♪ Bob and Brad ♪
♪ the two most famous ♪
♪ physical therapists ♪
♪ on the internet ♪
- Hi folks, I'm Bob Schrupp, physical therapist.
- Brad Heineck, physical therapist.
- We're the rather most famous,
physical therapists on the internet.
- In our opinion, of course Bob.
- Today we're going to talk about
about how to use the massage gun
for knee pain relief.
- Sure.
- Now we're taking a lot of this information
from Kelly Starrett,
he's the author of the book,
the bestseller 'Becoming A Supple Leopard."
I really, it changed how I do therapy Brad.
- So yeah, he talks about
muscles suppler,
the pliability, is that accurate?
- Pliability of muscles
and he always talks about working
upstream and downstream.
- Sure.
- So, if you have knee pain,
we're not going to massage
right on the knee itself,
- Hmm, no.
- with one little exception,
but we're going to massage
the muscles downstream,
which is the muscle that come
up and attach around the knee joint,
- Yep.
- or upstream the muscles that are attached
around the knee joint
so, we're going to hit kind of six spots.
So, the first one we're going to hit is,
and I've done this one myself
and I had amazing relief from it.
You say you're getting a little bit
of pain from that now Brad?
Right above the knee cap?
- Oh, I get that when I do some squats
- Yeah.
- or lunges,
That put a lot of stress on there.
- That's where I got it,
from lunges.
- And his theory is that this suprapatellar
(indistinct), (indistinct), pouch,
- Pouch.
- Suprapatellar pouch,
which is right above the knee cap,
it can actually get bound down.
So, when you're doing a lunge, if that's
not moving like it should be,
it's going to give you pain.
It's going to, yeah,
and that's exactly what's happening to me,
and I did everything to get rid of this.
Nothing worked,
and finally I took the massage gun
and I actually
started massaging it across,
but I would actually go up.
I used the air-filled one.
A little softer.
- Softer.
and I'd actually go right up
to the kneecap
and hit the top part of the kneecap.
- So, that'd be right where the tendon
technically connects to the patella.
- Attaches, right.
And I had 80% relief within two days.
- Really?
- I couldn't believe it.
- Yeah, I remember that.
- Cause I, I was trying everything else.
I was trying ESE Hendrick exercises,
- Sure.
- and handheld massage,
it just doesn't do the job.
- Sure. Now, you think you could use the ball?
- You could try the ball.
- And maybe do a cross fiber,
- Yes.
- like shoulders.
- Show that Brad, absolutely.
- So, you know, with a gun it trans, you know,
the, it travels back and forth this way
and if you put the ball head on like this
where you can go sideways with it
and that gives a cross friction massage,
- Yes, but pretty gentle.
- Yep.
- I mean it's tolerable.
- Yep, so Bob was going like this,
we're going to go like this.
Now, if you go like this with a ball,
it's going to be more aggressive.
It maybe,
- It's going to bump along.
- Yep. Bump, and I'm not even going to get close
to my kneecap.
- Sure.
- This way is much more comfortable,
so, that's an option.
- Yes, and by the way, this is not red.
I put some red tape on it and so did Brad,
so you can see against our dark pants.
- Right.
- What, what we're doing here so,
the next one quadriceps,
obviously the big muscle,
four muscles that are,
- Especially mine, Bob.
- Yeah.
(Brad laughs)
- Especially yours, especially they
they play a large role in knee pain.
So, we want to make sure that they're not tight
and we're going to want to make sure,
a lot of times you might do this massage before
and after a workout, even.
- Sure, yep.
- So, we're going to go ahead and you
can start, you know,
hit all four quadrants here as far
as the massage,
but you can also include flossing.
- Sure.
- Which is basically,
now you could slide your foot
on a slippery floor I suppose Brad,
but we're actually going to use
either the knee glide or the FitGlide.
The knee glide is for one single knee,
we used quite often
after knee replacements,
but the FitGlide
you can actually work both legs at the same time.
You can actually get in some fitness
with it out of it too.
- [Brad] So, keep in mind that quadriceps,
all four muscles go to a tendon
that connect to the patella
so, when we loosen up the quads
that takes stress off of that tendon,
which takes pain away.
- Yeah. So this is a great way
again, if you have the surfaces
that are kind of adhesed down
you push right on the surface and that,
and you're getting movement
while you're doing the massage
and actually can break up those Adhesions.
- [Brad] Now don't get us wrong.
You don't have to have one of these devices.
- [Bob] No.
You can have a smooth floor
with a towel on it, or whatever.
- A garbage bag I suppose would work too, right?
- Yeah, if you're on carpet.
Back in the old days we used to take,
- a washcloth.
- Ah no, no if you had carpet,
- Sheet pan.
- A sheet pan. Cookie pan, you know,
- Cookie pan, yeah.
- but make sure you clean it
before you make the chocolate chip cookies,
but that works.
- Now the same holds true for the hamstring.
You got three muscles of the hamstring,
the same thing.
You can hit the hamstring like this
and work it along there,
but you can also do flossing with that,
which is, that's one of the big advantages
of what the knee glide and FitGuide,
- Yeah.
- You can,
- Well with either one,
particularly the hamstring
when it's starting to feel better,
- [Bob] Right.
- If you can put it at an angle
this really will make the hamstrings work
as you massage it
and that's going to change your, you could do
how Bob has it the other way around where,
- [Bob] Yeah, and it kind of helped the hamstring,
- Yeah.
- While you're trying to do it.
- He's going downhill.
I'm going uphill if you will.
- So we hit the suprapatellar pole, pouch.
We hit the quadriceps with the hamstring.
Now the calf.
The calf muscle actually the,
the one gastrocnemius does cross over the knee.
- Yep.
- Don't hit right in the back of the knee,
the popliteal fossa,
there's a lot of nerve artery
and veins there.
You can hit right in the top part of the cap,
but don't go right behind the knee.
- Yep.
- Now this one I do every day because my calves
have been so sore.
I've been really working 'em lately
and I started to going back to
standing at my desk Brad.
- Yep.
- And it's amazing what a difference it makes
- Sure.
- how much they're working so,
again, if these muscles are not real tight
and they're loosened and pliable,
they're going to put less stress on the knee.
Alright so, we hit the calf muscle.
You could also do a little flossing with this.
I mean, you could just go like this.
- Sure. Yeah.
- Back and forth.
- Up and down like this.
- [Bob] Let's go talk about the IT band now, Brad.
- Well, it feels so good, we have to stop?
- Yeah. You can keep going while I'm talking.
- Alright.
- So, we got the tensor fasciae latae,
which is a muscle.
It attaches into the iliotibial band,
which crosses all the way down, down.
It crosses the knee.
It goes into the fibula, I believe.
- It's just like that.
- Yep. Yeah.
Just like that stripe.
Now this is a heavy band.
You can't stretch this band.
You could lift a Volkswagen with it.
(Brad laughs)
They, they talked years ago
that you could stretch it and get results,
but you know, well,
I think if you stretch it
you stretch the tensor fasciae latae.
- Yeah, the muscle belly.
- Yeah.
- Up here.
- But, what you, it happens quite often
or this too,
it is the band gets adhesed down to the body.
So, it does help to massage it
to loosen up the Adhesions
and so you can get some more motion
and will put less stress on the knee.
Cause you get a lot of people
get runners knee, or biking
from this to, if they bike,
they get a lot of overuse injuries.
- Yep. Especially if your bike
may not be adjusted properly as far
as the seat height, but yeah
and you can see we got different guns here
that we're using.
- Yep.
- This smaller one boy, these got pack
a lot of powers, so.
- Surprisingly so, this believe it or not,
it's the one I have at home right now
and the thing about it is
you can really get a grip
on the handle and really apply pressure.
I'm just shocked at how well this one works.
- Well, you know, there's not a lot
of muscle on this part of the thigh,
so, you may not want to go in too aggressively
and maybe work at an angle
or just turn the gun down.
- Or use the air-filled one again, so.
- Exactly yep, a lot of options.
- Alright, final muscle group
we're going to hit are the hip abductors.
That's, that's on the inside of the thigh
kind of going up through to the groin.
If they're tight they can cause your knees to
be knock kneed, which can cause pain,
- Yep.
- if they're not being in the right shape.
So, you can just work along the inner thigh
and work the muscle groups there and,
- I gotta be honest with you Bob.
Once I got in my late forties this muscle group,
which I never had a problem with running
decades before, all of a sudden in the spring
when I'm not in running shape,
I would get,
- [Bob] You feel it.
- Yeah. Yep.
- [Bob] I feel this muscle group when I'm squatting.
- Oh really?
- [Bob] A lot. This is probably the one I feel the most.
- Sure.
- [Bob] It's a, and I'm like you,
you know when you're young,
you get away with everything.
- Yeah.
- When you get older, you get away with anything.
- Yeah, that's really not fun.
It takes some of the fun away,
but then, you know, we're, we're on that.
We're on the job.
- We're on the slide.
- We're trying to cover your back.
- We're on the slide down.
(Brad and Bob laugh)
By the way, this video is a part of a series
of videos on massage.
If you want to see the entire series
go to bobandbrad.com
Go to the program section and look for the title.
There's a massage
and there's actually a bunch of them
that we have there.
One on sciatica, one on tens,
one on plantar fasciitis,
- Yep, et cetera et cetera.
- Check those out. Yeah.
Go to the massage one.
We're going to have,
I don't even know how many we're going to have,
20 to 30 videos there.
- Sure.
- Pick out the ones that pertain to you
and check them out.
We can watch the ones that you'd only need.
- Yep, they're usually 10, 10 minutes long
or so, ah watch it
and then there's a PDF button.
So, if you click on that
and your computer's hooked up to your printer,
it'll print out one or two pages of a review
of the whole video,
so you don't have to go back
and keep looking at it.
If you kind of forgot something, we do all this.
It's absolutely free.
We don't even ask for an email.
- One last point Brad here.
- Oh yeah.
- I want to make here on the muscles.
Generally what I've found is
and it's been
stated is that
if there's no pain or discomfort
when you're doing the muscle
you may not need to massage it.
You know what I mean?
- Sure.
- Generally you're looking for the muscles
that are sore.
- Yep.
- That are tender when you hit 'em.
Like, I, I no longer massage my hamstrings
cause they're, they seem to be fine.
- Sure.
- My calves, I spend a lot of time on them.
- Yep.
- A lot of time on them,
so hit the ones that are sore
and leave the other ones alone.
We, we were all,
- I mean you could if you want,
cause it feels good, can't ya?
- Yeah. We're all time starved though,
but so if you want to allocate your time wiser.
- Sure.
- Alright. remember Brad and I can fix
just about anything.
- Except for,
- A broken heart.
- Right, and we're going to figure
out some way maybe these are going to help.
- Don't go over your heart with this.
(Brad makes vibrating noise)
- Yeah.
I'm not going over my chest muscle.
That's my pectoralis major.
- Yeah, yeah.
(Brad makes vibrating noise)
- Alright, thanks.
- Just playin'.
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