Manual massage and foam rolling are commonly used by athletes for warm-up and recovery, as well as by healthy individuals for well-being. Manual massage is an ancient practice requiring the intervention of an experienced physiotherapist, while foam rolling is a more recent self-administered technique. These two topics have been largely studied in isolation from each other. In the present review, we first provide a deep quantitative literature analysis to gather the beneficial effects of each technique through an integrative account, as well as their psychometric and neurophysiological evaluations.
We then conceptually consider the motor control strategies induced by each type of massage. During manual massage, the person remains passive, lying on the massage table, and receives unanticipated manual pressure by the physiotherapist, hence resulting in a retroactive mode of action control with an ongoing central integration of proprioceptive feedback.
In contrast, while performing foam rolling, the person directly exerts pressures through voluntary actions to manipulate the massaging tool, therefore through a predominant proactive mode of action control, where operations of forward and inverse modeling do not require sensory feedback. While these opposite modes of action do not seem to offer any compromise, we then discuss whether technological advances and collaborative robots might reconcile proactive and retroactive modes of action control during a massage, and offer new massage perspectives through a stochastic sensorimotor user experience.
This transition faculty, from one mode of control to the other, might definitely represent an innovative conceptual approach in terms of human-machine interactions. In the last decades, work and recreational activities drastically affected our habits by increasing sedentary life Choi, This is further a well-admitted harmful consequence of the overuse of computers and smartphones resulting in various disorders such as postural deformity, and neck and shoulder pain Choi, It is also well-established that the repetition and prolonged maintenance of body postures affects health Kett and Sichting, To prevent and address such disorders, manual massage MM techniques are appreciated and recommended.
However, these have not yet been considered as therapeutic interventions per se. Practically, MM target soft tissues such as muscles, tendons, and fascias Guimberteau, ; Guimberteau et al. The MM treatment applied to these structures is performed through several maneuvers including effleurage, kneading, static or slide pressures, but also light and deep pressures.
