Comparison of the Immediate Effects of Functional Massage and Stretching Methods on the SRT, Knee Angles, and Leg Lengths of Adults with Insufficient Exercises

Abstract

In the modern society, as the quality of life has been improving and social interest in health and well-being has been increasing, the importance of exercise has been emphasized so that many people actively participate in exercise and conduct many studies on physical activities and exercise. Therefore, in the present study, the lower extremities that are closely related to walking out of the body and can be easily damaged during daily living or sports activities were selected to conduct experiments to apply functional massage and stretching to the lower extremities of adults with insufficient lower extremity exercise in order to compare immediate effects with a view to making activities good before starting daily living or outdoor activities, or sports activities. The subjects were divided into a functional massage group(n: 30) and a stretching group(n: 30) and the participants participated in the experiment through voluntary applications after firsthand hearing explanations about the experiment from the therapist. In order to examine differences in the effects of the intervention between the Functional massage and stretching groups, the independent samples t-test and paired t-tests were performed. An experiment was conducted with functional massage and the results showed statistically significant differences in all comparison items. This may mean that the improvement of overall lower extremity functions and the intervention method stretching could be also regarded to be a very effective method for improvement of lower extremity functions.