Hi folks, I'm Bob Schrupp physical therapist, Brad Heineck physical therapist, together we are the most famous physical therapists on the internet
Well in our opinion of course Bob. Oh, it's always our opinion, and we're never right according to our wives
Today Brad we're talking about you do this one thing right. I'm gonna get this right yet
You do this one thing right and your calf pain strain will heal and a lot of times
I think what people find they hurt their calf muscle. They strain it or pull a muscle there and
It gets better and then they go out and do something and it comes back again. It just it's that
Cyclical history of where it just keeps coming back
So you need to do this one thing to help it heal strong
So that it won't come back again and generally this does work very well, so what one thing Bob? We'll get to it
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Okay, all right so mid-calf pain a lot of times this happens. They call it tennis leg because a lot of tennis players
Softball baseball just about any sport, a lot of weekend athletes
Get it because they're sprinting when they're not used to being, they're not in shape
Generally what we're talking about here
Is we're talking about generally in the mid calf right here, now if it's down here it may be more of a tendonitis
That's a different issue and
If it's up here this doesn't happen that often up in here.
It's pretty common in this area or down here
Right right one or the other so what happens here is you've torn or you strain the fibers and
Usually they start to heal and they form scar tissue and that scar tissue isn't as strong as normal muscle
So the scar tissue forms and it forms like a latticework you call it like a spider
Wangled up spiderweb or like when you're flying a kite and your string gets in a big know
It's just a big mess, like Charlie Brown
Anyway that scar tissue not being as strong as it should be, as soon as you go back in an activity, it re-tears
And you were like oh, I thought it was healed and then it comes right back again, so you need to
Strengthen that area by doing what we call cross fiber massage, so you're actually gonna
Go cross the fibers the fibers run this way
So you're actually gonna massage going across
This way, you're gonna find the tender spot generally and you're gonna start rubbing
And you're gonna get in deep because see Bob's pushing into the muscle belly. Yeah, this is not a light surface
Type of massage this is that deep massage
And I'm going cross the fibers and generally when you start
And usually maybe a day or two after the injury you can start this maybe you want to ice the first day
When you start
Generally after a few minutes after a minute or so it should start to almost get numb or feel better even, if it's still
Getting really tender when you're doing it then maybe you want to hold off another day, and ice another day
If ibuprofen works for you to help get that inflammation down
So it's not so tender, by the way
You can tell whether or not you actually completely tore the muscle is if for one thing like
Isn't it you squeeze the calf Brad and it goes down like that
But I mean if you' tore the muscle you won't be able to push up at all, right.
Especially on the one foot
And it's gonna have more severe symptoms, they're gonna last longer
It might be you try this and it's very painful
And it continues to be and you do that for a few days in a row or up to a week
You know maybe you've got a tear there
So the problem with this Brad is ideally you want to do at least 20 minutes
Now you can do this a number of ways one
You could go ahead and do maybe five minutes four times a day and the first
You know what Siriaks recommends, and he's the father of Orthopedic medicine. He's the one that invented this or came up with this
He's now passed away, but he recommended three sessions in a row so three days in a row yeah
And then go every other day, okay, so but he recommended 20 minutes
And so obviously very difficult to do 20 minutes
It's even difficult to do a couple minutes, right your fingers get very sore
So one thing you might try by the way is you could try the Purewave massager
We're big fans of this
Do you want to grab the air-filled attachment too, now this comes with generally three different attachments the CMD5
One is air filled
It's soft and squishy, yeah
So that's gonna be if you want to start with that just because it's not it's gonna be you know not very
aggressive, good word
But eventually I'd like to see you get to the Pointer stick
Sure so that's the hard plastic you can get in more specific to
Where that scar tissue is to break it up what we like about the Purewave is that it actually just isn't
Vibrating which a lot of massages do, it actually percusses and goes this way
You know it's idefinitely more aggressive. You can adjust it, so now
This is something you can do for 20 minutes
I mean you could tolerate it because you're just going back and forth you can watch TV watch your favorite
Do they even have soap operas anymore Brad? I don't know Bob I don't do TV. They have real live
Soap operas now, but so you're gonna work it across that way, we're going across the fibers yep
I'm going to go across the fibers, I was going to say my life is a soap opera
Just kidding, so the other thing by the way we're gonna recommend is yeah
One of the things you might want to do day one is to get a heel wedge
Right because this is gonna take some of the stress off the muscle allow it to heal,it lifts up that heel
Which gives a little slack on the muscle it's not a lot
But it can be enough to
Give it the edge, so it starts to heal you need to put one on both feet
Otherwise you have a leg length difference
You have to put one in each heel, and they come as a pair a lot it quite often,
And this is a nice soft one, You know they may be a quarter-inch thick
You could try just
They recommend sometimes just cutting out a piece of carpet
Or if you have a foam laying around kind of dense foam you could try it yourself
If your handy dandy and you have some material, so after this starts to feel better the pain's gone away
You want to do some strengthening and stretching too. You want to show a stretch of the towel Brad? Sure
You got a couple ways to do it? Yeah, but you know if you got a towel or a sheet
Which we got a
Sheet rolled up whatever it takes and you
Can start to stretch it gently here
Stretchy stretc stretch, and you could stretch it both with the knee straight
And the knee bent, right you know if you happen to have a stretch out strap or something these are really nice
You know especially if you don't have good grip in your hands if you have a hand problem or arthritis
Arthritic or something of that nature it just makes it so much easier where you can just stretch so here
I got my knees straight. We're gonna get the gastroc muscle if we keep it bent get the gastroc soleus
So we're getting both now and you can do the pressure on general pressure off
If you stretch it so hard it creates sharp pain
That's too much, and it's probably not ready for it yet, so it should just feel like a pretty nice comfortable stretch
If you want to hold it you know you can hold up 10 15 seconds
I know some people say 30 seconds you can do that. I personally don't do that very often
I'm not saying it doesn't work, but I like the pressure on pressure off system
And then you have the incline board too? Oh, yeah, I love the incline board
This is about a twenty five degree incline board.
We actually did a video on how to build one of these if you're really handy,
They're simple to build if you got a saw and you do that kind of thing
Otherwise you can go on their site below. We have a real nice one
Recommended, our favorite tools for therapy
This is just a wonderful way the heel stays flat to the floor and you stretch and relax you can do with your knees straight
Gastroc soleus knee bent and put all your weight on there once it starts feeling good and ready for
You certainly can go to your staircase and do it too
Right you can just go ahead go to the stairs hold on to the railing and
I actually do both in the morning. I stretch on the stairs, and I stretch it with that. Oh you do yeah
So here he's got the same stretch going on. It's probably not as comfortable
But it still works, so then the other thing you're eventually gonna start some strengthening. That's where the stairs come in good. Let's pretend
It's this leg
That we're trying to strengthen, we usually like to start with eccentric strengthening so you're gonna start with the foot up like this and
Then I'm gonna go ahead and lower the foot down and then
I'm gonna pick it up with the right opposite leg, with the good one
Yep, and then I'm gonna lower it down look at those calf muscles
Ripple Bob you've been practicing, and lower it down. I don't have much for calf muscles. I know you do oh, no
No yours are growing, no I'm a calf not
So lower it down
So that works on the strengthening, eventually you can get to the point Brad where you can do
Concentric too where you actually lift down and up
And then eventually you can even throw in a weight
And you can start working on one legged ones and just doing like this, this works well on a stairway
Especially if you have a banister to hold on to
So we were going to show one other interesting thing today. This is more probably more preventative if you've
If you've read Tom Brady's book
The TB 12 Method
Yeah, am I saying it right?
He talks about he's a big believer in muscle plyability to prevent injuries so he uses a foam roller
But he actually uses a vibrating foam roller, and we were sent one so it's really cool. It's called the Booster
It's made by Blackroll and this
Part the boosters inside the roll it's actually hollow like this one
And you can take it out and you can put it in any one of their foam rollers,
So they have all these different
Funky colors, and this one has more ridges on it. Yep, but go ahead and turn this thing
The only thing, it's loud
So he has to push both buttons. It's coming.
So and that's on the low level so here
We're going to get some deep fiber pressure with massage at the same time
I haven't used this before but I liked it and you can vary it right now
It's on a lower level, and you know we can crank it up a little bit
I think I'm going the wrong way. There we go, without my glasses. I can't tell but
Look at that you can have it at a party, use it as a conversation piece
I'm gonna work this on the old calf muscle right there
Now this is a good maintenance one and Bob I'm wondering if maybe this would kind of act as a little cross friction massage thing
I'm not sure I'm not sure I don't know if I'd necessarily recommend it for the treatment
I'd certainly recommend it for prevention, I think it's the coolest darn thing. We're gonna do a whole video on it
I'm gonna crank it up a little bit Bob, but oh I just turned it off, I hit the wrong button
Thanks everybody for watching