♪ 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. Humble opinion.
- That's right.
Today we're telling you how to use
a massage gun for trigger finger.
Now Brad has had trigger finger
and you still suffer from it from a little bit
but it's much improved.
- Yeah. I wouldn't say suffer.
It's there, it doesn't bother me.
That suffer word bothers me sometimes.
- And you've done some of these things
that we're gonna mention today.
- Oh yes, yes.
But yup, it's still there, but it's not too bad today.
- Well, one thing we want to show you,
look at all of these muscles on the front of the forearm
they go down and a lot of those muscles go into the hand.
These are the tendons from these muscles and-
- That's working good.
- Yeah. When the tendon gets up into this spot right here
some of them go through a sheath.
- Yep.
- It's like a tunnel.
- Right.
- A ligaments tunnel.
And if, if there's inflammation here
as you can see this, look, it's inflamed
it won't fit through that sheath as well.
- They actually, technically, they call it a pulley.
- Yeah. Yeah. They do call it a pulley system.
- So the tendon goes through, through a pulley.
We're going to demonstrate that using a pulley.
- Right.
- Did you want to?
- No, I think Brad, why don't you show that now,
I think that works really good.
- So for trigger finger, like this is my trigger finger.
My third one, and sometimes it'll go
and you can feel it, go through that
that pulley enters a bump in it
and it goes click and it stays there.
And if I push it or bring it up it goes click
and if you have trigger finger
you know exactly what I'm talking about.
I've worked with mine and it's, it's smoothing out.
But if I ignore it for a while, a few weeks
it starts to come back.
So if you look at the tendon being this white rope
if you all, and here's that pulley, this is just a model.
It doesn't, it's not exactly like this by any means
but you get a bump in the tendon.
Well, right there, can you, so there's the bump
in the tendon and it goes, and it gets stuck.
And then it pulls through and there it is on this side.
So what we need to do is work that so that we-
- Smooth, that bump out.
- Exactly right. Oh, I'm stuck in there now.
And that, that may happen.
- Oh, it goes there.
- Oh, I see there.
You probably don't have an I-hook
anywhere in your body but that's the concept.
- But that's what you did.
You massage that bump and it got better.
- Or you can do it manually.
I do it manually. I use my thumb, use the massage gun
- And we're going to demonstrate that how, well, again
we're going to have to do the forearms and that bump.
- Sure.
- Okay, as we showed the anatomy of this
and Brad showed the little demonstration
with the pulley system which I thought
was really ingenious Brad.
- In the rope. - You came up with that.
- Well, I might've got it from someone else.
- Oh okay.
- No, actually, when they said, when they actually
the legitimate name is a pulley it's like
well I got pulleys out in the garage.
We should make something work with this. So anyways.
- It's actually called uh
trigger finger is known as stenosing tenosynovitis.
- Ooh.
- Eh, I'm awful.
- I'd rather say trigger finger.
- But anyway, yeah. There's inflammation.
So what we're going to remember, we talked
about massaging the muscles of the forearm to take
a little bit of that stress off the ligaments, go into that.
So you can use a lot of different heads on that one.
You could use the round head.
- Yep.
- Like that,
- The Flathead.
- Flathead.
- The air cushion.
- The air cushion if you want to start off
a little bit less aggressive.
- Now with all these, we always recommend
like our massagers come with five speeds.
Start with the lowest speed.
- Sure.
- Because you don't know how you're going to tolerate this.
You know, you might get a little sore
from this and you can always bump up more the next day.
- Yep.
- So you're going to go ahead and work this
and you might even try a little bit of flexing and bending
flexing and straightening when you're doing this.
- So we're doing a little flossing.
- Yeah a little floss, see how it goes.
But now if it locks up when you do it, I wouldn't do that.
- No. Especially if it's sore.
I mean, sometimes it gets pretty tender.
I know if mine, when it's, when it was bad
I didn't want to do that a lot, but then...
- Why don't you show Brad what
what you did and what helped take yours away?
- Right, so this is mine right here.
So I would massage here with my thumb, take my fingers
on the backside and here, and I'd work it across.
Okay. And I'd work it up and down.
And then once I got in there and massage it
getting that knot to just, to sort of speak, to loosen up
then I would do range of motion with it.
And I keep pressure on there.
- The entire time.
- Yup, and it was amazing.
I, for me, it didn't take a lot of time to make it easier.
You gotta do it a few days in a row, but you know.
- It shouldn't make your pain worse.
- No, no.
You'll, you'll feel it more than likely
you're gonna feel it improved.
If it's all flared up and really swollen
for whatever reason, then you, if it is painful-
- Then you gotta back off. - Yup. And it doesn't improve
after doing this for a minute or two, you got
to give it a break and you can work your range of motion.
When it triggers, it goes clunk over that clunk.
You could try to work it through there
but eventually you want to get that massage in there.
And as mine improved and I could do this
well my thumb would get tired and sore.
And so then it's like
I don't want to have trigger finger on both hands.
- Right. You could trigger finger your thumb too.
- So this is, I was using actually both of these.
I started out with the soft head.
- That's an air-filled head.
- Yep.
- That's pretty, it's probably the least aggressive head.
- This would be a good size gun to use on it.
I don't have this one at home and I use this one
and it works okay.
You just have to be a little less aggressive
but this one's pretty darn strong.
So, you know, and you guys, I would work
it like this and then I would do the range of motion
but the gun gets in and the way when it gets straight in.
So if you go sideways and you're working it and actually-
- And that's where this one works the best here.
- Here, you want to turn that off?
These have a three second delay.
So you got to hold it for three seconds before it goes.
And I would work at, in this way, crosswise.
And then I could work that range of motion with it.
You know, if you don't have a massage gun, I would.
Cause I did a lot of mine without the massage gun
and massage gun just takes the work away
from the other hand.
I would not buy a massage gun just for trigger finger.
- Just for this, right.
- Cause because you know, unless you're gonna use it
on the rest of your body, which if you buy one
you will and you'll be happy with it for the most part.
But this is how I would work it.
- You could, again, as Brad said
start with just a thumb doing it
and then if you feel like you have other issues
you may want to get a massage gun.
- Yep. No, it was triggering this morning a little bit.
And now after working this, you know
it feels pretty much normal now. It's kind of funny.
- By the way, I have Dupuytren's contracture.
I don't know if you could see that.
- Could you see that?
- My finger used to be tightened up to this point.
This was as straight as I could make it
but I actually, I'd like to tell you
that I used a massage gun on it, but I didn't.
What happened, I was doing pull-ups and it released.
And it actually, the adhesions must've broke apart.
- People used to comment on you
what's wrong with your fingers?
- Yeah, yeah exactly.
- But now, it used to be 'bout right to there.
Yeah. So it's yeah. So do pull ups.
- Yeah do pull-ups.
Well, and you can actually massage this too now.
When it's not too far along
it works pretty good to actually massage the area.
And I always, I read in books
where they recommended a massage, you know
like you can't massage it enough with your hands.
You know what I mean?
It's just, it's too.
- It's a pretty chronic, you know, a lot of scar tissue.
- I would use the massage gun on that.
- Sure.
- If you wanted and you know, they have procedures to
to inject it now and stuff like that but they
they could come back even after the injections, so.
- Then you've had yours for?
- 30 years. 40 years.
- Yeah. So it just goes to show you, you live with it.
- But yours improved, took 30 years.
- Yeah it took 30 years but. - And a bunch of pull-ups.
- Okay.
- Carry on.
- Thanks.
(upbeat music)