I have a professional massager that I apply to sore muscles that really seems to speed recovery. I'd be careful about applying this to a pulled muscle, but I love it for sore muscles.

Mine is an older model of one of these that I got from a chiropractor who was upgrading.

I've only tried one made-for-home-use massager and it just wasn't powerful enough, but there may be a decent model out there. I haven't researched them that much.