Investigation of the effect of acute sports massage on shooting accuracy in shooting branch

The aim of this study is to examine the effect of sports massage applied to athletes in shooting branch on pain, heart rate and shooting accuracy rates. The mean age registered to the Shooting and Hunting Federation was 18.35±1.63 years, height 172.5±6.12 cm, body weight 69.07±10.51 kilograms, sports age 5.07±2.28 years. 14 licensed shooting athletes, 9 men and 5 women, were included. The pain values of the athletes before and after the massage were measured with the visual analog scale, and their heart rates were measured with the Polar clock. In this study, pretest-posttest experimental design was used. The differences between gender and pain scale before and after massage, resting heart rate, mean heart rate during beat, and total beat scores were tested with a 2 x 2 (gender x massage) Mixed Pattern ANOVA. For the size of the trial effect, partial eta square (ƞ2) was calculated (ƞ²≤ 0.01 small effect, ƞ²≤0.06 medium effect, and ƞ²≤0.14 large effect). Statistical operations were performed in the statistical package program (SPSS 25, USA). p=0.05 error level was used in all statistical procedures applied. As a result of the statistics obtained, it was seen that the effect of gender (F(1;12)=.001; p=0.971; ƞ²=0.00) was not significant on the pain scale values of male and female participants, while the effect of massage (F(112)=17.381; p =0.001; ƞ²=0.592) was found to be significant. While it was seen that the effect of gender (F(1;12)=.166; p=.000; ƞ²=.014) on the Beat Average Heart Rate values of male and female participants was not significant, the massage effect (F(112)=64.050; p= 000; ƞ²=0.592) was found to be significant. As a result, it is thought that sports massage reduces pain and positively affects shooting performance.