♪ Bob and Brad ♪
♪ The two most famous physical therapists ♪
♪ On the internet ♪
- Hi folks, I'm Bob Schrupp, physical therapist.
- Brad Heineck, physical therapist.
- Together we are the most famous
physical therapists on the internet.
- In our opinion, of course Bob.
- Today we're going to talk about massage gun heads
or attachments, which one should you use?
And we're going to get right into it, Brad.
- That's right.
- Most massage guns come with like two to five
attachments, some come with six attachments I believe
and we're going to review use of the common ones.
- Right.
- And how we have used them, this is our opinion.
- Right, exactly, Bob I don't know if we want to
mention we've got massage guns technically and then--
- A handheld massager.
- The handheld, basically they do the same thing,
it just, this one is not as powerful--
- Right. - And has the handle for
which works different parts, we may get into that.
- Makes it a little easier to get to
certain spots as opposed to a gun.
- Yep.
- So your choice of the head or attachment
is going to be based upon a lot of things.
One is your body type. - Right.
- If you're thin, you're going
to be probably less aggressive.
- Yeah, if you don't have a lot of muscle mass--
- Right.
- If you don't have much subcutaneous, or fat--
- Right.
- Or if you're elderly and again, don't have a lot
and your skin may be more fragile, that's going
to take into account what you use as well.
- Right and on the other side of the coin,
if you're large or you're muscular--
- (grunts) Strong like bull, yeah.
- You obviously could take more of a head
that's a little more aggressive.
- Right, exactly.
- All right, so in all cases though we want you to
start, these all have variable speeds and some start,
some may have up to five different settings
but I want you to start on the lowest speed and work up.
- Right.
- Don't go all the way to the fastest speed
and jump right into it. - Right.
- Because that might be too aggressive for you,
it could cause bruising and pain.
- And again maybe I'll just mention before, you know,
the only use for a massage gun is to massage muscle.
You're not going to go over tendon, well you may
in a certain way we'll maybe get into that.
- Yeah we'll show you that.
- But primarily it's muscle, a deep
tissue with these guns particularly, you're not--
- Not over a pulse.
- Not over a pulse, yep, so here, here,
any place where you can feel a pulse and not over bone.
- Right.
- You don't want to massage over bone, it hurts.
- There's a little bit of exception there
too we might talk about-- - Yeah.
- You definitely don't want to do like on the neck
where you can't get away from the bone.
- Right.
- You know it's going to--
- That's a good point, on the spine,
here to here, keep it away from there.
- Yep. - It's not going to help.
- Let's talk about the big round head first, Brad.
Some of them have--
- The round head.
- The round head, some have a small
round head, what did you do with it?
I thought we had one out. - Yeah, well
it's here and then--
- A smaller one there.
- Yeah.
- They're close.
- It's not much difference-- - Yeah.
- It's just for a different size gun.
- Now the larger round head, it's good for large muscle
groups, you can do the quad and you can do
the hamstrings, the glutes, some of
the larger ones, it covers more surface area.
- Yep.
- But now Brad came up with a way to use it actually
like the smaller one to use for cross-fiber.
- Right.
- Do you want to show that Brad?
- Sure, so it can be done with this gun or this gun.
You wouldn't do it with this, it doesn't have enough
travel or amplitude, so I use it, this is a good place to--
- Right.
- Show it, the infrapatellar tendon from your patella
to your tibia, there's a tendon right there,
I'm not going to go in, and I want to do some
cross-friction massage. - Right.
- This way, we're not going to go this way,
we're going to turn the gun sideways.
- Right.
- And then you're going to get that cross-friction
massage, it works really well.
- Yeah.
- And it's a lot easier than wearing your fingers out.
- Yes, it is.
- Because we want to do this for five minutes
and it will wear your fingers out
and actually they say you can go up to
10 to 15 minutes with a series X8.
- Yeah, 15 to 20.
- Yeah, I think that guy's crazy.
- And I mean, you'd actually wear out your hands by then.
- Yeah.
- You'd need massage on your hands by then.
- I think even if you did it with this
you might wear your skin out. (chuckles)
- Sure.
- So be careful-- - Yeah.
- About something like that.
- I've had people, when we did cross-fiber
with their hands, they've actually developed a sore from--
- On their skin?
- Yeah from rubbing the damage.
- Oh yeah, so definitely be careful with the power unit.
- So again, that's a small head, now let's talk
about the air-filled head, this is kind of
a nice invention, I think. - Ah.
- So it's very soft, it's the least aggressive head--
- Yep.
- And you can actually travel over bone and it won't hurt.
Usually. - Yep.
It's squishy, yep.
- It's good for like relaxation type of massage.
- [Brad] Hmm-mm.
- But it's also again, good for areas that are near bones--
- Yep.
- Or if you're going over sensitive muscles.
- Right, yep, when I was, my hamstring pulled,
I was using it when it was sensitive because--
- Sure.
- You know, I would lay down and I would get in there
and work it but if I go in too hard,
it was no fun so this was a good choice.
- You know what I found with this, Brad?
You can actually do that on your hand, on this surface.
- Yep.
- It feels nice-- - Oh yeah.
- You can't do it on this side, there's too much bone there.
- Yeah, right.
- But actually if you use your hands a lot--
- Yep.
- Like in gaming or-- - Sure.
- Yeah, you know.
- Actually yeah, we did that video.
- Yeah and you can actually go up in the fingers.
- And we'll show another head that may work even better
on the small parts. - Better on that, yep.
All right, let's talk about the bullet head.
- Oh.
- Now this is probably a little more aggressive.
- Yeah. (chuckles)
- There's one like this.
- Yep.
- Good for like, trigger points, or knots.
- Yep.
- And a lot of times with a knot, you want to hit that
area for like 90 seconds-- - Sure.
- To two minutes and you hit right on that spot.
- Here let's show how-- - Show them.
- You could easily, most of these, you know
interference fit, so you just push them.
- Sure. - And that's it,
you don't have to do anything else for a lot of these.
But yeah, so this one, like Bob said--
- I'd say that's on the high end of aggression.
- Yeah, you're going to be on more muscle--
- [Bob] Right.
- Probably a more athletic type of a person.
- But certainly, again for trigger point, now Brad,
could you do cross-fiber with this?
(Brad groans)
I'm curious.
- Yeah but because of its profile--
- It doesn't cross-- - It's a little harder
to get in because this-- - Sure.
- It depends on what part of the body--
- It really is the ball for that, isn't it?
- You could do it on your Achilles tendon.
- Sure.
- And that would work well because it doesn't bump in,
the gun doesn't get in the way.
- Sure.
- You know if you're doing it on your buttock
or your calf, the gun kind of gets in the way.
- Gotcha, gotcha, all right, next one,
how about the plastic flathead Brad, here?
- [Brad] Hmm-mm.
- Now I thought this was good, it's like a moderate
intensity, it's a good one for like the IT band.
- Sure.
- Now we've mentioned this on the IT band already,
you can't really stretch the IT band, that's a thick band.
- Yeah.
- But it can get adhesed down to your body--
- Yep. - So you want to get
it moving. - Sure.
- But that would also be maybe good for the chest muscle
because there's some bone-- - Yep.
- Underneath there, ribs.
- I've got a chest issue now and I can use this.
- Yep.
- It actually does work good to go over cloth.
- Sure. - Particularly because
you can slide it, if you go directly over your skin,
your skin gets a little sticky.
- Right.
- So everything we're telling you, once you start
working with this, there are oftentimes
it's a variable ways--
- Right. - To do it, it's going
to be your choice and you'll learn
quickly what works good for you.
- But it's mildly aggressive, I would say.
- Yep.
- Now if you take this model, which is going to be
our heavy duty athletic model.
- Right.
- And this actually has a steel head--
- Yep.
- That screws on instead of interference fit,
and now this one really, I don't know why Brad
but it seems really aggressive.
- [Brad] Hmm-mm.
- I mean, if you really want to get things pounding
(chuckles) you want to use that.
- Yeah and they, the manufacturer says if you want to
throw it in the freezer-- - Oh yeah.
- Bring it on cold to your skin, it might be--
- Or heat it up. - Or heat it up,
obviously not too hot, that you can do on your own
but we do it without that. - Sure.
Now look at some of these Brad, these look
like minor torture devices but these are basically
a knobby, and yeah, they're for big muscles.
I mean, you're going to want to hit
the quad or hamstring or glutes.
- You're not going to see that on one of the guns.
- No, no.
- Because that goes on this one which it does not have
as much travel or back and forth motion--
- Right.
- And I actually like going over
the quad, it works well. - The same as this one, right?
- Yep. - Yep.
- Yep, all these go for this one.
- And they screw on, don't they?
- Yep, yep, they thread on, they got a nice thread on there.
- But yeah, there's no way you'd want to use this on
your forearm or anything like that, I don't think.
- Yeah, this one possibly. - Maybe that one, yes.
- The smaller one, and you know this one is not near
as aggressive and you know, you just do it--
- And then we got the nipple.
- Yeah, this one goes up and it's actually got the nipple
and that is a nice little point and that I could see
getting into, particularly like forearm.
If you got a knot-- - Right.
- In the muscle part of your forearm,
you might want to get in there, or anywhere.
- But it's not real aggressive, you know,
because it's not like the pointer.
- No, no.
- It's got a little bit of blunted from the circles.
- Exactly.
- It's a good in between, the last one Brad, would be
this field goal. (Brad chuckles)
- Yeah we call that the field goal.
- So I haven't used that one much, to be honest with you.
- No, I've tried it, but I think the only place
that we found that it really is going to score points
is here on the Achilles tendon.
- And somebody brought that up, right?
- Yeah, so we'll demonstrate it here.
- Kind of both sides of the tendon?
- Yeah, it gets right across so you get in,
you do have to be careful depending on,
like I can feel, there's, we've got that triad
going through here, we've got a couple tendons
and then there's a nerve in there that if you--
- Sure. - If you hit that,
and I think I just hit it, it's like hitting
your funny bone, so you don't want that,
you don't want this hitting a nerve or tender spots.
Up in here, definitely I can get in,
I'm getting on some muscle, I'm avoiding the tendon,
you know I could work back and forth.
So this is probably the one you're going to use the least.
- Yeah. - In our opinion.
- I think they talked about trying to go on
each side of the spine, too-- - Yeah.
- Which you could try it, I mean--
- Yeah.
- You know when you tear your, it shouldn't tear,
when you have Achilles tendonitis, the tears,
or the strain is happening on the sides of the tendon.
- Right.
- They don't happen normally on the back
so you want to rub on the side of it.
- Yep.
- And it's a big difference because if you rub on the back
it won't get better, you rub on the sides,
it will, so you can use it for that.
- Yep, it does bridge that tendon
the way it appropriately should.
Again, you'll know if it's, none of these should create
sharp pain or hitting the bone, you'll know
because it's not comfortable and just stay away from that.
- So this video is a part of a series of videos on massage.
- [Brad] Hmm-mm.
- And how to use massage for healing
different parts of the body, if you want to see
the entire series, go to bobandbrad.com.
- That's right.
- Go to the program section and in that program section
you're going to find other ones too look sciatica and
plantar fasciitis but once you get in there, you can go to
the massage section-- - Yep.
- And pick out the ones that you want
to watch, you don't have to watch
all of them, there's going to be a lot.
- You can scroll through the thumbnails of the videos,
they'll all be, that's all you're going to have
massage guns, pick out the one you want,
look at it and the benefit, the big benefit
is a PDF, you can click on it, print out
a review of that video and it shows you so that you can
just look at the paper when you're doing your massage
and say what was that on the video?
Look at it and voila.
- And the cost is free, so check it out.
(upbeat music)