Does the Therapist’s Sex Affect the Psychological Effects of Sports Massage?—A Quasi-Experimental Study

Objectives: The aim of this study was to determine the influence of the sex of the therapist and of the athlete on the athlete’s current emotional state after a sports massage. The assumption was that the effect of a massage on the current mood was independent of the sex of the therapists or athletes. Background: Sports massages are an integral part of the support given to athletes during training or competition and are a commonly used method for promoting athletes’ physical and mental recovery. Few studies have measured the mental characteristics or even the nonspecific effects of sports massages. Sexual attraction or dislike are among the nonspecific effects of a treatment. Materials and methods: One hundred and sixty-eight high-performance male and female amateur athletes received a sports massage from 15 male and female trained therapists. The current emotional state of the athletes was measured before and after intervention using the BSKE-EA17 adjective scale, whose items can be assigned to five categories of the current emotional state. ANOVAs (analysis of covariances) were carried out to calculate the interactions between the sexes. Cohen’s d for similar group sizes and similar group variances were determined. Results: Neither the sex of the therapist nor the sex of the athlete had any influence on the mental effect of a sports massage. The only exception was when male athletes were treated by female therapists, where an increase in “elevated mood” was observed. Sports massages resulted in an increase in the responses in the categories “elevated mood” (d = 1.1) and “level of activation” (d = 0.3) and a decrease in the responses for “low mood” (d = 0.3), “level of deactivation” (d = 0.6) and “level of excitation” after the massage compared to before the massage (d = 0.9). Conclusions: Sports massages appear to increase the positive dimensions of the athletes’ current emotional state and reduce the negative dimensions. The self-reported mood changes from before the massage to after the massage were not influenced by other prognostic variables, including wait time, age of the athlete or the duration of the run. The results suggest that the specific effects of sports massages on the mental status are supported. Disregarding the aspect of the therapists’ sex, sports officials, trainers and athletes therefore can be more independent in the personnel planning of sports therapists.