual markers, which are not widely investigated in the literature, seem to be effective recovery markers. Massage is a technique that stands out for its wide use after physical exercise in order to help accelerate the recovery process. In the literature, studies that investigated the influence of massage on performance did not find positive results and some authors question the real need to apply the technique to aid recovery. However, in the perceptual parameters, massage seems to have a good influence, such as pain reduction, perception of fatigue and improvement in the perception of recovery. Thus, understanding the experience that massage can provide during a training period can be an important outcome along with variables already used. The hypothesis of this study is that massage will improve perceptual parameters over a training period and, consequently, will improve the experience between training sessions without positively or negatively interfering in performance.

A sample of 120 participants will be recruited for the study. This is a parallel randomized controlled clinical trial lasting 4 weeks, each week will consist of 5 resistance training sessions. Participants will be randomized into three groups, control, intervention or placebo. Interventions will take place after training focused on the lower limbs. The intervention group will receive a massage for 16 minutes, in the placebo group the massage cream will be applied and the participants will be asked to remain in the supine position for 16 minutes and the control group will wait the same time at rest. All participants will perform an initial assessment consisting of an initial screening questionnaire, referred morbidity index, jump test and strength test. At the beginning, during and at the end of each lower limb training, after the interventions over 96 hours, the perceptual parameters will be evaluated and the assessment of muscle tone and stiffness, elasticity, mechanical stress relaxation time and creep will be before and after the training and after the intervention. On the second day of the lower limb training on each week, the Squat Jump Test will be evaluated before, after training and after the intervention. At the end of the 4 weeks of training, the participant will perform evaluations of functional and strength outcomes. At the end of the study, the preference of the participant and the cost-benefit of the technique will also be evaluated. Participant satisfaction will be evaluated after the technique. At the end of each week and at the end of the study, a balance of outcomes will be carried out. At the end of the study, the participant will also answer a questionnaire about sensations during training to perform a qualitative analysis. Data will be described as mean and standard deviation or median and interquartile range depending on the data distribution. Data normality will be tested by the Shapiro-Wilk test. Comparisons between techniques and associations will be performed using generalized mixed models with post Bonferroni test. All analyzes will assume a significance level of p\>0.05.

Eligibility Criteria:
Inclusion Criteria:

* age between 18 to 35 years;
* practice resistance training for at least 2 months;
* train at least 5 times a week;
* not having suffered an injury in the last 6 months in the lower limbs;
* not being a smoker.

Exclusion Criteria:

* use anti-inflammatory and/or analgesic medication during the study period;
* present an inflammatory process during the study period;
* not reaching 80% frequency in lower limb training during the study period.