Hey everybody its Doctor Jo, and it's product review time again. The folks at the OH
Ball sent me their OH ball and the SnOH ball. It's a great way to stretch
out your feet if you have something like plantar fasciitis, heel spurs, if you have
high or fallen arches, this is a great way to stretch them out, but stick around
to the end because I'm going to show you some great exercises for your feet as well, so
let's get started.
I'm going to show you
the OH Ball firs,t so what I really really like about the OH Ball is first of all it's
made with American maple hardwood, so it's nice and firm, this is going to
really get into that fascia, get into the muscles around the feet, and loosen
them up. It's also naturally hypoallergenic, so it's not going to give
you any kind of skin reactions, and it's antimicrobial and antibacterial which is
really good because you're using it on your feet and some people have stinky
feet, mine occasionally might be stinky, so if you're putting this on your foot a
lot, especially on your bare foot, it's really nice to have those components as
well. You can see here the paracord string is also a military-grade 550
pounds, so if you're pulling on this, it's going to, it's going to take a lot to
break it, so this is nice, it's sturdy everything's strong, that's what I really
like about it. Now for the Oh ball, this is great for everyday use, you can put it
down set your foot on it hold the rope, and the reason it's really cool to have
the rope is because then the ball doesn't roll out, slide away, you have control of
that ball, so you can also put pressure up this way by pulling it, so you don't
even have to put it on the ground if you're just lying in bed you can kind of
pull on it that way, or you can set it on the ground and then
pull up that way as well, so just three to five minutes a day is really going to
help loosen it up. The the way the rope is in there you can
roll it around and it doesn't roll up the Rope which is nice, so it's nice and
smooth it rolls on the inside of the ball so you can really just move it
around how you want to, so you can go all the way to the heel,
if you happen to have the heel Spurs in there, and that rolled just a little bit
cause I have my sock on, but you can get really into that heel, you can come up
underneath that plantar fascia, you can go to the ball of your foot, all the the
toes, and everything, and what's important with these things like plantar fasciitis
and heel spurs and even when you have your really high arches or fallen arches,
you really want to stretch out your calf as well,
so this is really nice where you can do that if you're sitting down on the floor
you kind of roll it on that - and I'll show you that in a little bit, so it's
really nice that you can do that, but I really like that it has the rope because
you have that control and again if you just had a regular ball without the rope
you wouldn't be able to do it this way, so if you didn't want to push it down
onto the floor. And for the SnOH Ball it's just like it sounds it's cool, and so it
comes with this little plastic bag and you want to put it in the plastic bag
when you put it in the freezer that's how you freeze it. You want to freeze it for at
least four hours, you can do it more than that and you usually want to take a
little towel and put it on the ground so when you have that little condensation
coming off the ball it will go on to the towel, and so you pull it out and what I
really like about having the coldness with the SnOH Ball is if you have some
swelling in the bottom of your feet, or if you have some muscle spasms this cold
does a really really nice job of calming all of that down and instead of just
putting ice on it, you can have some movement with it too, so you get that
massage while you have the cold, so it's really nice to do that as well, and again
it's got the nice rope ,nice firm rope on there and so again as soon as I put it
even with my socks on, you don't have to have your socks on, but it's already nice
and cool on the bottom of my foot, so if you've got that pain that's swelling
that tenderness in there, that cold is going to feel really really
good and it's just really nice to have and roll it around and again you can
even get on to the heel if there are some heel spurs there and then going up
into your calf as well, but having that rope again it's really nice because
let's say you're in bed first thing in the morning, you
can have this in a little cooler beside your bed so you don't you have to get up
to the freezer, and then you can even lay in bed and do that if you didn't want to
put your foot down on the floor, so it's a really great way to be able to do that
as well, so we're going to get down on the floor and I'm going to show you a
little bit of rolling it out with the calves as well, and then I'm going to
show you some strengthening exercises, so as I said stretching out the calf is
very important as well, and the OH ball is a great way to kind of stretch that
out. So using the ropes I like because you don't even have to put your leg on
the floor you can just roll it up and down this way, so it's a nice way to be
able to kind of stretch out the calf muscles without having to you know
really reach and stretch, you just take the ball it's easy to do if you're at
work because you can just have this with you pull it out of the drawer and
stretch it out a little bit, so you don't even have to get on the floor you can do
it from sitting in a chair and rolling it this way if you want to use the floor
to get just a little bit more pressure on the calf area, then you can just put
your leg on it this way and kind of move the leg around move the ball with the
rope. If you want to and get maybe some trigger points in that area because
again all this is connected to the foot and those muscles underneath the foot so
if you have stuff going on there, most the time this area is really tight
as well, and so you want to loosen that up, and get it nice and flexible, and
you can also do the stuff on the floor that you are doing in the chair, so just
putting your foot on the ball and rolling it around this way so you might
even have a little bit of more control if you're sitting down close to it, and
really just kind of working that heel on the edge there coming back getting all
the way to the toes, and then again you can even just have your foot out and
then pull towards you to get those spots almost like a trigger point release in
there, but really just loosening up that area again it only takes about three to
five minutes. A great simple way to strengthen your
calf muscles and work on your feet muscles a little bit if you're sitting
in a chair, is just spread your feet out about shoulder width apart, so if you're
working on the computer this is super easy to do you only don't have to stop
what you're doing, and you're just going to come up on your toes here and then
roll down and lift your toes up, so just this is not full weight-bearing, but just
a little bit of weight-bearing, so this is kind of a starting point where you'd
want to start with exercises and then we'll build up from here, but this is
just a nice way to get those muscles moving get everything kind of working
after you stretch it out with the ball. Then you want to strengthen those
muscles to keep them nice and strong and help prevent that plantar fasciitis,
those heel spurs, those high or fallen arches to come back, so you always want
to strengthen after you stretch that's really really important. Another great
strengthening exercise if you have a resistive band is to work those toe
flexor muscles, especially that first rea, that big toe, and so an easy way to do
that is just kind of put the band where your toes are, make sure the band doesn't
slip out, sometimes with socks is a little slippery, so be careful and just
curl those toes down and come back up. So you're just working those muscles
that go underneath the foot where that plantar fasciitis happens, or where that
fascia sits, so this is a great way to help strengthen those toe muscles to
actually go all the way across the bottom of the foot up into the back of
the leg, so it's not going to be big movements, these are small muscles and
some people have more movement in their toes than others. I don't have great
movement, my brother has fantastic movement, he
used to pinch me with his toes when we were growing up, but not everybody has
that talent, so just start off with about ten of these. This is a red band, usually
in the series yellow is the lightest, red green, blue, but it really depends on what
brand it is so just make sure you start off with the lightest one, so if the calf
exercises are easy sitting down then you can do some standing up. Make sure you
have a nice sturdy chair or a countertop to hold on to for balance because you
don't want to get this better and end up hurting something else, so just so you
can place your hands on there for a little bit of balance. Spread your feet
out about shoulder width apart, and then just come up on your toes high as you
comfortably can, come down, and then pull your toes up so you're just going back
and forth, but really try and control that so when you come up,
don't just plop down, make sure you're controlling that movement back down and
then bringing those toes up, so it's that just nice back and forth movement, and
then if it becomes easy then you can try them without holding on which is a
little bit harder. So start off with about ten of those, if that becomes easy
then you can go to just one foot where you're coming up, and then going back, so
that makes it much harder just using the one foot. After that you can strengthen
the arch of your foot. You can do this sitting down or standing up, but what you
want to do is try and keep your heel down and your toes down and just curl up
that arch, so you're making that arch do that work by kind of kind of if it's
flat like this, you're pulling it up into a C motion, so just curling it up and
coming back down, so that's just working those muscles along the arch there and
really just working them out and strengthening them, so you don't have to
do a lot again I'd just start off with ten on each side and see how that feels,
and then the last exercise would be a balance series, and so balance exercises
are great for the muscles and the ankles, even the knee and the hip, so
they're really good to do and that's going to help when you have stuff going
on with your feet, so again hold on with both hands to start off with because if
you're having stuff going on with your feet you might be off balance a little
bit. If holding on with two hands becomes easy, drop down to one hand, if that
becomes easy go just to one finger, and then if that's easy try doing the
balancing without holding on at all, so just start off with ten to fifteen
seconds and work your way up to a minute of each of
those, and then make sure you're switching sides, even if you don't have
something going on with both sides you want to work them both because if you
just have the plantar fasciitis or the heel spurs on one side, you're probably
overcompensating on the other side so you definitely want to work both sides.
So there you have it, that's the OH Ball and the SnOH Ball. If you have any questions, leave in
the comments section, if you're interested in finding out more about the
product you can go to theohball.com, and if you'd like to purchase the
product, you can click up here, and don't forget to subscribe to our channel by
clicking down here. And remember be safe, have fun, and I hope you feel better soon.