Percussion Massage Better Than Foam Rolling? Or Other Massage

Foam Rolling Vs Massage Gun Which Is Better

Which Is Better Massage Gun Or Foam Rolling?

Percussion massage has its own unique benefits. Better in other areas of Massage, but it does have some limitations. Foam rolling can do things that percussion massage cannot do and vice versa.

For some people, a Percussion massage could be a better alternative than foam rolling the body. Unfortunately, Foam rolling can put you in some awkward positions to get the full benefit.

Is Massage Gun Better Than Foam Roller

A foam roller can do things that a massage gun cannot do. A Massage gun with proper technique can do things Foam rolling cannot do.

This mainly comes down to the way they are used or implemented to massage the body. A massage gun uses a percussion massage by going deep into the tissue vertically, giving the percussion pulsing deeper tissue massage.

Unlike a foam roller is being rolled over the tissue. A foam roller’s benefit is that a percussion massager cannot deliver the mass volume of blood flow being squeezed through the muscle. Ultimately the benefit of recovery comes from blood flow. this is why I still use foam rolling for its effectiveness and has been the main tool of recovery tool for many years now until the percussion massagers have become more popular.

Percussion massagers will be better when it comes to someone trying to get into a tight area or pinpoint a small trigger point. When working on one area, it is going to get relieved much quicker than foam rolling.

Foam rolling takes some time to work for a whole muscle group fully. You’re only getting one action at a time as your role back and forth. With a percussion massager, some of them can move at 3000 RPM in a concentrated one area. It’s going to get released quicker.

A percussion massagers downside is that it only works in one area at a time in a pinpoint action. But you’re not going to get the mass blood flow a volume squeeze through all the tissue like you can with a foam roller.

But if you have an annoying pain that’s a pain like sciatic nerve pain deep into the hip, a percussion massager might be the only tool you’ll be able to use on yourself to relieve you of this type of sciatic pain. And the past, people use baseballs and tennis balls and do static pressure in one area to release a type of sciatic nerve pain.

With the new percussion massagers, they’re much more comfortable to use less effort and time-saving, and you don’t have to lay awkward positions to release these trigger points. You hold a percussive massager, and the area giving you the problem and work that area until you have your results.

It’s recommended not to work for one muscle group with a percussion massager for more than 2 minutes, and a whole full body percussive massage should be done within 15 minutes.

Putting in perspective when using a foam roller, you could do a foam rolling session before you would ever overwork any muscle.

I find a great benefit of using a percussion massager to pinpoint sciatic nerve pains and work on the actual trigger points that are hard to reach or won’t release very quickly from foam Rolling. Once I’ve used the Percussion massager and worked, everything goes back in tune everything up finishing with a foam roller. Now that everything is loosened up and there are no major locked up trigger points, I’m able to use the foam roller to finish flowing everything out and getting gorging the blood flow to all the tissue and remember blood flow is our healer.

This is why things die and get sick and why muscles get sore and tight and seem to worsen unless you work on them. That’s the Restriction of blood flow, and blood flow carries all of our nutrients to do the repair that we need for a body blood flow number one this is why healthy foods are important that support blood flow at Aid the body and healing process.

Percussion And Foam Rolling Massage

The big difference between percussion And foam rolling Massage Really comes down to the style. It’s a vertical massage versus a horizontal massage pants percussion massage, or you could look at it like this. It is a flowing massage versus a compounding massage.

Either way, they’re really can’t be compared as the same thing they perform the same idea is getting a massage, but they’re used completely differently. When you think about it, it makes more sense. One is a percussion beating the tissue, and one is a flow rolling against the tissue.

If you look at anatomy and muscle fibers and how the soft tissue is constructed, it makes sense how they both can have their own benefits, and they really can’t be compared against each other because one is much different than the other.

The way that muscle fibers layout in the body, they don’t all lay in One Direction. and when these muscle fibers get tensed and tight, they become more in a straight line, and that’s not what we want because that’s where the tightness and soreness and atrophy of the muscle will begin to get worse and not heal and get stronger it will actually get tighter and weaker.

So when you use a percussion massage, you start reversing this, and you start getting blood flow and letting the body heal itself naturally. The same thing when you add foam rolling, you are breaking up the fiber in a different way, and you’re flowing the blood so to sum it up.

The biggest difference is how the two massages are plaid. One is vertically applied, and one is horizontally applied. Each one has its benefits in its own way.


I’m not trying to be biased against either one. If anything, I should be biased against foam rolling and promote the percussion massager because that’s what the site is all about percussion massagers. However, I still use foam rolling for myself just as much as I use percussion massage, and actually, I might foam roll more, and that’s just for the convenience of it for me.

But if anybody were to ask me off the street what I recommend, I highly recommend using both of them, starting with the percussion massager for 15 minutes and then finishing up the rest of the body with foam rolling. Your results will be better and the time you spend will be less it’s really the best of both worlds.

And then, if you have the money and get a hired masseuse massage therapist, give you a full-body one-hour session once a week or twice a month.

If you’re an athlete or work out more than 3 days a week, you should already be doing a lot of your gym or work out sessions held back and can be getting worse without the proper recovery.

Dose A Massage Gun Replace Foam Rolling

My answer would be NO. Massage gun does not replace foam rolling. I don’t care what anyone says, and take it from me, this whole website is basically promoting Percussion guns, but I’m not going to say things I don’t believe in. This whole post goes into more detail about the benefits that foam rolling has that a massage gun can’t physically do, mainly blood flow.

Some people will state that a massage gun has been a complete replacement for their foam rolling routine, and maybe so, but I still personally use a foam roller just as much if not more if you look at it.

If you wanted to replace a foam roller altogether and you hated rolling and wanted the benefits of foam rolling, yes, you could go to a percussion massager and not do foam rolling. That’s fine too.

But you’re going to miss out on some benefits. I recommend using a percussion massager 75% of the time and using foam rolling 25% of the time. You’re going to get faster results with the percussion massager, and you’re going to get overall results faster when you add a little bit of foam rolling. It’s all about blood flow to the tissue getting the healing power kicked in

Is Foam Rolling Really Beneficial?

I talked a lot about the benefits of percussion massage and some rolling massage in general, but to go in-depth of the benefits of foam rolling and is why I still foam roll nearly every day.

Foam rolling has the ability to recover your body that no other type of Massage can really do.

The only thing compared to foam rolling is when you have a hired masseuse, and they’re able to take their arm and press it in deeply and run along the body with their forearm, someone mimicking a blunt around object rolling down the body.

The benefit here is that maybe not very understandable until you look at the anatomy and how muscle fibers heal with blood flow. I talked a lot about blood flow, and I do for a good reason. It’s absolutely everything.

You look at people with diabetes because of their high sugar levels the sticky sugar-like protein sticks around the cells preventing blood flow! And then you hear about their eyesight failing and their toes turning purple and some people with diabetes getting their toes amputated.

It really freaks me out, and I am very serious about this because my friend last year overweight, poor diet, lack of exercise, diabetic and not doing anything about it 28 years old got her toes cut off. It all could have been prevented, but this comes down to blood flow.

Foam rolling moves blood are healer this does it’s not mean it’s going to prevent diabetes. It’s not going to help the most extreme medical cases. What is the same principle when the body loses the ability to get blood flow to one cellular area, then cell death happens.

Without blood flow, nutrients cannot get to an area to keep it alive with oxygen water, sodium potassium magnesium all the trace minerals vitamins nutrients amino acids. All this stuff keeps all these millions and trillions of cells in the body alive and what mixes up of what We Are.

To paint the picture of how important blood flow is for the body when you’re using a foam roller, you are going over a large body area. You’re picking up the tissue, and you’re pushing it down like kneading dough in a sense, and you are picking up blood through all this tissue like a wave. You’re forcing it through all the capillaries and all the muscle tissue, and all the fiber in the tendons is getting this blood flow that would not otherwise go through in this manner, and blood carries all the nutrients and all the healing power.

This is the reason for doing massage in the first place, but to paint the picture and understand how blood flow is an important and healing process, nothing can replace foam rolling in it in itself.

The problem I have with some rolling I told you everything great about it’s not irreplaceable. Still, the biggest problem that I have with it is the positions you have to put yourself in to benefit from foam rolling. It can be uncomfortable. It could damage you depending on if you’re trying to recover from an injury some positions you shouldn’t be putting yourself in until you fully recover from a major injury.

This is why I got into percussion massage in the first place is the ability to massage and area without putting so much strain on the rest of the body you just let the percussion massager do with work and take the load off of other muscles and able to relax if you’re using a foam roller fully. You’re trying to relax but also tensing up at the same time. You’re not going to get the benefits and maybe even cause more muscle strain and other areas.

Is A Massage Gun Worth It?

Absolutely yes, I highly recommend anybody to get a massage gun, even a cheap one around $100 going much cheaper than that you’ll run into some problems.

I found that a percussion massage gun is really nice on the days that I’m sore and tired I don’t have the energy for stretching or the energy to roll around on a foam roller doing more of a workout than actually feel like a recovery plan.

That’s the beauty of a percussion massager. It’s almost like your personal massage therapist at your demand most recovery self-implemented programs or systems. You have to extend even more effort into yourself to get the recovery process.

With a percussion massager, the massager does the work. You can sit back and somewhat relaxed. There are different ways that you can rig up your percussion.

You can tie it to a chair or stick it in a couch cushion, and you don’t even do anything but lean into it a little bit and move around occasionally.

It’s tough to reach the upper back in between the shoulder blades. I experienced a lot of pain and tightness, and if you’re trying to use some device back there or roll around on a baseball, it’s very uncomfortable and hard to get the desired results. When you jam a percussion massager in between a couch and sit back and relax, you’re actually able to relax the rhomboids and the traps and let the massager actually do its job and get relief in a matter of minutes.

What isn’t worth it when it comes to a percussion massager is when you buy one for $50 or even some at $80, they’re actually dangerous. I haven’t heard any reports of them actually Catching Fire, but I had one that almost did catch fire. The internal parts are made very cheaply when you go under the hundred dollar price point, and things can get hot and overheated and meltdown.

I always recommend Brad and Bob’s Percussion Massager. I believe it’s still on Amazon. It is probably the best for the lowest price.

Brad and Bob’s Percussion massager.

There are plenty of others that go all the way up to $500, but they all pretty much do the same thing. The Archway percussion massager is a pretty good one, too I think around $200, or so it’s probably the best mid-range for the money.

Take Away

My final thoughts don’t throw away your foam rolling equipment and not pushing tools after purchasing a percussion massager. Percussion massagers are just another tool in Your Arsenal of recovery tools. It is not a replacement for foam rolling or any other type of Massage. Still, it is definitely something to add to your recovery plan, especially if you don’t have the time or the money to hire a professional massage done once a week. I look at it this way you could buy a piece of equipment, say some Smith machine, that has all the attachments and all the cables, and basically, you can perform almost every muscle group exercise on this machine. So saying that there’s no need for any other equipment would be naive when you know that a barbell or a dumbbell can give you a different type of workout in a different type of way. The body is always getting used to what it’s in and its environment, so confusion in the gym that calls it muscle confusion promotes growth. I don’t have the science on this but to me if I’m always doing the same stretch routine. If I’m always using a foam roller, maybe the body is intelligent enough to adapt to these routines and may not give me the full benefit of the recovery routine. Adding percussion massage into the mix and mixing, get it in in different ways with foam rolling with stretching with cold showers and hot baths. All this will keep the body working in a healthy well-oiled machine like it’s supposed to be. 

Percussion Massage Better Than Foam Rolling? Or Other Massage