Massage Therapy has been around for thousands of years. It dates back to 3000 BCE or earlier in India. It has always been a sacred system of natural healing. With the demands we place on our bodies every day, it is no wonder massage therapy has become so mainstream.
Most of us wish we could afford a massage every day, but that’s simply not our reality. This is why we have found personal means of massage as part of our self-care practice. There are many massage tools on the market today and some of the most popular have vibration capabilities.
In 1895 Dr, John Harvey was first recorded to show the benefits of vibration massage. In the late 1990’s Dr. Jake Pivaroff invented the first “Massage Gun”. A hand-held percussive therapy tool that he called the “Deep Muscle Stimulator”.
We all know the benefits of massage, whether its dynamic, vibration, percussion or oscillation and why it works, but only recently have we begun to understood how it works. Research from Dr. Robert Schleip and Dr. Thomas Meyers and others shows that massage is much more sensory than it is mechanical. Intense manual therapy with a focus on immediate mechanical change is the old-school way of thinking. New evidence shows that manual therapies, such as percussion, may influence the nervous system and that IASTM/MFR (Instrument Assisted Soft Tissue Mobilization/MyoFascial Release) tools become better at facilitating a goal-oriented adaptation response. Therefore, massage therapy feeds the sensory system in order to change motor output, and this chronic change over time delivers extremely beneficial results.
Courtesy of Jawku
There are several percussive therapy tools on the market today. These tools, combined with proper technique and programming, can target specific neuromuscular responses. For example, setting the massage gun at a higher frequency and quickly passing it back and forth over the treatment area with lighter pressure can stimulate or activate the targeted tissues. This is why there is much excitement about the new attachment heads on the JAWKU V2 Muscle Blaster. The heads have been designed to provide goal-oriented outcomes by adjusting variables:
By manipulating the variables, users are targeting the results they want. The variables that can be leveraged are:
Frequency – The rate at which the piston goes back and forth, producing percussion
Rate – How quickly the user moves the gun over the body
Pressure – How much pressure is applied to the area of focus
Duration – How long an area is worked on
Courtesy of Jawku
Additionally, the forms and materials of the heads themselves are considered to be variables, and JAWKU has up-leveled its options with its new massage heads, especially in its Muscle Blaster V2. This includes:
A head that can be heated or chilled
Heads designed for application over clothes or on skin directly
Heads that grab the skin
Heads that can be used with oil or lotion
A head that can be used on bone or very tender areas
For more information on JAWKU’s various Muscle Blaster massage guns and its various head options, take a look here. We will also provide information in future blogs about the benefits of the individual head types offered by JAWKU.
