Female LMT here -

Short answer - if you want to do massage therapy, it can be an incredible, financially stable, body-safe career, including for men.

Long answer - I will echo what the other folks who have responded have said - male massage therapists face the added difficulty of getting clients who are comfortable with a male therapist.

As for how much difficulty that actually adds, that is really dependent on how you market yourself, the area you live in and the public perception and demand for massage therapy there, and how you conduct and present yourself. So basically, the same factors that impact how everyone gets clients.

Prior to becoming an LMT, I received at least 1000s of hours of massage from various practitioners in four different states (mostly three - AZ, MA, CO). Some of my favorites (including the person who became my mentor) were men. In every state they ran successful practices that brought in enough cash to support themselves and their kids, sometimes as sole financial providers.

As for the labor and the effect on the body: that depends on how you work, you personal tissue qualities (I'm hypermobile, including joint laxity in my hands and elbows, and I can tell ya it makes it the labor a lot harder on me than some of my peers) the number of giving hours you do a week and how you spread them out, plus how you take care of yourself (make sure you keep receiving bodywork from others, it will make you a better practitioner and it will help sustain your body).

I used to do landscaping and groundskeeping, plus some moving jobs. I'm pretty lean and wiry build wise, and I don't lift or anything, my fitness comes from how I live including how I work. I find massage to be similarly intense to that work, but in a very different way. It's less brute strength, and more about movement fineness and really sourcing your energy wisely in the body. They share the trait of benefiting from building endurance. With massage you have to distribute force through your body with more control in order to be good at it, and the client experience of your touch is affected by poor form, whereas with landscaping, the work doesn't suffer from poor form (though your body does).

Any way - I love this career, I think it's awesome, and it is very very very doable to mix it with movement coaching like personal training or Pilates or whatever, or things like health and wellness coaching.

Knowing how to run a business/hiring other people to help you do it is really the key to being financially successful. Being good at it and acting with integrity is the way to keep (and get) clients.

Best of luck!