It is recommended that physical activity be a routine for people throughout their lives. The WHO recommends that adults get an average of 300 minutes of moderate activity or at least 75 minutes of high intensity activity per week. Among the sports, street running attracts more and more fans. It is an inclusive modality as it enables several people of different ages to practice it on a daily basis. It is associated with easy access, low cost, and low technical level. The incidence of running-related injuries is between 2.5 to 33 injuries per 1000 hours of running, and the variation occurs due to the type of runner, operationalization of the term injury, and duration of follow-up. To reduce the deleterious effects of muscle damage it is important for athletes to utilize recovery strategies to reduce pain, fatigue, prevent future injury, and enable a faster and more efficient return to training. It is believed that ventosaterapy is a recovery technique that performs drainage and increases blood circulation, facilitating the release of toxins that are associated with pain processes. The application time varies between 5 to 10 minutes with a negative pressure of 300 millibars being sufficient to generate changes in musculoskeletal pain. However, there are several modes of application. Therefore, the development of studies is important to prove the effectiveness of the technique.

The primary endpoint evaluates the effectiveness of ventosaterapy on quadriceps muscle pain and the secondary endpoints investigate the effectiveness of the technique on muscle fatigue, performance, overall perceived effect after running.

This is a randomized controlled trial study, with a follow-up period of 72 hours, registered in the REBEC platform. The runners will be distributed in experimental or control group in a randomized manner. The experimental group will receive vacuum therapy in the quadriceps muscle belly after running and the control group will receive non-effective joint mobilization in the hip and knee joints. Both interventions will last 5 minutes. Allocation will be concealed using opaque, sealed, and numbered envelopes. The runner and the assessor will be blinded to the interventions. Intent-to-treat analysis will be used. Sample selection will be by convenience. Runners will be recruited after running street races in the city of Juiz de Fora and will be instructed not to perform vigorous physical activity 24 hours before and 72 hours after data collection. Inclusion criteria: running at least 6km, adult, running for at least 1 year, and having the habit of practicing running at least twice a week. The intervention or placebo will be performed on the leg that is most sore after running. If participants report the same level of pain in both legs or no pain at all, the side to be evaluated and treated will be randomly selected. The endpoints will be measured: Pain and fatigue (EVAN), muscle performance (unipodal vertical jump) and overall affect (perceived global affect scale).