♪ Bob and Brad ♪
♪ The two most famous ♪
♪ Physical therapists ♪
♪ On the internet ♪
- Howdy folks! I'm Bob Schrupp, physical therapist.
- Brad Heineck, physical therapist.
- Because we are the most famous physical therapists
on the internet. (both chuckling)
- In our opinion of course, Bob.
- So we're gonna talk about today,
why you should not buy a massage gun,
and but we're also gonna tell you why you should.
- Sure. Yup.
- And let's get right into it.
- Put it right out there.
- Number one, if you have hard to reach places,
you might need a partner if you're using a massage gun.
So- - Right. Right.
- Obviously your back and upper traps.
- You just cannot reach.
- Yeah, you can't get the leverage on it.
So yeah.
- [Brad] Are we going to talk about that now?
- Yeah, this one would work better for that,
the handheld massager.
But this doesn't have the power as much as a massage gun.
- Yup.
- It's fine.
It's going to be fine for someone who is a
maybe a slighter build or, you know, not as muscular.
- Yeah. I mean, you may want to get one and have a gun too.
These are not too expensive and they have their place.
- All right, next one.
For disc herniation or sciatica,
this is not going to heal a disc herniation or sciatica.
- No.
- I mean, you might feel better for some secondary reasons.
- Yeah.
- You know, like the muscles have tightened up
because they're, they're sore from the sciatica,
but really don't buy one of these
if you think it's going to heal your sciatica.
- Right.
Again, you may feel better,
but the nerve is still pinched
and it's got nothing to do with,
well, something to do, but yeah.
I'm sorry.
- Brad, do you want to talk about neck pain
and headaches?
- All the time. (laughs)
Yeah. If you have neck pain,
you know,
we're talking like here up.
- Yes.
- You're not going to use a massage gun on the neck here.
You don't,
you know the muscle's there,
but you cannot do it without hitting-
- The bone.
- The bone, the spine.
And that spine is very delicate if you will,
- Yeah.
- When you're hammering on it,
because that's what's going on,
these are transversing back and forth.
- Right, they're pre-crushing.
- You could hurt your spine, as a matter of fact,
you could cause a problem.
I made a mistake years ago,
- Yeah.
- With one of these.
- I did the same.
- And I was massaging a patient's shoulder,
and then I went up to the neck
and I saw by the look on his face,
I was doing the wrong thing.
And I felt really bad as a therapist,
- Right.
- I said, what am I doing?
And anyways, it worked out fine.
- You try it on yourself.
And you were like, Oh my God.
- Don't go directly on them.
- And the same with the head.
You wouldn't be doing it for a headache. It's just not good.
- Oh! You're not gonna do it.
You know, your temples, with your head,
you can do it with your hand.
You know, that's uh,
- Right.
It's just going to,
and, and, that leads us kind of to the next one, Brad.
You really want to kind of avoid bony surfaces.
There might be some exceptions
like when you have quadriceps tendonitis
or you have the suprapatellar pouch,
sometimes you hit the knee cap a little bit
and you use the air-filled one.
- Yup. They're they're soft and squishy.
- Yeah.
- If you hit the edge of the bone,
it's not gonna,
it's not so bad.
- Yeah. Even tendonitis.
Like, if you have elbow,
(Brad chuckles)
if you have a tennis elbow or golfer's elbow.
- You'll know if you get too close, it's gonna hurt.
- Yeah, it's gonna hurt.
- You don't massage that kind of,
in that fashion.
- Um, you shouldn't go over a pulse,
you know?
Yeah.
- The neck.
You know the brachial?
- Right. - Yup.
- Um, the back of the knee, - Yeah.
- Right on the back of the knee,
a lot of, a lot of nerve artery veins there.
I won't go over your heart either.
I just, it's never a good idea.
- Yeah. The other thing, I don't think,
I don't know if you had this on,
but don't go over lymph nodes.
- No! I don't.
That's a great one.
- Right.
- It's a good point.
- Particularly, in your femoral crease right here.
- Right in the groin.
- They're very superficial right under the skin.
- Well, obviously right under the elbow,
uh, armpit.
- Yup. So there you have it..
Because if you hit those lymph nodes,
I mean you could cause some problems.
If not anything, you just irritate them.
And I know I had some lymph node issues
and the doctor said,
you know, I thought it may be cancer,
well, he ruled that out.
He says, if it's bothering, you just stay away from them.
Cause this is gonna make them worse.
- Sure.
So when you irritate a lymph node,
it just gets worse and it's no good.
- Gotcha.
All right.
During pregnancy, obviously don't go over the fetus.
I mean, we always want to say that.
- Yeah, obvious.
- Generally, you wouldn't do it over a bursa.
And a bursa is a fluid-filled sac.
If it's inflamed, you know.
- It'll be tender.
- Right. It'll be tender and I wouldn't go over that.
- And you have bursas in almost every joint in your body.
- All the joints.
- So that's kind of a, I mean,
- You gotta be careful.
- Yeah. You go over the muscle belly now and you'll feel it.
Bursas hurt.
- If it makes pain worse,
and the pain hurts afterwards yet,
you should, shouldn't do it.
- Right.
- All right, if you have a bleeding disorder
or bruise easily,
obviously you're not going to want to do the suction.
It is pounding, I mean, it's percussion.
- Yeah, if you're one of those people,
when you bump into a piece of furniture,
you got a bruise there,
you're going to bruise from this
if you're getting aggressive particularly.
- Yeah.
- So, yeah.
Don't, don't even think about it.
If you're really a bruiser, you know, easily bruised.
Now, if you've had surgery,
I want to make sure you have it approved
by your physician or medical provider
before you do massage cause like after surgery,
you're actually at higher risk for developing blood clots.
- Sure.
- Let's say you do a massage in your calf,
you loosen a blood clot
and send it up to your lungs and it kills you.
- Yeah.
- So, we obviously don't want that.
- Right.
- So a way to avoid that.
This is,
I would say again,
you want to get it approved by your doctor.
If you have some type of nerve disorder
like if you have multiple sclerosis or epilepsy,
unless it's approved, I wouldn't do it then either.
- Right.
- Open sores, obviously,
skin tears,
you don't want to go over.
This is very obvious to us, Brad,
I think, you would think everybody would know this
but it's not.
I guess people have done this before.
They've had a broken bone or a healing fracture
and they start massaging all over it.
- Oh!
- So, they want to make it feel better.
- I mean, that could be well after it's healed,
- Right.
- And you've been walking on it
or I mean, you know, many weeks after,
then you may want to have scar tissue to break up
but not there in the healing process.
- All right.
Well now, why would you buy one?
And there actually is very good reasons why.
- Yeah. Indeed, a lot of them.
- Yeah. One, it's very easy to use.
You don't have to get on the floor like a foam roller.
You know?
- Right.
- So, if you can't get on the floor,
- Yeah.
- And you want to massage the area,
- Talking about one of these for, which they work well but,
- Yes, they do.
- You really, it takes more effort.
- And you know what?
The cost actually, like,
if you use one of the less expensive one
is almost comparable to a foldable or solid.
- Yeah.
- Or even one of these smaller ones,
- Yeah.
- That really do a heck of a job.
- Yup. Many people believe it or not, Brad,
and I have used this in our clinics for years
and we, I found all I,
50% of the people actually prefer the gun over our hands.
(Brad laughs)
- Or of our aids, I should say, our assistants.
- Again, tell,
we're not professional massage people.
- Right.
- So we can't talk.
But we know what we're doing as far as the muscle groups,
- Right.
- Where to go,
- We were taught.
- We're trained. But it's not, that's not like,
we're masseuses.
- Right, right.
- So keep that in mind.
- All right, it's,
you never get,
it never gets tired and never says no to you. (chuckles)
- Well, unless you run the battery down.
- Yeah.
- You got to keep them charged up
but they hold a charge for, for quite some time.
- Yeah. What's nice about it is
you can also use it with the whole family, generally.
(Brad laughs)
Yeah. I mean, seriously.
- I know.
- Brad and I gave away some of these massage guns
to some teachers.
Brad, I am still getting great compliments from them.
- Yeah.
- And the one, the principal,
he, he uses it every day.
His kids say you're in love with this thing.
(Brad laughs)
Yeah, I mean, it's just been funny.
- Sure.
- And other ones, another, another principal,
she said her whole family uses it.
- Yeah.
- That instead of going on vacation,
they went and used the massage gun.
- So the principals kind of hog these things
from the teachers?
- Yeah, apparently so.
You know, you know. That's, the
you're a principal.
(Brad laughs)
You could do what you want.
So, it's a great,
these are really great.
I use them in this manner
to warm up the muscles before I run.
- Yeah. I should probably do that. That may help me.
- Uh, problematic muscles.
I mean, I don't do it to all, by any means.
But seriously, I hit my calf muscles before I run,
- Yup.
- And just a great way to stretch them out
and get them warmed up before you go out.
- Sure.
- So you can also use it for cooling down.
So, I mean, they're really great for that too.
- Sure.
- And that's what I'm talking about, muscle recovery.
But it's also good for muscle strains
or scar tissue or tendonitis.
- Yup.
- It really works well for that
because one thing,
your hands are going to get tired
if you're doing a self massage.
- Yup.
- And this, you can apply for 10 to 15 minutes,
like just like you should.
- I'm telling you, for most people,
I think I can speak across the board.
If, if you've got a massage gun
or you're going to massage by hand,
chances are if you're gonna do it by hand,
hey, you might just,
that's a lot of work-
- You might still do it for a little bit
- With this,
you kind of look forward to it.
- Right.
- It's so much easier, it feels good.
And it just feels good when you're done.
And if you get that feeling
for the next 15 minutes or so, it's a,
I mean, these, these are popular for good reasons.
- Yeah, there's a reason.
And the last thing, and this,
I've given so many of these away, Brad,
it's honestly one of the best gifts you can give.
- (laughing) It is, yeah.
- It is!
And I mean, there's not anybody,
hardly anybody that's going to say,
"No, I don't want a massage gun."
I mean, they're all,
most of them find out they really like it a lot more
than they thought.
- Sure.
- They're surprised at how much they like it so.
- Just make sure you don't get,
get the right one for the right person for,
I think like Mike's grandmother,
she had one of these or one of these,
and it was way too aggressive.
- Right.
- And then she went for one of these,
- Yeah.
- And it was, you know, much more,
- It was appropriate, yup.
So this video is a part of a series of videos on massage.
If you want to check out the entire series, go to
bobandbrad.com.
Go to the giveaway sec,
not giveaway sec,
program sections!
(Brad laughs)
And in that section,
you're going to find out a whole bunch of topics
like we got a program on plantar fasciitis,
- Right.
- We've got a program on sciatica,
- TENS.
- TENS. And shoulder, and some of the other ones
are coming out. - Right.
- Where, we don't have them up yet,
but find the program on massage,
check it out,
figure out which videos you want to watch.
Cause they're going to be like 20 of them,
or 30 or 40.
- There'll be a bunch.
- And the ones that pertain to you, and Brad,
- Oh!
There is a PDF printout
so that you can look through, a co,
a review of the whole video you just looked at,
print it out and keep it handy
until you basically memorized it.
- And how much are charging people?
- Absolutely, Bob. It's astonishing.
Zero.
Big zero!
- It's our gift to you.
- Not even an email.
- Nope, just come on and use it.
Thanks for watching.
(end credits)