Aptly Named Product Review
Irradiated by LabRat
Aptly named as after playing with them all weekend we are pretty well convinced they are actually magical.
As readers may or may not be aware, we are fans of Mobility WOD. It’s a video blog run by a Doctor of Physical Therapy dude (and he is most definitely a dude sort of guy) named Kelly Starret, whose original and still primary aim was helping athletes address their joint and tissue injuries, injuries-waiting-to-be, and limitations. It’s sort of a paradoxical experience in that his southern California dudebroness made us both kind of want to punch him in the face at first, but emerging evidence going through this stuff that he is pretty much always right… yeah.
So, the floss bands. MWOD introduced us to the concept and it seems to be pretty much his invention. Stingray and I both have relatively normal joints, but we both have old injuries that echo forward in ways that are very slightly problematic- he has an elbow he inadvisedly employed with a jackhammer against a lot of basalt (never do this) that effectively acts like a chronic case of tennis elbow, and I have an ankle in which I popped a lateral ligament in twice in a row when I was a teenager and has never really been quite the same again. He can’t lean on his left elbow and gets irritating twinges in weight-bearing exercises that load that joint; I have less range of motion in my right ankle and it’s prone to rolling on me.
Or, actually, past tense on both, see again magic. He tried the elbow, I tried the ankle. He got all the range of motion in his elbow back plus a disappearance of the pain after a minute or two of screwing with it wrapped, I got five degrees more flexion in the bad ankle than I had in the good. (At least until I got tired of walking around on one flexible ankle and one stiff one and did the good ankle as well.) It’s not permanent- but it does last for hours, and the effects seem to be cumulatively theraputic. He’s got some elbow twinges again, but not as bad as they were and he only wrapped it the once three days ago. We’ve been obsessed with these rubber bands all damn weekend and have found it works dandy on knees and wrists as well. I’m tempted to wrap myself up like a mummy and see how many power snatches I can get in before I fall over unconscious.
The basic principle of the thing is that, in healthy tissues, tendons and ligaments and fascia and muscle slide against one another freely; in tissues that have been inflamed by injury or by chronic misuse/underuse/overuse, the connective tissues tend to mat together somewhat. This limits range of motion and can cause a little to a lot of pain, depending on how bad and where. The compression banding pins down big tendons and forces the tissues to slide independently of one another again as you move the joint through as much and as many different kinds of range of motion as you can think of. (This part is not as much theoretical- you can feel it and it is WEIRD). After the wrap comes off, blood flows back into the area as you move the joint around freely again, and the extra oxygen boost helps keep things from immediately restiffening. (This part is more theoretical, but what the hell, makes sense to me.)
The I-have-a-new-joint effect lasts for hours. It’s neat. Bands cost about 25 bucks for a pack of two 7-foot bands. If you’ve got a knee or elbow or ankle or wrist or whatever that’s just not quite the same (not a real, serious disability), you might consider giving it a shot- or even if the injury is more major than that, try wrapping the joints downstream that have had to compensate for the new movement patterns in the meantime and see if it doesn’t make THEM happier.
As a disclaimer, I’m not getting paid for this. I doubt Rogue Fitness or Kelly Starrett are aware of my existence. But it’s a really damned neat feeling to spend two minutes with a rubber band and get back a range of comfortable motion (and absence of chronic pain) that’s been gone for years, if only for a couple of hours- but renewable anytime.
As a final disclaimer, lagniappe if you will, I have NO clue how this will work for those among you whose injuries involve a whole bunch of metal in the affected joint. It might help, it might hurt, if it’s actually painful rather than just weird and uncomfortable stop immediately and find someone else to make a gift of it to.
May 21st, 2012 at 5:42 pm
Sounds awesome.
I don’t suppose there’s a way to wrap it around my spine and / or neck, is there?
May 21st, 2012 at 6:26 pm
Knees….hands, how do I wrap the joint of thumb and hand?? They’re not that expensive, I might have to get some to play with…
May 21st, 2012 at 6:35 pm
I nearly severed my left pinky a few years back. Part of the physical therapy was a similar system of wrap it in a rubber band thingy and move it in all the ways you can think of. PT told me the point was to break up scar tissue and free up movement. Worked like a charm, I ended up with 90 some percent of the motion coming back.
I need to look more into his site, it makes me wonder if this will help with the RA joint issues I have now.
May 21st, 2012 at 7:10 pm
Ruth, we did my wrist this weekend. I have an old injury from falling on it a few years back, probably exacerbated by a bit of carpal tunnel, and LR just kinda wrapped the wrist and a good piece of my hand. It immobilized my thumb joint well and good. My results were pretty much as described all around - increased flexibility in my wrist and fingers, less pain and stiffness, and overall, “Whoa, that’s weird! So cool!”
May 21st, 2012 at 7:43 pm
I’d LOVE to find something besides drugs and heat that would help with my hands, thanks for the info Indy! Shall definetly have to make a point of trying them….
May 21st, 2012 at 8:23 pm
Perl- as compression flossing would remove your ability to breathe done around the neck or spine… yeah, bad idea. But, search the Mwod site for “flossing” in general without “compression” or “tack” or voodoo; he demonstrates the same basic principle on some noncompressible areas using lacrosse balls, weights, and the voodoo bands’ much bigger brother the fitness band. This one might help you: Better back extension-izer
Ruth- Yeah, I made sure to start from behind the two knobs of bone at the sides of the wrist to make sure I nailed down those main tendons well and good, then went up to about mid-metacarpal on her. If I were trying specifically to help the thumb rather than the wrist I’d have tried to see if there was any way to leave the thumb with *some* ability to move, but that might not be possible.
SD- I’d look into it but proceed with caution. He assumes his audience are athletes; some might be very good for you, others might, well. Break you. If it REALLY hurts…
May 21st, 2012 at 8:49 pm
Bless you! I was just commenting to my wife that “Science, We’ll fuck you up” amuses the hell out of me and dropped in to look. I need to order some of these! I have taken a number of hellacious hits at work this past year- four broken hand bones, four crushed ribs, a 3/8″ by 3/8″ V shaped notch in my right hip bone, and a fracture below the knee that has built up a 1 1/2″ by 1/2″ by 3/8″ calcium deposit in one month. I hurt all the damned time. Any relief I can get from these and older injuries would be great. You know a man is hurt when not hurting more is a serious point of concern prior to any activity in the boudoir!
May 22nd, 2012 at 5:36 am
Oh its the wrists TOO, but that joint of thumb to hand is the worst area, on both hands. Its some weird mixture of tendonitus and arthritus and although I spend a reasonable number of days mostly pain free (as long as I don’t do something TOO stupid) on the other end of things there’s enough days when my hands HURT ALL DAY, and I can barely use the thumb to hold onto things. Heat does wonders for the pain, but only for a short period of time after application. So drugs….yah not so much.
May 22nd, 2012 at 3:35 pm
I’ve got one of those injuries from my one-and-only barfight that I think I’ll employ them on.
Interesting.
May 22nd, 2012 at 3:38 pm
“Availability: Out of stock”
gawddammit!
May 22nd, 2012 at 3:42 pm
We’ll haul one or two of ours down to the party, though last I heard you were probably not gonna be able to make it.
May 22nd, 2012 at 3:46 pm
DO WANT. Thanks for bringing this up, LR.
May 22nd, 2012 at 3:58 pm
Add me to the chorus of thanks. I’m still working through a number of injuries received in a car accident last year (hopefully done with surgical intervention for good) and in the process of rehabbing, well, everything it seems like some days! I’m particularly interested in working on the shoulder, but wish, like Perlhaqr the neck was an option with these!
May 22nd, 2012 at 4:18 pm
Turns out that my foam roller came with a floppy pink “stretch band” that seems like it’ll work just fine for this. I’m gonna try it on my left ankle (which has about six inches of surgical steel in it) — it’s been messing up my squat form for the past few months now and static MWOD mobilizations aren’t helping much any more. This also seems like a great way to help my wrists — one of which I broke twenty years ago and never got back to 100% mobility — survive constant typing. If you want some anecdotal “evidence” on how this works on metalled-up joints, shoot me an email.
I’m getting excited about the possibility that my “almost as good as before I broke it” mobility issues might be soft tissue — and treatable like this — rather than bone. Woot!
May 22nd, 2012 at 4:38 pm
@Bluntobject… OOOoooh! Good thought, I’ve got some of them somewhere around here!
May 24th, 2012 at 3:17 pm
That worked *fantastically*! Thank you sooooo much for taking the time to do this write up, I don’t know that I’d have encountered the concept otherwise!
May 24th, 2012 at 3:23 pm
Awesome, I’m so glad I could help. What exactly did you do?
May 26th, 2012 at 11:59 am
Had my husband wrap the shoulder including upper arm, and then just worked it through as much range of motion as I could get for a good 20 mins. Stretched everything out, and the one knot that’s been dogging me for ages is G-O-N-E gone!