Who Invented the Massage Gun?

I… dear reader. Am getting older, and crankier. The latter attribute isn’t important, although it does explain quite a lot about me. The joy of getting older is that my body is getting more snaps, crackles, and pops than I care to admit. This has encouraged me/forced me/confined me, to taking more interest in both rest days and rehabilitative work of varying degrees.

Being a child of the internet, especially in a fitness context, I have fallen prey to many different ‘revolutions’ in warming up. Sadly there was a time when my warm-ups, and cool-downs, which included dynamic stretching, foam rolling, static stretching and muscle activiation, were longer than the workouts themselves. There were also times when I began a workout by diving straight into my working sets. God I miss being a teenager.

Now I fall somewhere in the middle and warm up by progressing ramping up the weight used in an exercise and using a massage gun on off days. I was also corrupted by a combination of Pavel Tsatsouline and Louie Simmons so my workouts now include things like Turkish Get Ups and Reverse Hyper Extensions. Did Pavel ever meet Louie? That would have been an interesting roundtable eh? Louie seemed to like him… which is not always a sentence one can type.

Anyway… back to the subject at hand, massage guns. Percussion or massage guns have become increasingly popular, and affordable, among the general fitness-loving public. What I want to focus on here is the early history of these guns, the business rivalries which have emerged and their place in popular training culture.

What is a Massage Gun and What Does it Do?

Feeling somewhat lazy, and annoyingly aware that search engines encourage writers to link to other websiteses, I’ve decided to rely on the good folks at Everyday Health for a definition

Massage guns (sometimes called “percussive massage treatment” or “vibration therapy”) are portable, handheld devices that look like a power drill and, in some cases, sound like one. They’re almost always wireless — most use a rechargeable battery — and they come with interchangeable attachments.

When the massage gun is placed on your muscles and turned on, the attachments vibrate or “percuss” at a high frequency and low amplitude of movement. Advocates claim that this promotes recovery from workouts and improves overall performance while reducing muscle soreness.

They can be found in gyms, in locker rooms and now in a variety of health, grocery and megastores. Fascinatingly they are now being marketed for both gym goers as well as those experiencing ongoing musculoskeletal pain.

I am now painfully aware this sounds like a paid placement. It isn’t. I’m just interested in the history of this device and, truthfully, I used a massage gun plus foam rolling and stretching for a year to try to cure sciatic pain. What helped me in the end was going to an osteopath who re-aligned my hips in 5 minutes. That being said, if people want to pay me to endorse dubious products, my virtual door is always open.

The Early History of Massage Guns

To understand the history of massage guns, it is important to explain the device’s logic. During the 1950s, osteopath Robert Fulford advocated the use of percussive theory wherein a small percussion vibrator or hammer was used to treat muscular pain and energy blockages around the body. I went down a very large rabbit hole on Fulford and his healing philosophy. For woo-woos of the 1990s (which I admittedly was/am), he advocated a whole body form of treating patients with the ultimate goal of helping them be a full person. This included a more esoteric focus on energy channels and pathways through the body.

Just as an aside, I love the idea of going to an oesteopath about hip pain and delving into a deep philosophic conversation about life. The osteopath who cured my sciatica gently (but rightly) critiqued why I lifted heavier and heavier weights for a hobby. Still struggling to answer that one…

Anyway Fulford is important as is percussive therapy (PT) because of the equipment it used. Fulford did use his hands to treat patients but he also relied on the percussive hammer. See the below video for what was, in effect, the first massage gun used in a health/sporting setting.

Skip to roughly 15 minutes into the video

 

The Oster and the Thumper

During the 1960s ad 1970s America saw the creation of the Oster handheld massager and then also the aptly named thumper – get your minds out of the gutter.

Oster was a steel company that began to branch out into new equipment, including massage guns, following the Second World War. The reason I’m going to briefly pass over this history is that Oster, unlike the other organizations and people mentioned here, seems to have been a commercial invention or product rather than one that came from a real medical need. Evidence of this comes from the fact that they also made blenders during this period as well. I know Elieko made waffle makers so maybe I’m being a bit snobby but I will give Oster kudos for creating a pretty cool handheld device which ultimately probably helped push prices down for consumers. It was pretty lacklustre as a sporting or medical device as the below video highlights.

In 1974 a more obvious precursor to the modern massage gun came in the form of Thumper massagers. Developed under the watchful eye of Canadian chiropractor Lyman Johnson, alongside Mechanical Engineers from Magna International Inc, thumper massagers were percussive electric massagers

Thumper Massagers were initially developed in 1974 for professional use in the clinic and was aimed to release muscle tension on a patient before a chiropractic adjustment. This was the first electric massager and it was called the Vibrotoner. With research and development conducted by Toronto Chiropractor Lyman Johnson and with the help of Mechanical Engineers from Magna International Inc., this first percussive electric massager was made possible.

The Modern Massage Gun

The Thumper, which still exists today, was an obviously important and impactful change. It is not, however, what most people consider when they are thinking about massage guns. The first, commercial, massage gun that people became exposed to in a major way was the Theragun. Invented by Dr. Jason Werseland after a serious motorcycle accident, the Theragun was first invented in 2007 and then used in Werseland’s practice for nearly a decade.

It is really useful to note that Werseland was a trained chiropractor, whose philosophy on the body would broadly align with some of the others mentioned here. The below video gives such an earnest testimony of Werseland’s journey to making the Theragun.

A key point from the above video was Werseland’s time working with elite athletes. When the Theragun was released for mass consumption in 2016, the general public became aware of it largely through competitive sport. An early, and impactful Theragun video, was that showing former NFL linebacker James Anderson using the product.

 

An article from Men’s Health on the Theragun in 2017 shows how quickly sportified it became

You may not be able to drain three-pointers and dissect the Golden State Warriors the way Kyrie Irving does, but you just may be able to borrow his secret weapon against injuries.

Because the Cleveland Cavaliers point guard apparently has some help in staying healthy. During all the hubbub over the Warriors trouncing Irving’s Cavs for the NBA title, you may have missed a brief Monday night shot of Irving on the sidelines, a trainer huddled over him with a blue-and-black gun.

That gun is called a Theragun and while it’s pricey at $600, it’s also an emerging tool for athletes looking to get a quick fascia fix on game days.

At the same time MMA trainer Firas Zahabi invented a comparable product, the TimTam (first released in 2017). Again the connections to elite sport were important and, cards on the table, it was Zahabi’s interview on Joe Rogan which first made me consider an electric massager as useful rather than a gimmick. From 2016 to the present electric massagers have grown in popularity and usage. As often happens in fitness, the original monopoly Theragun and TimTam had on the market has been destroyed by cheaper and lighter alternatives. A Theragun cost $600 in 2017 and had few competitors. I can know get a cheap option for $40. I know that last line sounds like product placement. In truth I typed ‘cheap massage guns’ into Google and put in the first link I found. If people want to pay me for cheap product placement though…

Conclusion

I am something of a convert to the massage gun. What I believed to be the latest fad or gimmick in fitness has, in truth, a much longer history of helping people. While the marketing hype may say all of this is new, ‘there is nothing new under the sun’ continues to be a mantra we need to adopt within the fitness industry. But… on that note… Happy Lifting!