The Olympic Athlete Marks: What Those Circles on Michael

In the summer of 2016, during the Olympic Games in Rio, photographs of Michael Phelps emerged that showed circular reddish-purple marks across his back and shoulders. The marks were striking — perfectly round, evenly spaced, dark enough to be noticed from across the pool deck. International media, including outlets that had never previously discussed traditional Chinese medicine, devoted considerable airtime to explaining what cupping was and why an Olympic swimmer would be using it.

This was a strange moment in the public history of the technique. Cupping had been practised continuously somewhere in the world for at least three thousand years, with documented use in ancient Egypt (1550 BCE), in classical Greece and Rome (where Hippocrates described it in detail), in Islamic medicine (where the practice was called hijama and was integrated into religious tradition), in Eastern European folk medicine, in Chinese medicine, and across nearly every other regional tradition. In none of these regions did the public consider cupping exotic. It was simply a thing one did when one had certain complaints.

What 2016 demonstrated was that cupping had become, in Western metropolitan settings, sufficiently obscure that an Olympic swimmer using it counted as news. The technique had not gone away; it had simply migrated out of mainstream Western awareness during the twentieth century, even as it continued in other parts of the world without interruption.

This piece is for clients who arrive at our parlour with some awareness that cupping is “an Olympic thing” but who have not encountered the much longer history the technique sits within — three thousand years of people reaching for a cup long before there was a podium to photograph it on.

What is actually happening under the cup

The mechanism is less mysterious than the dark circles make it look. A cup is placed against the skin and a vacuum is created inside it — historically with a brief flame that heats and then cools the trapped air, in our parlour with a small hand pump that does the job more precisely. The lower pressure inside the cup draws the skin and the soft tissue just beneath it gently upward.

That simple lift does several useful things. It pulls capillaries toward the surface and opens local blood flow in a way that lasts for days, not just for the minutes the cup is in place. It separates the thin fascial layers that hold the muscle groups in position — the same layers that, when they grow sticky and congested, quietly restrict movement. And it asks the body to pay attention to the area: to send blood, to clear what has accumulated, to do its housekeeping in a spot that has been neglected.

None of this requires belief. It is mechanics — pressure, circulation, and the body’s own response to being told, politely but firmly, that a particular patch of back needs looking after.

What cupping does for athletic performance

The reason elite athletes have adopted cupping as part of their training preparation is that the technique has measurable effects on muscle recovery that are difficult to achieve through other means.

After hard training, muscle tissue is left with several states that impair the next session: micro-damage to the muscle fibres themselves, accumulation of metabolic waste products, local inflammation, and reduced blood flow in the deeper layers. Standard recovery techniques — stretching, ice baths, foam rolling, massage — address some of these factors but not all.

Cupping addresses the accumulated stagnation in a way no other technique replicates. The negative pressure pulls capillaries open and increases local blood flow for several days after the treatment, which accelerates the clearing of metabolic waste. The lift of the fascial layers — the same effect that helps with frozen shoulder — also addresses the small adhesions that form in heavily trained muscle. And the post-cupping increase in local circulation appears to accelerate the regeneration of muscle fibres themselves.

For an Olympic athlete training twice a day with sessions a few hours apart, the recovery benefit between sessions is meaningful. For an ordinary person training three times a week, the benefit is smaller but still present. For most clients in our parlour, who are not athletes at all, the benefit is most pronounced in chronic conditions where local circulation has been poor for years. (If you want to understand the marks themselves — why some are pale and some nearly black — I have written about reading the marks in more detail.)

The cultural recovery

What has happened since 2016 is interesting beyond the immediate sports angle. The Olympic exposure created a kind of cultural permission for cupping that had not previously existed in Western cities. People who would not have considered visiting a Chinese-medicine practitioner suddenly felt comfortable asking about cupping. Spa centres in Italy, France, and the UK began offering the technique. The conversation around it shifted from “exotic alternative” to “respected old technique that professionals use.”

In Tirana, that permission arrived with its own small comedy. Clients who would once have raised an eyebrow at the words “Chinese medicine” now arrive having already watched a swimmer’s back on television, ready to discuss it as casually as they would a new café on the Bllok. The endorsement that finally landed was not from a textbook or a practitioner. It was from a man winning a medal in a pool in Rio.

This is part of why I find this work meaningful in a way that has little to do with the technique itself. We are caring for the survival and careful refinement of a practice that has been done by hand for thousands of years — and that, for one strange summer, the whole world suddenly noticed at once.

A small story from the table

About a year ago a man in his late thirties came in for his first cupping session — a recreational runner with a back that had been tightening for a decade of desk work and weekend half-marathons. He had booked, he admitted, mostly because he had seen the marks on athletes and wanted to know what the fuss was about.

After the session, while I was cleaning up, he twisted in front of the mirror to study the row of dark circles across his shoulders, turning like a man trying to read a label sewn into the back of his own collar. He was quiet for a moment.

“I thought I was fine,” he said.

I told him most people do, right up until the skin produces the evidence. He laughed, a little ruefully, and booked a second session before he left. The marks faded within the week. The tightness, by then, had begun to as well.

Trying it for the first time

For a client considering their first cupping session, my honest recommendations are:

Come in expecting to spend about an hour from start to finish, with about thirty minutes of cup time. Plan to wear loose clothing afterwards — the cups leave marks, as I have discussed, and tight collared shirts can rub.

If you have a specific complaint (chronic shoulder tension, recurrent back ache, athletic recovery, recurrent cold sensitivity in winter), tell us at intake. The cupping protocol shifts based on the goal.

If you are anxious about the marks, look at a few photographs online beforehand. The reality is generally less dramatic than the imagination.

If you have any of the standard contraindications — blood-thinning medication, pregnancy, recent surgery, significant skin conditions in the treatment area — tell us at intake. There are usually gentler approaches that can ease the same complaint without the technique that does not suit you.

And if you find yourself, a few days later, explaining the circles on your back to a curious colleague over coffee — you will be in good company. For one summer the entire world had the same conversation, and it has not entirely stopped since.

Yang Wang practises Chinese medicine at Chinese Massage – Tai Chi Tirana. The parlour is in central Tirana, near Bulevardi Gjergj Fishta.