How Often Should You Get a Massage? An LMT's Honest Answer

Each day, most of us live our lives prioritizing other people's needs and happiness while pushing our own well-being to the back burner. It's time to change things around. When you start prioritizing your own well-being, the well-being, happiness, and quality of life of those around you often improves right along with it.

So let's talk about a question I get almost every week as a licensed massage therapist: how often should you actually get a massage?

The Short Answer: It Depends on Your Goal

There's no universal number. Anyone who gives you one without asking a single question about your life is guessing.

Do you have chronic pain? An acute injury? Are you just trying to relax? Are you chasing athletic performance? Those are four completely different problems, and they get four completely different answers.

Here's the quick version, then I'll break down each one.

Your Goal	How Often
Chronic pain	1x per week — short-term, paired with strength training
Acute injury	~5 sessions over 5 weeks, front-loaded
Stress and relaxation	1-2x per month
Athletic performance	Every 2-3 weeks, never within 4 days of an event

How Often Should You Get a Massage for Chronic Pain?

Let's say you have chronic low back pain — maybe from sitting at a desk all day — and you want to see if massage therapy can help.

The honest frequency answer is once per week.

Here's why, and here's why I'm going to talk you out of it anyway.

Massage therapy DOES help. But it's a passive modality, which means someone is doing something to you. YOU aren't doing anything to manage the pain yourself. With that approach, it takes regular, repeated touch to keep the muscles from getting tight and staying tight again. Stop going, and it comes back.

So you're now on the hook for a weekly appointment, forever, and what you've bought is "not hurting." That's it. That's the whole return.

That's not cost-effective, and it's not a reasonable ask for most people's time or budget. If you want weekly massage for the rest of your life to manage your back pain, then so be it — no judgment. But I'd rather give you a better option.

The better option is mixing strength training with massage therapy.

That lines up exactly with what I see every week at our Allison Park studio. Bodywork gets you out of pain enough to move. Strength is what keeps you out of pain.

How Often Should You Get a Massage for an Acute Injury?

Different story entirely.

Maybe you sprained your ankle. Threw your back out — a one-time thing, not a pattern. Fell snowboarding and tweaked your knee. These things happen, and massage therapy can DEFINITELY help here.

With something acute, you should start getting massage right away. It improves circulation, which helps heal the injured tissue, and a skilled massage therapist knows how to mobilize the tissue and the joint to start bringing healthy range of motion back.

Here's the schedule I use:

When	Sessions
Week of the injury	2 sessions
Week 2	1 session
Week 3	1 session
Week 4	0 — heavy emphasis on strength and rehab exercises
Week 5	1 session

Notice week 4. That's not a typo, and it's not me forgetting to book you. That's the week the active work takes over.

By the end of week 5, if you've been working with a physical therapist or a strength coach to rehabilitate the injury while simultaneously receiving bodywork, you should be feeling pretty good.

How Often Should You Get a Massage for Stress and Relaxation?

Okay, so you're not injured, nothing hurts, and you just want to relax. Then what?

Go as much as you want, haha.

But a fair answer is once or twice per month. It really depends on two things: how long your nervous system can hold onto that relaxed state, and how decent a job you're doing at managing daily stress the rest of the time.

Context matters here.

Maybe you're planning your wedding, it's in two weeks, the DJ just cancelled, and the photographer booked another job while completely disregarding your contract. Get a massage. Close your eyes. Chill. You'll figure it out after.

On the other hand, maybe you're an ER surgeon with a brutal sleep schedule. You could probably go every one to two weeks depending on what your calendar looks like.

That said — if stress is the actual problem, massage is treating the symptom. The active side matters just as much here: managing anxiety through daily habits, and honestly, getting your sleep sorted out. An hour on the table doesn't undo a 5-hour-a-night habit.

How Often Should You Get a Massage for Athletic Performance?

This one has more variables. Two questions drive it:

1. Do you have a competition or performance coming up?
2. What does your training schedule look like?

If you have an event coming up

Give yourself about four days between your massage and the event.

Sometimes bodywork leaves us sore and beat up a bit. That's okay when it's done right — but we DO NOT want to feel like that going into an event. Four days gives your body the time to recover and show up sharp.

This isn't superstition. A systematic review and meta-analysis of massage and delayed onset muscle soreness found massage after strenuous exercise does help with soreness and performance — but soreness itself is a real, measurable thing that takes days to resolve. Don't schedule it into your event.

If you're not training for anything specific

Every 2 to 3 weeks is a reasonable frequency.

Don't train and get bodywork on the same day

I don't recommend it. After training, your muscles are fatigued, sore, and a bit tighter. Because of that, you won't be able to receive deeper bodywork, and you won't get as much out of the session you just paid for.

I like getting my bodywork on my rest day. Then the next day's workout, I go just a bit less intense.

The Bottom Line: Massage Is One Piece of the Puzzle

If you take one thing from this, take this:

Massage therapy is only a small piece of whatever puzzle you're trying to solve.

With chronic pain, acute injury, and stress management, it's important to be using active modalities — strength training, rehab, meditation, mindfulness — and not just passive modalities like massage therapy, chiropractic care, acupuncture, or cupping.

Active modalities are how we actually make long-lasting change. Passive modalities facilitate and help.

That distinction is the whole thing. It's why I'd rather sell you fewer massages that are aimed at something than a standing weekly appointment that just keeps you comfortable enough to never fix the underlying problem.

If you're in Allison Park, the North Hills, or anywhere around Pittsburgh and you're not sure what frequency makes sense for your goal, give us a call. We'll tell you honestly — including when the answer is "you need less massage and more strength work."

Always remember: the more willing you are to make changes to prioritize your well-being, the better you'll be at taking care of those around you. YOUR well-being is important, and it's time to start prioritizing it — FOR LIFE.

Happy to help.

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