♪ Bob and Brad ♪
♪ The 2 most famous ♪
♪ Physical therapists ♪
♪ On the internet ♪
- Hi folks I'm Bob Schrupp, physical therapist.
- Brad Heineck, physical therapist.
- We are the most famous physical therapist on the internet.
- In our opinion of course Bob.
- Today we're gonna show you how to use
a TENS Unit with calf pain.
We're gonna show you also correct pad placement.
Also at the end of the video we're actually,
in addition to the TENS instruction,
we're gonna show you just a simple treatment
you can do on your own,
that's unrelated to TENS.
- At home.
- As a bonus. - Right.
- So the first thing as far as the unit is concerned,
the TENS Unit, Brad and I have tried
dozens of dozens of units.
There may be a hundreds of units out there I don't know.
There seems like there's a lot.
- Yeah, if you search it on Google.
- Yeah.
- They come up all over.
- So we thought, we can't really show you how to use unit,
because we don't know which one you have
and we've, like he said, we've tried dozens.
After much deliberation,
we decided to endorse one type of unit,
so we're gonna endorse iReliev,
they're certified by FDA and they're powerful
and they're compact and they got good instructions so--
- They're good.
- Yeah they're a good unit, good solid unit.
- Yup.
- So we are gonna show you how to use three of their units.
To see that, if you wanna use the ET-1313,
the ET-5050 or the ET-8080,
which happens to be our favorite by the way.
- Sure.
- Just go to bobandbrad.com, go to the program section,
under the program section,
you'll see our whole program on TENS.
- Right.
- And under there you'll find specific videos
on the ET-1313, ET-5050 or the ET-8080.
- Right.
- It shows step by step how to use those.
- And there's PDF print offs,
so that you can refer back to a sheet of paper
and not always refer back and look at our mugs on video.
- Yeah, (Brad chuckles)
even this video has a PDF
that goes along with it-- - Yup.
- So if you wanna get the instruction on
where to place the pads.
- Yeah, bonus-- - So if--
- No charge.
- No charge, if you go...
If you're using another TENS Unit,
you're just gonna have to use their instruction manual.
- Sure.
- We'll show you where to place the pads though.
- Okay.
- So, the whole thing about placing pads for pain,
it's not, there's not a specific right or a specific wrong.
You've gotta experiment.
- It's gonna vary in the individual, the diagnosis,
the pain pattern, but we'll get you through it here.
- Yeah, whatever works for you,
that's where we wanna put it.
- Sure.
- With a couple precautions too.
- Yeah. - I mean,
we always got to follow precautions.
But let's say we're gonna start with the calf pain,
let's start off, this is gonna indicate,
where I'm having the pain.
- The red X.
- And let's say we're gonna start off with just one channel.
So each unit, show the unit Brad.
- Yup, so here we've got the ET-8080,
it's got a nice big screen and here we got channel 1,
with two pigtails going to the, you know,
we're not gonna connect them up.
Just a little easier to show placement this way.
- Yeah.
- But it would be with your situation.
- Yeah and that's channel 1,
you can hook up another channel, channel 2
and what we did is just to indicate these pads.
Channel 1 has yellow pads
and channel 2 has green pads.
They don't come like that, they come like this.
We put some tape on there,
just so you can distinguish between the two.
- Nice visual educational--
- Yeah, there we go-- - Tool--
- We're always good about that.
So I'm gonna start off with,
generally what we recommend,
let's say you're gonna start with two pads,
one channel 2 pads.
I'd choose you put one right on the pain
and the other one I place either above the pain,
but I usually put at least a pads width apart.
- Right. - Brad often recommends,
like a hands width apart.
- Yeah as a rule of thumb. - (mumbles) If there's room.
Or you can put one below the pain.
- Sure, you do have to be careful about,
not getting into the crux of the knee,
where the knee bends-- - Right.
- It kinda bends the electrodes and it doesn't work.
So I'd tryna-- - I think even,
you get over here too far, you can get onto the nerve,
the perineal nerve you know.
- Yeah, but you'll feel that (chuckles).
- Yeah, you'll feel it, you'll know.
So you could try that, if that doesn't feel quite right,
you wanna try something different,
you can put one above the pain and one below the pain
and you can have pictures of these.
And another choice is,
to put one on each side of the pain like this.
- There you go.
- Now let's say you have a larger area of pain,
you have a big calf, I don't have a big calf,
you're a calf guy aren't you?
You're a calf and I'm a calf not.
(Brad chuckles)
- Yeah if you got one of the, you know,
it just seems to be sore in a broad global area, then--
- You might actually put four pads
and so you're gonna put channel 1 above and below
and channel 2 across.
And so this, there's actually conduction between the pads.
- Right.
- So there's be a cross going that way
and it's forming the other part of the cross.
- Right.
- Like a T.
- Yup, so the current's running through there,
through there and you know,
it's one of those things that you really can try
and or you can just--
- You can just turn it, because what happens,
again you might hit the nerve there Brad.
- Yeah.
- So you could just go like this.
- Yup.
- And form an X.
So now you gonna have current running from here to here
and here to here.
- Yup.
- And it forms like the X, like the picture we have here.
- There you go.
Yeah use your little imagination there,
oh you already have, so you've got it marked.
- Yeah, yeah I got it (chuckles).
- You did that on purpose, didn't you Bob?
- I did.
(Brad chuckles)
So as a final thing, if you wanted to follow the nerve,
let's say you're having kind of like static nerve pain
going all the way down to the calf,
you could put one here,
you know over the...
One channel over here over the pain.
- Yup.
- And you could also go up into the--
- Right.
- The thigh, now you can't put it on your clothes,
I'm just not gonna, (Brad chuckles)
I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna go--
- You're not gonna expose yourself, right.
- I'm not gonna expose that much yeah,
so you can have one that follows the nerve like that.
- And keep in mind, you know,
with these, the leads are gonna be attached
and they're gonna have to go underneath,
your clothing. - Your clothing, right.
- And then this will go into your pocket or on your belt.
- They do have a wireless one too--
- Oh, yes. - Which is,
a little bit more...
It's more expensive.
- Right.
- But it's a little bit easier to deal with,
'cause you don't have to deal with the wires.
- Exactly.
- If you use the link below by the way,
you're always-- - Oh.
- Gonna get a hefty discount,
so we always wanna make sure people who follow us,
get money off, if they're gonna buy something
that we recommend.
- Exactly right Bob.
- All right, so the product that we recommend,
in addition to the TENS Unit
or maybe in place of the TENS Unit.
- Bob you better talk to the camera, I think--
- Well-- - They think,
you're ignoring them.
- Hi, (Brad laughing)
would be one of the massagers, we have some--
- Oh yeah.
- And by the time this comes out,
we're hoping that we have our own massagers.
- Sure.
- Bob and Brad massagers.
- Now you can massage by hand manually.
- Yeah, you can just go in across the muscle like this
or even use your thumb, but these are big heavy muscles
and it tends, yeah you're gonna
tend to fatigue fairly rapidly.
- Right.
- So when I have heavy muscles like this,
like the piriformis or hamstring or quadriceps or calf,
I usually recommend using a massager, it's just...
It's gonna pay for itself because,
you can massage for 20 minutes
and not even feel fatigued at all,
because it's doing all the work.
- Right and they do get deeper I think,
they just work better and that's why they've
become so popular in the last few years.
- Yeah, they're not just vibration either,
they're percussion,
so they actually percuss into the muscle a little bit.
- Right, so the motion goes in and out deep,
as opposed to in a radial motion if you will.
- Yeah, this one has, you know--
- Ooh.
- That one is like 30 some dollars.
- Yup.
- So fairly reasonable.
A massage gun, now this is one form of a massage gun,
that we...
Ours might look differently.
This actually really penetrates quite deep
and it really has quite a bit of percussion.
- More power, bigger motor on it.
- And every one of them comes with different heads,
that you can put on there.
- Sure, yup.
- So you can work it or just like that.
- Yeah.
- And you can really get into there.
This is probably not the best position
to work on your calf either,
'cause you kinda got tension on it.
- Right.
- You're better off going like this, where you...
Where it's relaxed a little bit.
- Yeah you could even do the figure four position---
- Sure.
- And it's trying to relax that way.
You know one thing that the smaller one, if you,
I know it's not the calf,
but if you were working on your achilles tendon,
you'd probably want the smaller one,
'cause that one might be too aggressive.
- Right.
- I know that's not what the focus of this video is,
but I just was thinking about that and you know,
I wanna share.
- All right (chuckles).
(Brad laughs) Well--
- Check out the rest of our videos on TENS.
Again our recommendation is that,
you check out all the titles
and only watch the ones that are pertinent to you.
- Right it makes it efficient.
- Yeah and you might only have to watch,
four or five of them.
- Did we mention the PDFs on this video?
- Yeah we did.
- Oh good.
- Yeah, remember there's a hand out with each one,
so thanks for watching.