Why most massagers (and massage guns) are a waste of money: and how to get something effective

There are hundreds of hand held massagers and massage guns on the market, but when we were looking for something to recommend our patients we found that most were an ineffective waste of money. 

The main problem

A UK university study agreed. When they tested personal massagers for sale to the public they found that most were likely to do more harm than good. They concluded that manufacturers were more interested with how their massagers looked on shop shelves than building genuine therapeutic devices (1)⁠.

Marketing does not help

The marketing of these machines certainly does not help help you choose. Marketers bend the truth, endorsements are paid for, and there is a proliferation of websites and videos that will say anything is good to get an affiliate commission.

We still needed something for our patients

As a chiropractor I still needed something we could recommend for patients and be confident they would get better. To do that I went to the scientific journals and did practical trials to find what works and what doesn’t. In this article I will discuss what you need to look for and what to avoid.

With vibrating massagers (and massage guns) it is the vibrations that have the therapeutic effects. For more information please see our article The scientifically proven effects of vibration massage- with clinical applications . Because of this the most important thing for a massager is it’s ability to deliver good amounts of therapeutic vibrations. The effectiveness of these vibrations is determined by two things:

1. The amount of vibrations
2. The frequency of the vibrations

How massagers deliver vibrations

To deliver therapeutic vibrations a good machines will use technology you’ll probably be familiar with. This is a vibrating compactor, often called a wacker plate.

Example: A “consumer” grade massager

Our factory send me this machine to look at. Like most similar machines it came with cheap plastic gimmick shaped heads that are next to useless so I glued on a decent head from one of our massagers. When you use it though it feels like it’s not doing much and you need to press in to help it. That’s because it has got a low powered motor and it’s head doesn’t go up and down anywhere the amount a proper therapeutic device does.

The machine on the left is a vibration massager. As we’ve seen it has a vibration pad designed to send in copious amount of therapeutic vibrations. The tool on the right is s T-bar which massage therapists use to press deeply into muscles, usually painfully. The massage gun in the middle is basically a t-bar with a jackhammer mechanism. It’s designed to drive the head in rather than deliver therapeutic vibrations.

As you can probably see massage guns deliver far less therapeutic vibrations than a genuine vibration massager, while to our knowledge “punching the head in” has no scientifically demonstrated benefits and is much more likely to hurt you.

Ease of use

By far the most important thing in your massager is the therapeutic vibrations it can deliver. Of course to get the benefit from these you need to be able to apply it to all the parts of your body that need it. The machine pictured delivers excellent therapeutic vibrations, but they’re designed for professionals like myself to use on patients, not self use. To do that you need a proper handle. In this section we will show you an example of an excellent design, then what you will typically find.

Probably the best example of an ergonomically designed handle for self use is the one on our General Purpose Massager . It’s length is about ideal, and if you look at it from the side you’ll see it curves down to a bit lower than the level of the head. What that means is you can easily use it somewhere hard to get to.

Using a machine with a decent handle

As you can see in this pic below I can easily massage the middle of my back with my arm only raised slightly, not having to reach or strain. Also, the ball at the end of the handle means I do not have to grip tightly to stop the handle sliding through my grip. With this machine you can give parts that are hard to reach a decent massage without suffering from fatigue.

A massager that has a decent handle and can be used like a cushion

As a bonus, if you get one of our Ultimate Quad Head Massagers it has the decent handle, but because the business end is larger and flatter you can easily use it like a chair or cushion massager. I stick mine behind me on the chair each morning.

Contrast this with the machine the factory sent me. It’s handle is shorter, doesn’t curve down as far, and the head pokes a long way out. To reach the same spot I have to reach my arm up a lot higher and strain.

The worst machines for self use would have to be massage guns. Like a real gun they need to be pointing directly into your muscle to work properly, so I think you’ll see that you’d need to be inspector gadget to use them effectively anywhere other than the front of your body where you could easily reach.

They’re the things you need in a massager, now lets very quickly look at the gimmicks you don’t need. A lot of machines come with an assortment of cheap gimmicky plastic heads that serve no useful function. Another thing is buttons, lights and a lot of speed settings. While not actually harmful they’re just another thing that can break and you’re better off with an on/off switch and a simple variable speed control like you’d find on any quality power tool. It will be much more reliable and give you any speed you want.