What Are the Purple Dots on Michael Phelps? Cupping
Has an Olympic Moment
Doug Mills / The New York Times
By GRETCHEN REYNOLDS
and KAREN CROUSE
August
8, 2016
RIO DE JANEIRO — Olympics trivia:
What has 19 gold medals and a bunch of purple circles?
If you watched a certain swimmer’s
Rio Games debut on Sunday night, when he propelled the United States
4×100-meter relay team to a gold medal, you know the answer: Michael Phelps.
While it may look like Phelps and several
other Olympians with those skin marks have been in a bar fight, the telltale
dots actually are signs of “cupping,” an ancient Chinese healing practice that
is experiencing an Olympic moment.
“Because this particular recovery
modality shows blemishes on his skin, he walks around and looks like a
Dalmatian or a really bad tattoo sleeve,” said Keenan Robinson, Phelps’s
personal trainer. “It’s just another recovery modality. There’s nothing really
particularly special about it.”
Practitioners of the healing
technique — or sometimes the athletes themselves — place
specialized cups on the skin. Then they use either heat or an air
pump to create suction between the cup and the skin, pulling the skin slightly
up and away from the underlying muscles.
The suction typically lasts for only
a few minutes, but it’s enough time to cause the capillaries just beneath the
surface to rupture, creating the circular, eye-catching bruises that have been
so visible on Phelps as well as members of the United States men’s gymnastics
team. If the bruising effect looks oddly familiar, it’s because it’s the same
thing that happens when someone sucks on your neck and leaves a hickey.
“I’ve done it before meets, pretty
much every meet I go to,” Phelps said on Monday. “So I asked for a little
cupping yesterday because I was sore and the trainer hit me pretty hard and
left a couple of bruises.”
Physiologically, cupping is thought
to draw blood to the affected area, reducing soreness and speeding healing of
overworked muscles. Athletes who use it swear by it, saying it keeps them
injury free and speeds recovery. Phelps, whose shoulders were dotted with the
purple marks as he powered the relay team, featured a cupping treatment in a recent
video for a sponsor. He also posted an Instagram photo showing himself
stretched on a table as his Olympic swimming teammate Allison Schmitt placed
several pressurized cups along the back of his thighs. “Thanks for my cupping
today!” he wrote.
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