♪ Bob and Brad ♪
♪ the two most famous ♪
♪ physical therapists ♪
♪ on the internet ♪
- Hi folks I'm Bob Schrupp, physical therapist.
- Brad Heineck, physical therapist.
- Yes we're the most famous physical therapists
on the internet.
- In our opinion, of course, Bob.
- We mean business today.
Today we'll show you how to use a massage gun
for forearm, wrist and hand pain.
This is good for overuse syndrome.
If you're a gamer
or use your computer a lot
you're using those hand and wrist muscles, a TEN.
- Golfer's elbow.
- Golfer's, tennis elbow.
- Sure.
- We for all these.
So for, for all of this, it's really important to understand
that many of the muscles of the hand and wrist actually come
in the forearm, they start in the forearm.
You don't need to know the names
but we're going to point out some here.
These are the front of the forearm.
If you have the palm facing forward.
Look at all those muscles that come down
and look how they extend into the hand here
with the tendons.
- [Brad] Yeah.
- So there, they're what is moving the fingers?
- Yeah, you can, you know, see that actually
or feel it, you know, when you do this,
the muscles here are the ones that are very palpable
- Right? And like you said, you can see it now.
The same thing is on the other side.
Now let's say you put the palm
or the back of the hand forward,
that's the extensor muscles
and look at all those muscles here.
So, we got lots of muscles that
have to be massaged in order to take away
pain from the wrist and hand.
- Right.
- So and well, plus we'll,
we'll also get into the hand.
Well, I mean, you can see,
these are some of the muscles of the thumb
and the thenar eminence and the
- [Both] Hypothenar eminence.
- I think we just call those the intrinsic muscles
of the hands, the smaller ones.
- Yep.
- And that can be massaged too.
- Oh yeah, it actually it feels good.
- So why don't we first start off Brad going on
let's say some of these,
the flexor muscles here and the extensor muscles.
Why don't we
I think there's really two good ones for that.
Is one, it would be the air filled.
- Right. So we're talking about the head itself.
It actually is cushy.
I've got a little air in it and it's not so aggressive.
It's a nice option we use it a lot.
- Why don't you start showing that I'm going to grab
a pointer one too, - Yap
because the pointer would be good for
trigger points
- Sure.
- Or for knots as the lay person calls them.
- Right.
So again, the muscles are here.
The tendons go up to the fingers
here but they also connect back in here when you have,
oops look at that.
We're getting used to our new equipment here.
Where they connect to the epicondylitis or so
- Epicondyle.
- Yeah, I'm sorry.
(Brad laughs)
but here we go.
I'm demonstrating if you can see that
and usually you stir the muscle but
you're not going to go up on the wrist probably.
You got that nerve,
the median nerve running through there
It's pretty superficial.
So we're going to stay away from that.
- You don't see it on the diagram here, but yeah.
And you can go across the fibers
so you can go across like this,
back and forth this way or it can also
go to the lengths of the fibers.
- Yep.
- Either one will work.
- Ooh! And get different areas.
So now he's doing the extensor muscles.
Now, if he does find a spot that is a trigger point
which is quite often,
you'll find like one right about there.
- Yep, exactly.
- Then you might try the pointer one
I think this might be this one Brad.
(mumbling)
- Oh yes. There's definitely a pointer on this one.
- Okay. All right.
So I'm going to, I got the pointer one now.
So with that, when I hit, hit the spot
if I find a trigger point,
I'm actually going to relax the arm
and I'm going to find that spot
and I'm going to actually hold it right
over to that spot, boy I could feel that Brad.
- Yeah.
So here we got the same thing for the smaller gun.
- So I'm just holding it right on there Brad.
Oh wee.
- You can vary the intensity also by the angle.
- Sure, you can go like this and decrease it.
- But whatever works for you.
- It's one of those things where, if it hurts
it should hurt so good.
- And that's what it is doing for me.
- We don't want to get that sharp pain
where it makes you wince.
That means you're getting too aggressive, back off
go away from it and kind of work up to that knot
or that trigger point if you know
- Ideally you want the muscle on slack, right Brad?
- Sure.
- Do strain, counter strain?
- Right.
- But so you'd want the wrist up like this?
- Well, but you wouldn't want to hold it.
- No you want to hold it up.
You'd want to support it with a pillow maybe or something.
- Exactly. Yeah.
Just throw that little a throw pillow over there.
- It's a throw pillow.
- Yeah. See? Look at that.
Yeah, so you put it, so the wrist is up.
Whatever you want that wrist relaxed or here.
- You want the forearm relaxed.
- Yeah, just to get the whole arm
in a relaxed position, - Sure
whether we're doing this or this.
- All right. So that.
- These are fun treatments, Bob.
- Yeah they are.
And if you,
again this is something you could do a couple of times a day
and it's a treat and you can actually do it during a break
and it'll let your arms be ready
for the next part of the day.
- Sure.
Do you want us to talk about
the intrinsic muscles of the hand?
- Sure. Go ahead jump into that.
- This is actually the smaller one.
The pointer one is actually a darn good one
for getting into the muscles.
As a matter of fact, I did a video on a muscle
for the thumb that makes it go like this and go like this.
- You can see the thumb muscles right there.
- Yep. And that is,
you know that's probably the biggest muscle
in the whole palm of the hand right there.
And then over here we got one too, but this one,
you know the thumb is doing a lot of work.
- Yes it is.
- So that's typically probably one of the main ones.
- If that's too aggressive for you, you can put the air fill
- Sure. Yep
- An air filled, you can actually take that Brad
all the way through the hand.
- Right.
- You can even go through the fingers.
I mean, now it will not work on the back of your hand,
these things.
(Brad laughs)
Cause there's just not enough skin.
- There is no.
- [Both] Muscle there.
- That's all tendon and bone.
And then, I mean the air one you could do there
But it's not going to do you to feel good.
Again, you're right in this area,
be careful because there is that
- [Both] Median nerve.
- Coming through.
- It's pretty close to the top too
so we're not going to hit that.
This is definitely.
- Doesn't that feel good?
- Hmm. Yeah.
- You go up in the fingers.
- Sure.
I'm going to go right on this pillow
give it some support.
You can do each in, individual finger.
- All right. While you're having fun, Brad
I'm going to show for a specific problem here now.
Some of you may get what is called
de Quervain's tenosynovitis
- That's a mouthful.
Let me, let's get rid of some of this stuff here
and I can show you what I mean.
- I was just going to mention, we do have this
the handheld massage which is not quite as aggressive.
And if someone's older or they're a little,
a little thinner or they have more sensitive hands
this one may be a good one.
It's a lot cheaper too.
It's got different heads as well.
- Now you can see here, this is actually the thumb
and these are two muscles that come down
and they form what is called the anatomical snuff box.
There are the ones close to the thumb.
There's one there.
But there's two more-
- You've got a good snuff box.
- Yeah. Wow.
- Make sure you see that, okay.
So it's very common
with overuse syndrome to overuse these tendons.
- Mm hmm
- They get quite sore.
Now you can take the...
do you want to show the ball one Brad
and how you can go sideways on it?
- Oh yeah.
That's right for the cross friction.
- For the cross friction right.
- Oops.
- So he's going to go right across these tendons
as they hit right here
they come together and uh.
He's going to apply some massage to that.
- Oh I could use this one?
- Yeah.
- We're going to go like this.
- So we use.
yeah - Not like this
that's way too aggressive
but you can work it this way
and get my pillow back here.
- Yeah I get you want to be relaxed.
- Yep.
There, that's the ticket right there.
Ooh.
- Now if that is too much, if you cannot tolerate that
you can actually start by just doing this.
You can actually put your hand right on those tendons,
your thumb I should say rather than tendons
and just work on going like this extending it up like this.
- Sure. - It's just a start.
- And that's...
it's kind of like that flossing technique
where you put pressure on a tendon and work it.
- Yeah. You showed that before for a trigger finger.
Didn't you?
- Yep. Yeah.
We did a very similar technique.
It's kind of like the,
you know all of this stuff kind of relates
to the whole body. - Right.
- But that's another story.
- Should be, again, all of these we don't want increased
pain especially after you've done it a few times.
- Right.
- And you know if it starts to
Too flared up and we have to back off
and maybe ice it.
Oh, I don't know (Brad laughs)
if ice is good anymore.
We just did a video on that.
But this video by the way is a part
of a series of videos on the use of the massage gun
for different areas of the body.
If you'd like to see the entire series,
go to bobandbrad.com - Hmm
go to the program section. - That's right.
- And look for the one on massage guns.
And you'll see a whole list of videos.
- A whole cornucopia of videos related to massage.
Pick out the one that relates to you.
If you have problems here, it'll be in the title.
Look at the video, there'll be a PDF.
Click, you can click on that.
Print out a review of the whole video,
the exercises involved, it'll be on there.
You don't have to go back and look at us.
And the great thing it's all for free.
No email.
- And those other ones too
Like sciatica, - Oh yeah.
shoulders and TENS.
- You'll see the whole list
if we're going to have the whole body
pretty much covered at a time.
- Yeah, we're
adding to it all the time.
- That's right.
- The uh, hip one is going to be up next
I believe.
Finally done I think.
(both laugh)
- We're working on it, it takes time.
- Thanks for watching.
(joyful music)