4. Discussion
DOMS, acute pain
Studies regarding the effectiveness of repeated massage on DOMS have been conducted after a single bout of stress and did not find significant differences from the control [We hypothesized that massage would improve swimmers’ perceptions shortly after intervention which could, in turn, improve their training abilities. In this sense, we found that the perception of the well-being of participants in both massage groups remained basically unchanged, whereas the participants in the CON reported a worsening of this perception at the end of the week. In fact, participants that received a massage had less chance of feeling tired from resistance training shortly after intervention at the end of the week. This may indicate a cumulative benefit from receiving massages throughout the week. However, we highlight that these effects were small and limited to self-reported perceptions.Although massage has been shown to reduce acute pain [This brings light to the debate regarding the management of training load in the sports scenario. For competitive swimmers, greater training loads were found to be associated with better performance [Our second hypothesis, that the cumulative effects of massage between training sessions would result in positive repercussions for swimmers’ sprint and functional performance, was only partially confirmed, as we did not find significant statistical improvements on the tested variables after one week of superficial and deep massage compared to CON. On the other hand, although there is some hypothesis that too much recovery may hinder training adaptations [This study is not without limitations. We did not objectively assess swim quality after recovery or monitor an entire season, which leaves unanswered gaps. Thus, assumptions for other stages of training cannot be made. Therefore, investigating the behavior of recovery throughout the season is still relevant given the specificity of training principles. Findings of previous studies support the investigation of the application of massage for longer periods. Rapaport et al. [