♪ Bob and Brad ♪
♪ The two most famous physical therapists ♪
♪ On the internet. ♪
- Hi folks.
I'm Bob Schrupp, physical therapist.
- Brad Heineck, physical therapist.
- And we are the most famous physical therapists
on the internet.
- In our opinion, of course, Bob.
- Today, we're gonna talk about 25 reasons
to use a massage gun.
And plus we're gonna discuss which attachments
you'd wanna use when you- - Sure.
- Let's get right into it, Brad.
We got all the 25 to go.
So let's- number one,
we're gonna actually read these off our clipboards here.
- Our memory's not good enough to go at 25.
- Number 1, if you just wanna relieve stress,
it's a great thing for relieving stress.
You're going to use, what I like, is the air-filled one.
That's better probably to show it out.
- It's soft. It's got some air in it,
that's why it's called the air-filled one.
You can use the large round one too,
if you use your on large muscle groups
and it'll work or even a small round one.
- You'll know when you start working with it.
Number 2, relieve post-operative pain.
You know, as long as the surgeon says,
after the surgery you're able to do this.
So don't get aggressive or don't go after this
unless you get permission.
- 'Cause we don't want you to loosen a blood clot
and send it up to your heart. - Exactly.
- But the air-filled one works for that right, Brad?
- Yeah but you would probably use a softer one.
- Number 3, reduce anxiety.
You know, if you can calm your body down
and convince it that it's not in the fight or flight.
Again, the air-filled,
we promise we won't just say air-filled,
but right now, the air-filled one is a good for anxiety.
- The thing, if you're tight in the neck
or the temples of the head, you stay away.
You do not massage the neck or at the head
- Yeah, it's just too boney.
- Manage low back pain.
You've got tight muscles in your back,
you need to loosen those up.
This can be a great way to do it.
Oftentimes on the back,
you're gonna need a little assistance from someone else.
It's hard to reach back there.
- And the thing about with the attachment,
you can use just about any attachment on the back
but you have to figure out which one you can tolerate.
- Don't get too aggressive. - Yeah.
All right, number 5.
Help fibromyalgia pain.
So any massage you have for fibromyalgia should be painless.
You don't wanna increase the pain.
- Right.
- This should be comfortable so,
this is probably the air-filled one, again, too Brad.
The air-filled attachment.
- You don't wanna make it worse,
you wanna soothe it and calm it.
Next one, a muscle strain or pulled muscle.
And this is one where, you know,
if you got a pulled hamstring,
you're gonna start out when it's tender,
maybe with the air-filled,
but after it gets better and you can get in deeper
into that muscle, which you do wanna do,
on a strain, then you may go to one of the plastic ones
or even possibly if you're really athletic,
you may get deep with the bullet one, we call it there.
- Yeah and the same the next one, muscle recovery.
Again, the small muscles,
you may wanna use the less aggressive heads,
like the air-filled or the round.
But larger muscles, you might get one of the knobby ones.
- Sure. Yeah like that.
Yeah so, the muscle recovery's talking about
after you get done with a workout,
your muscles are sore,
you need to get some fresh blood in there
and get the old stuff out
and a massage is gonna help that.
- It might even be, you know, four hours later,
you're trying to get some blood flow to it.
- Muscles warmed up and stretched prior
to the event or the sport.
So, in other words, before you do your activity
or the event, you can do some massaging,
particularly on areas that may have be problematic
as far as history of strains and that kind of a thing.
- Yup. Number 9, reduce muscle tension.
You know this, again, we're talking
about a relaxing massage now.
We're not talking when it hurts so good.
You can probably use the air-filled or the big round one,
and just, it's going to be, you want it to feel good.
You're trying to relax, oh my gosh.
- Right, so don't get aggressive with the pressure
and you can adjust these guns.
There's five speeds on a lot of them.
- Most of them variable speeds,
and we recommend starting on the lowest speed
and you can always work your way up
but don't flip it up to five and jump into it right away,
unless you know what you're doing.
- Next one, to enhance exercise performance.
This is kind of a repeat of the one I just mentioned,
but, you know, again, you're gonna get the blood flow,
get the fresh blood in there,
keep the muscle loose and supple,
there's a lot of high-level athletes
that use this kind of a approach.
- Yes, they do. Number 11, relieve tension headaches?
No, I would not recommend using massage gun
for relieving tension headaches.
You can use your own hands or-
but do not use a massage gun.
- Sleep better.
Yeah so, again, nothing from the neck up,
but if you have some tight muscles or tension
in certain areas, massage them,
and it's a good way to initiate that sleep.
- People have said that about you Brad,
there's nothing from the neck up.
If you wanna reduce the pain of osteoarthritis.
So if you have a painful knee joint,
or painful elbow joint,
what we're gonna recommend is you're
going to work upstream and downstream.
In other words, you're gonna work the muscles
below the knee and above the knee,
attached to the knee.
You're not gonna massage right onto the joint.
- Right. Yeah. But you don't massage the bone.
Next one, decrease stress in cancer patient.
Now, again, this is something you're going to do
under guidance of the physician.
You just don't grab one and go,
you have to say, "Would this be a good idea?"
because there could- - Be chemo or whatever-
- So caution: light on that one.
- But it should be, again, painless.
This is, you know, you're trying to reduce stress.
You're not trying to increase stress.
- It should feel good right away.
- Yep. Decrease rheumatoid arthritis pain.
It's the same thing as osteoarthritis pain.
You're not gonna massage over the joint,
especially with the rheumatoid arthritis
where there may be some laxity from it.
So you're going to massage the muscles
above it and below it.
And that should affect the joint in a positive manner.
- So laxity, the joint that's loose,
maybe, hyper, double-jointed, hypermobility,
that kind of a thing.
Trigger points or knots,
now that is where we can, you know,
there's a common trigger point on everyone
right back in here,
if you're going right directly to this,
I might even start with this one
and work up to this one
but it's going to hurt at first,
but then it should feel good after 20 to 30 seconds
and feel it release.
That's what we're looking for is
to get that knot to release and become soft.
- All right, next one.
We just had some experience with this, Brad.
Scar tissue.
My wife had a procedure on her legs
for getting rid of some of the veins,
and they told her she should do some massage
over the scar tissue.
My God, did this worked great.
- Did it? - She was shocked.
Like there's big bulgy scars. Really, there was.
And she took them right down-
- And then flat?
- Flattened 'em out and supple.
But she did a little bit of what you recommended,
where you take the round head and you go sideways.
Yeah, show it, Brad.
- Yep, there we go. We got it goin'.
Let's say we're going for-
so you can see on the skin,
so we're going not straight into it,
but sideways over that scar tissue,
not so aggressive but it's doing what it's supposed to do.
We wanna break it up in an appropriate manner, nice work.
- Oh, this next one, Brad
I'm sorry, number 18. I'm jumping on yours.
- Oh that's all right.
- We already did relaxing massage.
I don't know why it's mentioned twice.
Number 19, tendonitis.
- Oh sure. - We were just doing that.
- Yeah so, you know, there's the muscle belly,
and tendons oftentimes can be really short.
So it may be like the tendon from your quadriceps
to your knee,
and we talked about this one in another video
where you get in there on that tendon
or the tendon between the patella and the-
- [Bob] Tibia. Yup, here we go.
Number 21, help chronic neck pain.
Again, we would not recommend using the massager
on the neck nor the head.
- Nope, stay away. - Stay away from it.
Number 22. That's yours, Brad.
- Lower joint replacement pain.
So we're talking about total knee, total hip.
Actually, I have a patient right now.
He's gonna get a total hip and he's using the massage gun
around those muscles to keep them loose until the surgery.
But after surgery, you're gonna talk to the surgeon
and find what's appropriate and what he allows or she.
- Yeah, either way you're not gonna go over the joint.
- No.
- Once the knee is replaced,
you'll do muscles above it and below it again,
just to help it along.
Number 23, if you want to increase your range of motion.
You know, it's going to help if you loosen up
and make the muscles around the joint more supple.
You can use pretty much any attachment
based upon your comfort level.
If you're really aggressive,
you can use one of the more aggressive heads.
And if you're not,
you can use one of the air-filled ones here.
- And we have a video specifically
on which head to use-
- For which problem.
- Right.
Yep and the last two kind of fit together, Bob.
- Well, no, not 24. Migraine frequency?
Well, I guess they fit together
and they're saying we don't use a gun.
- Right.
- Yeah. So migraine headaches, again,
you're not gonna do headaches, nothing on the head.
- I would say the next one, you could do, Brad,
improve quality of life in a hospice care.
- Right. I guess as long as
the doctor's on board with you.
- Yeah 'cause again, the massage should be painless.
It would be probably the air-filled would be a good one.
- It may be depend on how the cancer's being treated.
- Right.
- Other things that may influence it.
- All right, this video is a part
of a series of videos on massage.
So if you wanna see the entire series
where we go over different body parts
and how to massage them,
go to BobandBrad.com, go to the program section,
and in there you're gonna find different programs,
like on sciatica, and
we're just putting one up on a hip pain.
- Sure.
- We got one on tens, plantar fasciitis.
- Yep. You can see a list of them.
- So look at the massage one,
pick out the videos you wanna watch,
and they're all about 10 minutes long,
and along with them, Brad?
- For this particular video, it's a really advantage.
We have a PDF printout.
You could print this out and look at the reasons or whatever
that we go over then you don't have to listen
to us babble for 10 minutes.
- There you go.
- It'd shorten it up. (laughs)
- And, you know, we're gonna charge you
a lot of money for this.
- Yeah, it's all free.
Everything, not even an email.
- Yup. Check it out.
Thanks for watching.
(upbeat music)