Before an event,
or after one
It will not make you faster, which is worth knowing before you book one for the morning of. What it can do is a smaller and more useful thing, and it happens further out than anybody tells you.
It will not make you faster, which is worth knowing before you book one for the morning of. What it can do is a smaller and more useful thing, and it happens further out than anybody tells you.
The whole industry offers a massage on the morning of an event. This practice has worked for years to a rule that says the opposite. It is worth knowing which of the two the measurements are on the side of.
Start with what the pre-event session does for performance, because that is the thing being sold. Reviews of the trials find no effect on strength, none on jump, none on sprint, none on endurance, none on fatigue. Flexibility and soreness move a little, and nothing else moves at all. Then there is the part nobody puts on a booking page: past about nine minutes immediately before competition, the work tended to make maximal strength, sprint and jump measurably worse. One reading offered is that you have softened the springiness the tissue gives back, at the moment you were going to need it.
Set that against what the field advises: fifteen to forty-five minutes before the gun on one page, twenty-four hours on another, alongside promises about preventing injury and cutting recovery time with no evidence base at all. The first of those falls squarely inside the window the measurements warn about, and both fall inside the forty-eight hours this practice treats as a floor. That rule is quoted below rather than restated, which is the point: it was not written to win this argument, so the argument is not circular. The cautious rule has simply turned out to be the one the data agrees with, and the industry is standing on the other side of it.
Findings from systematic reviews of sports massage and performance, and from a review of pre-performance massage and maximal strength; the timing advice is quoted from four UK clinic pages read in August 2026. Full pass with links in the research note.
And the boundary is the same here as everywhere else on this site: if it turns out to need a diagnosis, a scan or a prescription, Jonathan will say so and point you to the person who can, rather than work around it.
Before and after are not the same work done at two times: they are two pieces of work that happen to share a name. Say what you actually want out of the hour and the rest follows, including, twice, that what you need is somewhere else.
Brisker, broader, shallower. The aim is a body that moves freely on the day, so nothing is worked deep enough to leave tissue sore or reactive: you want to feel nothing on the day, which means the deep work happens early enough to settle.
Reviews of the trials find no effect on strength, jump, sprint, endurance or fatigue; flexibility and soreness move a little. More than about nine minutes immediately before competition made maximal strength, sprint and jump height measurably worse.
Figures from systematic reviews of sports massage and performance; see the evidence note.
The standard advice is fifteen to forty-five minutes before the gun, which is precisely where the measurements say it costs you. The rule this practice works to sits further out; both are below.
If there is a date in the diary →You have a date, and the instinct is to book close to it. Which week is the better question.
Ask which week →Both shipped on the treatment page long before this one existed. They are quoted here rather than restated, and what sits underneath them is why.
Fifteen to forty-five minutes before the event, on one page. Twenty-four hours, on another. Pre-event work to prevent soreness and injury; post-event work to cut recovery time significantly. None of the four survives being looked up.
Advice quoted from four UK clinic pages, August 2026; see the evidence note.
Two of the four answers send you somewhere else, and the first tells you not to book when you were going to. That is not modesty. Claiming all four were worth booking would mean claiming things that are not true.
I want to move well on the day: the lighter of the two, and the one everybody sells.
Brisker, broader, shallower. The aim is a body that moves freely on the day, so nothing is worked deep enough to leave tissue sore or reactive: you want to feel nothing on the day, which means the deep work happens early enough to settle.
Reviews of the trials find no effect on strength, jump, sprint, endurance or fatigue; flexibility and soreness move a little. More than about nine minutes immediately before competition made maximal strength, sprint and jump height measurably worse.
Figures from systematic reviews of sports massage and performance; see the evidence note.
The standard advice is fifteen to forty-five minutes before the gun, which is precisely where the measurements say it costs you. The rule this practice works to sits further out; both are below.
Fifteen to forty-five minutes before the event, on one page. Twenty-four hours, on another. Pre-event work to prevent soreness and injury; post-event work to cut recovery time significantly. None of the four survives being looked up.
You have a date, and the instinct is to book close to it. Which week is the better question.
Ask which week →I found Jonathan's ad online and messaged for a last minute massage as I was feeling very sore in my legs and other parts. He went out of his way to accommodate me.
You can have one anywhere, and this is the one Jonathan will talk you out of. Nothing about it is dangerous (the finding is a measurable drop in strength and sprint tests after longer work immediately beforehand, not an injury risk), but there is no upside on the other side of the ledger to weigh against it. If the morning of is genuinely the only slot you have, the honest answer is that you would be better off warming up.
Because anything deep enough to be worth doing needs time to settle before you load it, and the day before does not leave any. That rule is older than this argument: it has been published with the treatment since long before anybody went looking for evidence about it. What changed is that the evidence turned up on its side rather than the industry's, which was not a given and is the reason the rule is quoted here rather than rewritten.
All of it, and the word "event" is doing less work than it looks. A first 10k, a charity ride, a Sunday league final and a hiking weekend are the same problem: a fixed date you cannot move, and a body you would like to arrive at it able to use. Nothing above depends on how fast you are going to be.
Later than the same evening, which is where most people's instinct lands. Pressing on anything in the first day or two gains the least, so it is worth asking before you pick a day; if it is a marathon specifically, the fortnight is set out week by week rather than summarised here.
Nobody here is going to tell you, and that is deliberate rather than coy. There is research on it and some of it is encouraging, but a claim about what a treatment achieves needs a standard of evidence that this practice does not hold and is not going to pretend to. What can be described honestly is what the hour is (slow, unhurried, pointed at how you feel), and that is what the panel above does.
Possibly, and Jonathan is the one who will say so. He is not a physiotherapist, and this is soft tissue work, one-to-one. If what you have turns out to need a diagnosis, a scan or a prescription, he will tell you and point you at the right person rather than keep you on the table.
If there is a date in the diary, the useful conversation is which week to come in, not which morning.
Book a sessionOr start from the situation rather than the sport: something already hurts, or nothing hurts yet.
