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Percussive massage guns are the latest tech innovation to be embraced by the sports world — and they’re quickly becoming a household staple for athletes and others who are striving for peak performance.

Promising to enhance recovery and conditioning post-exercise, massage guns are designed to relieve muscle soreness, tightness, aches, and knots.

Matt Bevilacqua, Ironman champion and five-time paddleboard world champion and record-holder, swears by his massage gun – specifically, the Hydragun.

Our first question to Bevilacqua was how using the device compares to plain old foam rolling, which is proven to have a similar result over time. “You can feel the effects … after five to 10 minutes of use,” he said. “[The massage gun] vibrates and loosens the muscle quickly, compared to a hard rolling, which has a different, slow massaging effect. It immediately feels like I’ve completed a warm-up exercise without actually moving.”

How do they work?

Let’s dive into the tech to find out how they actually work. Jack Pan, a mechanical engineer at HYDRAGUN, told Business Insider Australia that massage guns have five key components:

• The motor
• The eccentric, which is a spinning disc that turns the rotations of the motor into the linear, back-and-forth motion that makes the head of the massage gun percussive.
• The barrel, which is the head of the gun
• The battery
• The casing

“The difference between any old massage gun and a great one is how good these individual components are, what they’re made of, and how you put them together,” Pan said.

“The core of any massage gun is the motor,” explained Pan. “One trick to see how good your gun’s motor is, [is to] open it up and count the layers of copper wire. A powerful motor will have more layers to conduct and dissipate heat, to prevent overheating. For the Hydragun, the current model has six layers, but for the Mark II [which the team is currently developing] we’ll be using eight.”

The size of the eccentric determines the amplitude of the massage gun, which is the distance the head of the gun travels as it moves back and forth. It also determines the speed of the massage. “The bigger the disc, the higher the amplitude of the gun — and the slower the speed as well,” Pan said. In other words, there’s a trade-off between speed and amplitude. The Theragun, for example, has a higher than average amplitude, but its maximum RPM (speed in rotations per minute) is correspondingly lower. Pan also noted that the weight of the eccentric must be optimised: “Too light or too heavy, and you’ll get excess noise.”

A quality massage gun will also have a gunhead that’s stable and reduces friction to keep it quiet. “Stability [can be a problem] . . . especially in some of the smaller guns, where it starts off quiet, but after two or three months’ use it becomes noisy. This is because the barrel isn’t properly fixated, so the attachment heads start to wobble or tilt in different directions, causing friction and rattling.” Friction is also managed by the choice of material. “We use a seamless steel barrel coated in Niflon,” Pan says of the Hydragun.

Pan emphasised that the materials used at all stages of production will hugely impact the end result. This includes everything from the screws and rods that join the various components together, to the casing. In the case of the Hydragun, the casing’s outer shell is made from aerospace-grade aluminium alloy, which is great for heat dissipation and also helps to keep the device lightweight. “The inner shell is made of zinc alloy, which is a denser, tougher material,” he explains. “So you get both the light weight and the durability [by using these two materials].” It’s then polished, oxidised, and spray-painted (twice) to give it a schmick, premium look.

Which massage gun should you buy?

The best massage gun is the one you’ll use, which is why hand-feel matters as does personal preference on the size and shape of the gun. Logically speaking, if a massage gun is too bulky, heavy, or simply uncomfortable to hold, you’re less likely to use it (or at least, use it regularly). Also, as Pan explained, “a shoddily-made gun will vibrate a lot, so your hand goes numb after a few minutes.”

Similarly, if the gun rattles loudly when you’re using it, it will probably annoy you sooner than if it were whisper-quiet. “To be honest many guns have similarities [from a user standpoint],” Bevilacqua admitted. “However, the Hydragun, for me, has a superior speed of vibration and it is by far the quietest which is very important when using it early morning before training or when watching TV.”

But there’s more to it than just comfort: high vibration and noise levels can sometimes be indicators of a gun’s durability as well. Pan explained that even tiny details like how deeply the screws are inserted during the manufacturing process matter. If they’re too loose (or too tight), that irritating rattle can actually indicate that the gun will become damaged over time.

Pan explained there’s a trade-off of features that is considered by all companies when building their percussive massage guns. “The materials and component selection are key,” Pan said. “It’s not that people don’t know what to do or what to use, but most manufacturers opt for cheap materials to keep costs low . . . not because they don’t know how to make a good massage gun, but because they’re choosing to compromise.”

Everything from the materials used to the precise orientation of the connecting rods affects the performance of the gun. In the end, it comes down to what the company is claiming to do and how much they are willing to compromise on to save on production costs.

Learn more about percussive massage guns here.

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