Does Cupping Therapy Work for Sports Performance and Recovery?

If you have watched elite sport over the last decade, you have probably seen athletes covered in distinctive circular marks across their backs, shoulders or legs.

Those marks are usually from cupping therapy.

Its visibility increased significantly after athletes such as Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps were seen using it, and cupping has since become increasingly common within sports therapy, physiotherapy and recovery.

Cupping therapy is often promoted as a way of:

• increasing blood flow
• reducing muscle soreness
• speeding up recovery
• improving flexibility
• removing “toxins”
• reducing muscle tightness
• and even improving sporting performance.

But does cupping therapy actually work?

More specifically, does cupping help athletes recover faster or perform better?

When we look at the research, the evidence is considerably less convincing than the popularity of cupping might suggest.

What is cupping therapy?

Cupping therapy involves placing a plastic, glass or silicone cup against the skin and creating negative pressure — essentially suction.

With dry cupping, the skin remains intact. With wet cupping, small cuts or punctures are made in the skin before suction is applied.

The suction pulls the skin and superficial tissues upwards into the cup, often leaving the characteristic circular red or purple marks afterwards.

Those marks can certainly make it look as though something significant has happened to the tissues.

However, the appearance of a treatment tells us very little about whether it actually improves muscle recovery, reduces injury risk or makes somebody perform better.

What are the claimed benefits of cupping?

You will often see cupping advertised for athletes as a treatment capable of improving recovery, reducing soreness and helping muscles work more effectively.

Some of the proposed benefits include improved circulation, greater flexibility, reduced muscle tension and faster recovery following exercise.

There is an important difference, however, between a treatment having an immediate effect on how somebody feels and it meaningfully changing how their body performs.

For athletes, that distinction matters.

What does the research say about cupping therapy?

There have been studies suggesting potential benefits from cupping, particularly around pain and flexibility.

The problem is that much of the research has been relatively small and of variable quality.

A systematic review specifically looking at cupping in amateur and professional athletes found 11 trials involving 498 participants. Some studies reported improvements in areas such as pain, range of movement and certain markers of muscle damage.

However, most studies were considered to have an unclear or high risk of bias, frequently comparing cupping with receiving no treatment at all.

The researchers ultimately concluded that there was insufficient evidence to recommend either for or against cupping in athletes.

The US National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health reaches a similar conclusion when looking at cupping more generally: most research is low quality, there may be some effect on pain, but the evidence is not strong enough to make confident conclusions about many of the other claims surrounding the treatment.

And newer research hasn't provided particularly convincing evidence for sports recovery either.

A 2025 randomised clinical trial investigated cupping after running in 81 recreational runners. Researchers measured quadriceps pain, fatigue, perceived recovery and vertical jump performance.

Cupping didn't significantly improve any of them.

Similarly, research in collegiate footballers has found no significant improvement in hamstring flexibility following cupping.

There are individual studies reporting positive physiological changes, so I wouldn't suggest that every piece of research into cupping is negative.

The bigger issue is that we currently don't have convincing, consistent evidence that applying cups translates into something athletes really care about:

better performance.

Does cupping improve muscle recovery?

This is probably one of the biggest reasons athletes use cupping.

After hard training, it is normal to experience fatigue, soreness and temporarily reduced performance while your body recovers and adapts.

A recovery treatment is therefore attractive — particularly if it promises to speed this process up.

Unfortunately, there is currently little convincing evidence that cupping meaningfully accelerates muscle recovery following exercise.

You might feel different afterwards. You might even feel less sore.

But that isn't necessarily the same as your muscle having repaired more quickly or being better prepared for your next training session.

If our goal is sports performance, that distinction is important.

But doesn't cupping increase blood flow?

This is one of the most common explanations given for how cupping supposedly works.

Applying suction to the skin can cause local changes in circulation.

That isn't particularly surprising — mechanically stressing the skin and superficial tissues will produce a physiological response.

The problem comes with the next step in the argument:

Increased local blood flow = faster recovery = better performance.

That hasn't been established.

Our bodies already have an extraordinarily effective cardiovascular system supplying working muscle with oxygen and nutrients and removing metabolic by-products.

Making an area of skin temporarily red doesn't necessarily mean the underlying muscle is recovering more effectively.

And even if a treatment produces a measurable physiological change, we still need to ask:

Does that change actually matter?

Does it make you run faster?

Lift more?

Jump higher?

Recover more quickly?

Reduce your risk of injury?

Allow you to train more effectively?

At present, the evidence for those outcomes isn't convincing.

Does cupping remove toxins?

Another common claim surrounding cupping therapy is that it helps draw “toxins” out of the muscles or body.

There is no good evidence that the dark circular marks left behind after cupping represent toxins being removed.

They occur because suction places mechanical stress on the skin and small blood vessels underneath it.

Your body already has organs specifically designed to process and remove unwanted substances — particularly your liver and kidneys.

Cupping isn't replacing or enhancing that system in any meaningful, evidence-based way.

Why does cupping sometimes make people feel better?

This is where conversations around treatments such as cupping need some nuance.

Someone can genuinely feel better after cupping without the treatment necessarily having changed the underlying tissues.

Pain is complicated.

Touch, reassurance, relaxation, expectations, previous experiences and simply taking some time to recover can all influence how somebody feels.

Someone might genuinely leave a cupping session feeling:

• looser
• less sore
• more relaxed
• or more confident about training.

That experience isn't imaginary.

But it also doesn't necessarily mean that cups have accelerated muscle repair, corrected damaged tissue or improved athletic performance.

Feeling better and performing better are not always the same thing.

This distinction is particularly important in sports medicine.

Why I wouldn't recommend cupping for sports performance

My biggest issue with cupping isn't that it is particularly dangerous or that nobody could possibly enjoy having it done.

It's an issue of opportunity cost.

Athletes have limited time, energy and often limited money.

If your goal is to improve your 5K or 10K time, become stronger, cycle faster or perform better at your chosen sport, I would rather spend those resources on interventions we know can make a meaningful difference.

Progressive strength training

Building stronger muscles and tendons can improve physical performance and increase your capacity to tolerate the demands of your sport.

Strength training can complement running, cycling and many other sports rather than simply being something reserved for people wanting to lift heavy weights.

Sport-specific training

If you want to become better at running, cycling, swimming, football or another sport, appropriately structured training remains one of the most powerful tools available.

Your body adapts to the demands placed upon it.

Managing your training load

Recovery isn't about trying to eliminate every ache following exercise.

Training itself creates fatigue. That is part of the process that ultimately allows your body to adapt.

The aim is to balance enough training stimulus to create improvement without consistently exceeding your ability to recover.

Sleep

Consistently good sleep is probably less exciting than turning up to training covered in circular cupping marks — but it is considerably more important.

Sleep plays a major role in physical and psychological recovery and should be one of the first things considered if somebody is struggling to recover between training sessions.

Nutrition

Eating enough overall energy and consuming appropriate amounts of carbohydrate and protein to support your level of training matters far more to recovery than most passive treatments.

Appropriate rehabilitation

If pain or injury is limiting your sport, identifying the problem and gradually rebuilding the strength, movement and capacity required for your activity is normally much more useful than repeatedly treating the painful area passively.

None of these things are particularly glamorous.

Unfortunately, improving sporting performance rarely comes from one glamorous intervention.

It comes from consistently getting the basics right.

Is cupping therapy safe?

Dry cupping is generally regarded as relatively low risk when performed appropriately, but it isn't completely risk-free.

Temporary skin marks are expected, while other reported complications include persistent skin discolouration, burns, scarring and infection.

Wet cupping introduces additional risks because the skin is broken and blood is involved.

For most athletes, however, my main concern isn't serious harm.

It is being sold an intervention with claims that run ahead of the evidence.

So, does cupping therapy work?

It depends what we mean by “work”.

Could somebody feel temporarily less sore or more relaxed after cupping?

Possibly.

There is some evidence suggesting that cupping may influence pain and movement in certain situations, although the quality of that evidence is limited.

But if the question is:

Does cupping improve athletic performance, speed up muscle recovery or make you a better athlete?

At present, we don't have convincing evidence that it does.

Seeing elite athletes use cupping can understandably make the treatment appear credible.

But elite athletes using something isn't evidence that it works.

The bottom line

Cupping therapy is popular in sport, but popularity and effectiveness are not the same thing.

There may be some short-term effects on symptoms such as pain, and some people simply enjoy having cupping performed.

That is very different from demonstrating that cupping improves muscle recovery or sporting performance.

So would I tell somebody that they must never have cupping?

No.

If you enjoy it, understand its limitations and aren't using it instead of appropriate rehabilitation or training, that's your choice.

But would I recommend spending your time or money on cupping because you want to become a better runner, cyclist, footballer or athlete?

No.

For improving sporting performance, I would prioritise the things we know are far more important:

train appropriately, get stronger, recover properly, eat well and sleep well.

They may leave you with fewer impressive circular marks.

But they're far more likely to make you a better athlete.

Want to improve your performance with a plan that actually works?

Rather than relying on passive treatments, I can help you build a personalised strength, rehabilitation and performance plan based around your sport, your goals and the evidence.

References

Bridgett R, Klose P, Duffield R, Mydock S, Lauche R. Effects of Cupping Therapy in Amateur and Professional Athletes: Systematic Review of Randomized Controlled Trials. Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine. 2018;24(3):208–219.

Coutinho LOB et al. Cupping therapy does not improve quadriceps muscle pain and fatigue intensity, perceived recovery, and vertical jump height after running: A randomized clinical trial. Journal of Bodywork and Movement Therapies. 2025;42:441–445.

Williams JG, Gard HI, Gregory JM, Gibson A, Austin J. The Effects of Cupping on Hamstring Flexibility in College Soccer Players. Journal of Sport Rehabilitation. 2019;28(4):350–353.

National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health. Cupping.