Foam rollers and percussive massage guns are marketed as warm-up tools and recovery aids. This article checks those uses against the published abstracts of six systematic reviews, five of them with meta-analyses, issued between 2023 and 2026. It sorts the usual claims into myth and fact and attributes each finding to the review that reported it. The reviews cover studies of exercisers, and the abstracts report no comparison of one roller or gun model against another.
Terms the reviews use
- Range of motion (ROM): how far a joint can move.
- Stiffness and passive peak torque: laboratory measures of how much a muscle resists being stretched.
- Countermovement jump: a standing vertical jump used as a test of explosive performance.
- Certainty of evidence: the reviewers’ rating of how much confidence the pooled results deserve.
Myth: a roller or a stretch is an essential warm-up step
A 2024 systematic review in the Journal of Sport and Health Science pooled 38 studies with 1,134 participants. It compared stretching and foam rolling with other warm-up activities and found no significant difference in range of motion, stiffness or passive peak torque. The authors rated study quality as fair, with low to moderate certainty of evidence, and concluded that there is no need to emphasise stretching or foam rolling to produce short-term gains in those measures. The comparison was against other activities, not against doing nothing.
Myth: rolling builds more flexibility than stretching
A 2024 meta-analysis in Sports Medicine looked at training programmes rather than single sessions: 85 studies, 72 on static stretching and 13 on foam rolling. Both methods increased joint range of motion compared with a control condition, with a moderate magnitude, and the overall difference between them was not significant. In programmes of four weeks or less, though, stretching produced a significant change and foam rolling did not. The authors called for more studies of high-volume foam rolling and of female participants, so the roller evidence is thinner than the stretching evidence.
Myth: a roll before lifting changes your strength
A 2023 review in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research examined 20 trials of foam rolling during warm-ups in healthy adults or athletes. The meta-analysis found no effect on myofascial tissue stiffness, isometric strength, eccentric torque or rate of force development. Knee extensor concentric torque did increase after rolling. The authors described the certainty of the evidence as low and asked for higher-quality studies.
Fact, with limits: rolling and soreness the next day
A 2024 review in the Journal of Bodywork and Movement Therapies pooled 16 randomised trials with 515 participants, measuring soreness with a visual analogue scale and pressure-pain thresholds. Its authors concluded that rolling after exercise has a certain preventive effect on muscle soreness, tiny immediately afterwards and more obvious beyond 24 hours.
Massage guns: mixed results in two reviews
A 2023 systematic review in the Journal of Functional Morphology and Kinesiology screened 281 records and included 11 studies, ten at moderate and one at high risk of bias. It reported that massage guns could improve the flexibility of some muscle groups, and that for strength, balance, acceleration, agility and explosive activities they either brought no improvement or reduced performance. No differences were found in contraction time, perceived exertion or lactate. Its stated conclusion was that massage guns can help improve short-term range of motion, flexibility and recovery-related outcomes, but that their use in strength, balance, acceleration, agility and explosive activities is not recommended.
A 2026 meta-analysis of 12 randomised trials in Chiropractic and Manual Therapies found that percussive therapy improved countermovement-jump recovery compared with control (low certainty) and lowered creatine kinase, a biochemical marker (very low certainty). It did not clearly improve recovery of maximum voluntary contraction (moderate certainty) or delayed onset muscle soreness (very low certainty). Treatment longer than five minutes per muscle group was associated with larger jump effects and also with higher soreness scores. The authors said these dose findings are preliminary and should not be read as prescriptive thresholds.
A checklist before buying
- Check the comparison group: a result against no treatment is a different claim from a result against another warm-up.
- Check the certainty rating: the massage-gun benefits in the 2026 review were rated low or very low certainty.
- The abstracts do not compare models or price levels, so they give no basis for choosing between devices.
- Treat performance claims on packaging as the manufacturer’s claims, not as findings of these reviews.
For other recovery products, see this site’s reviews of cold plunge tubs and compression garments, and its summary of static stretching reviews.
The bottom line
Across these six reviews the findings are mixed. Foam rolling and static stretching programmes both increased range of motion against a control, rolling did not outperform other warm-up activities in an analysis of short-term effects, and neither tool showed a consistent strength or explosive-performance benefit. The massage-gun evidence rests on small numbers of trials, with moderate or high risk of bias in the 2023 review and low or very low certainty for its benefits in the 2026 review.
Sources
- Foam rolling and stretching do not provide superior acute flexibility and stiffness improvements compared to any other warm-up intervention: a systematic review with meta-analysis, Journal of Sport and Health Science, 2024 (pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)
- Static Stretch Training versus Foam Rolling Training Effects on Range of Motion: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis, Sports Medicine, 2024 (pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)
- Foam Rolling Acute Effects on Myofascial Tissue Stiffness and Muscle Strength: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis, Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, 2023 (pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)
- Preventive effect of foam rolling on muscle soreness after exercise: A systematic review and meta-analysis, Journal of Bodywork and Movement Therapies, 2024 (pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)
- The Effects of Massage Guns on Performance and Recovery: A Systematic Review, Journal of Functional Morphology and Kinesiology, 2023 (pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)
- Effects of percussive therapy dosages on recovery from acute exercise-induced muscle damage: a systematic review and meta-analysis, Chiropractic and Manual Therapies, 2026 (pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)