♪ Bob and Brad, the two most famous ♪
♪ Physical therapists on the internet ♪
- Howdy there folks, I'm Bob Schrupp, physical therapist.
- Brad Heineck, physical therapist.
- Together we are the most famous
physical therapists on the internet.
- In our own opinion of course Bob.
- Brad's a little more famous than I am.
- I don't know about that, Bob, just yesterday.
Nobody knew who I was.
Even my wife.
- So how are we going to talk about today is
how to use the massage gun on achilles tendonitis.
So what is achilles tendonitis?
- Well, there is achilles,
you know, the story about Achilles?
- Yes, I do got shot by an arrow, right?
- Yes, right there. Right.
- Anyways, that's another story, we better get on with it.
- Anyway, if you have pain over the achilles tendon
that's often achilles tendonitis.
So that, it's a band of tissue, very thick.
I've got it somewhat arched up here.
- It is a heck of a tendon.
- Yeah, it attaches, it's a very thick one,
it attaches to two muscles that blend together
and come together and attach to it,
the gastrocsoleus, gastrocnemius and the soleus.
When have, what happens is quite often, if you're
if you're have a lack of flexibility and tightness
you can start to pull on that tendon a little bit too much.
And you start developing micro tears and inflammation
a lot of overuse syndromes, right?
- So then you get itis, or inflammation,
- Right. Achilles tendonitis.
- So you'll feel it when you palpate or, you know
use your fingers to,
- Yup, you push in there
and you'll find where it's tender.
You can actually pinch it.
You can go along the calcaneus, the bone and see
if you can find out, if it is a very specific spot
or if it's kind of broad.
- Right.
And if you raise up on your toes too,
often you're going to feel it.
- Oh, 'cause that muscle, that tendon is responsible
for all your body weight when you're on one foot.
So jumpers may have problems,
or running where you do a lot of repetitive.
- Well, when you adjust to mean
remember we made the adjustments to running more of a
on a forefoot than on the back.
- Yup.
- Which is the way you want to run.
- Right?
- Use the POSE method, P O S E.
- Right.
- You can look it up.
You're gonna use your calf muscles more.
And they warn you that your calf muscles
are going to get sore.
- Right? So.
- Baseball players, you know, you accelerate
as fast as you can off that base, really picks up.
I've worked with a couple of people,
- From zero to a hundred right away.
- That's where they rip achilles tendon.
- And the hamstrings.
- Yeah.
- So anyway what we're going to recommend
is two types of massage here.
First is just kind of a general massage.
You're going to massage the calf muscle,
because you want to make sure that's supple,
that those two muscles are supple,
so they don't pull on that tendon as hard.
- Yup, because they're directly connected.
If they're tight, then
that tendon doesn't have a chance to relax right heel.
The next one is we're going to do cross fiber.
And the tendon fibers run this way.
We're going to want you to do fire, cross fiber across it.
And that's going to help to heal the most
to be honest with you, that's
where you can really make a difference.
But we have a little caveat here, Brad.
- Caveat, oh.
- A warning. Okay.
- Basically, you're not going to do cross fiber
on the fibers on the back of the foot of the tendon.
- Sure.
- It's actually on the sides, Right.
- So on this side or this side, if you use your hand
you actually pinch it like that.
- And you can manually massage.
- You absolutely can.
- Just like this,
but your fingers get pretty tired too quick.
- And you know, ideally you want to do this
for a pretty good length of time.
You can do this for up to 15 minutes,
or I like to spread it out
throughout the day Brad, like do five minutes at a time.
So Brad, do you want to show first?
Maybe the ball attachment.
- Yeah. So you got a ball attachment on these guns,
hopefully you do, all of our guns have all these.
So I've got it on this,
this is the, kind of our medium sized gun
and we're going this way.
So I mean, if you're going to work the calf first
a muscle, you know, you can work that directly in.
And it's a large muscle group for a lot of people
you can do it cross ways.
- Or you can strip along the, they call it stripping,
right along the fibers up,
going along the fibers of the muscle.
- Sure.
You're going to spend some time on this.
It should, typically feels pretty good
unless it's real tight and sore.
- Yeah. If it's a tender spot, keep working that tender spot
til the pain goes down.
- Yeah, get that muscle to release.
- You want to work at, it may take a couple minutes.
- Yeah. Or even longer.
- And again, with the injuries down
at the achilles tendon where it comes together.
When you get done up here, now with this,
I'm probably not going to go directly into it,
like Bob had said, we're going to work the fibers crosswise.
And you can do that cause this is reciprocating this way.
And I'm just going to gently go on it.
You got to watch out for your calcaneus,
what do we call this bone? The malleolus.
- Lateral and medial malleolus.
- The ankle bone, if you will.
- The ankle bone, yes.
- And they're right in this area
there happens to be a nerve bundle as well.
So you don't, if you get some pain that hurts
or send some shocks and tingling, get away from that
that means you're on that nerve.
And we don't want to do that.
- So Brad came up with this idea of going sideways.
And I think it's really, probably one of his best thoughts
he's had in a while.
- Really? Thank you.
- So.
- And go both sides of it too.
I'm going to go in the medial and the lateral.
- And I'm going to show you another option
that's a little more aggressive.
So we got this one that is flat, but on the sides
it's really got a little more
of a sharp edge it's rounded, but it's sharp.
- It's like a pancake.
- So once that one is maybe tolerable and no pain anymore
you might go to this one.
You can really get aggressive on this one, Brad.
- Sure. Just because it's a narrow,
- It's a narrow spot.
- Not like a knife, but it,
- That is working good.
That, that is aggressive.
- What'd you just go that way
or can you turn it this way as well?
- Which way?
- This way.
- Yeah, it can go either way.
- And again, you have to listen to your body.
We're not creating or irritating it, after you work at it
for you know, 30 seconds or so
it should start to feel better, numb-ish.
If you get sharp pain, you're on a tender spot,
do not work that, work around it.
And as it gets better, sometimes may take a day or two
you know, work towards that tender spot as it feels better,
and improves. - Right.
You definitely don't want to keep doing it
if it just keeps getting worse.
- Yep.
- Brad, I'm sorry to say, What?
- But my way works better.
- Oh, sorry, yeah. Well I'm just giving options Bob.
- It's really aggressive, feel that one.
- Oh yeah.
- Do it to yourself and see if you give the same opinion.
Okay. Now I'll try it that way.
- Nah, I think you're right Bob.
Well, I'm not going to disagree.
- He's an agreeable person.
That actually works that tendon really quite well.
- We've had people, I'm a little shocked myself.
- Comment about this field goal.
We call it the field goal attachment,
and we don't use it very often.
- Sometimes in the spine, on both sides of the spine.
- On our videos, our programs actually
we do have one where we show how to
use that properly on the spine.
You could go actually, it bridges right across.
Now. Again, when you get down here around your ankle bones
you really have to be careful
cause that's gonna hurt and give you problems.
So, I personally, I'll do it up in this area,
above the ankle bones.
I'm not going to get down in here
cause I'm just touching and I can tell.
- It fires. It's no good.
- You start banging on those nerves in there,
you're going to have problems.
But back in here, you know, it works all right.
And we can work it this way.
- You get some really good point pressure with that.
- This actually feels real good Bob.
- Oh, so you want to experiment and find
out what works for you and give it a try.
This video by the way is part
of a series of videos on massage guns.
So if you wanted to see the entire series
go to Bobandbrad.com, go to the program section
you'll see the one on massage guns, but there's also ones
on sciatica and shoulder pain.
- Tendons.
- Plantar fasciitis. Yes.
- So each one has a category
of a number of videos about 10 minutes long.
It has the title specifically.
So don't have to read all of them or watch all of them.
- Watch all of them, just pick the ones that pertain to you.
- Watch it. And a big bonus is
we have a PDF printout that has
a complete review that Bob has typed up for you.
You can look at that after you look at the massage
you don't have to keep going back
and forth when you kind of forgot little things
about how to do things.
- Right. And what is the cost Brad?
- Bob, this is incredible.
You're gonna drop your drawers.
(both laugh)
Well, my dad used to say that, it's free, completely free.
We don't even ask for your email. So hold them up.
- And we're going to blow your hair back.
There we go.
- Oh yeah.
- Thanks.
(upbeat music)