How Often Should I Get a Massage?
The question I hear the most often in my practice is probably, “how often should I get a massage?” Or at least something along those lines. And while the answer is different for each person depending on their individual needs, it’s still pretty simple.
You should go as often as is necessary for you.
Let me explain.
Like any other type of therapy, your needs dictate the frequency and duration of massage therapy. In my professional opinion, there’s 3-4 main frequencies to choose from. Those most popular are, from least frequent to most:
Once a month
Once every 3 weeks
Twice per month or every other week
Once per week
Each of these appointment frequencies has a purpose. For example, if you receive massage therapy once a month, you’re aiming to maintain your current level of physiological health or simply support a healthy lifestyle. This is where you want to end up. Monthly massage helps to maintain a healthy equilibrium or homeostasis for your body. Likewise, one massage every 3 weeks is similar maintenance. These levels of care are definitely helpful, but they’re much less likely to create lasting change to whatever issue you might be dealing with.
Along those same lines, receiving massage therapy every other week or even every week is the level of care you should aim for when you’re actively working to solve a problem. If you are recovering from an injury, actively trying to regulate your nervous system and reduce chronic stress, actively training to increase your fitness or training for an upcoming event, etc., then you should be getting a massage at least every 2 weeks.
Breaking this down even further, your level of activity can influence how often you should receive a massage. If you work a labor-intensive job, like a trade, whether skilled or unskilled labor, your maintenance schedule should be once every 2-3 weeks (depending on other factors). A professional athlete should be receiving massage therapy to help with recovery weekly, and probably more often if recovering from an injury. Meanwhile, if you work a desk job, your maintenance schedule can easily be monthly if you’re not dealing with any other issues that can be addressed through massage.
A few examples might help here.
My first example is an exercise physiologist and personal trainer who owns a training gym. He is also an athlete who trains for and participates in triathlons 3-4 times per year, but he does this to maintain his physical fitness, not professionally. He schedules his massages twice per month for maintenance and increases that frequency if/when he experiences an injury like a sprain or strain, when he has overtrained, and he’ll add in an extra massage right after a big race to help with recovery.
Here’s another example: a retired teacher who deals with fibromyalgia and chronic pain. She comes in weekly because massage therapy helps with her chronic pain. She would come in twice a week if she could afford to do so.
Then there’s the tradesman. He’s a handyman, and he has arthritis in his fingers as well as trigger finger in one hand. He gets a massage about every other week for maintenance but also to help keep the arthritis and trigger finger in his hands from affecting his work.
My last example is a woman who works in an office and sits at a desk for most of the day. If this was the only thing I knew about her, I would say that one massage per month would be fine, but she also struggles with chronic stress. She is trying to exercise and move more for her long-term health, but the struggle is real, and she’s not seeing a lot of progress. Her stress keeps her body in survival mode, constantly activated, and it’s affecting her sleep, too. Depending on her financial capacity, I would recommend once per week or every other week massage frequency to help her regulate her nervous system and boost recovery while she’s increasing her movement to help increase fitness.
So, how often should you get a massage? That depends on you and your answers to a few different questions. How active are you? What do you do for a living? What is the overall state of your nervous system and your usual level of stress? Are you dealing with any injuries or health conditions that massage therapy can help speed up healing and/or manage? And how much of your income can you afford to dedicate to massage therapy and/or your health in general? Remembering that your frequency can change with your needs, answering these questions for yourself should give you a decent idea of how often you should be receiving massage therapy.
