FinnHook-a great tool for tension release

[aragorn]

My best Christmas present this year was a little tool called FinnHook. I was a bit skeptic at first, but once I tried it I got hooked! With a little practice, it feels like the best massage you ever had, OSIT.

It's design is simple, but brilliant. For someone (like me) who suffers from muscle pain e.g. in the shoulders, neck and back this is the best thing since the slice of bacon. :D

Here's some basic information:

http://finnhook.fi/?page=Frontpage&lang=en

What is a FinnHook?

Finnhook is a versatile, ergonomic, and easy-to-use wellness product that provides the benefits of massage, acupressure and trigger point therapy all in one. The Finnhook has been developed after years of practical experience and the results are very positive. The Finnhook has been developed for everyone who suffers from neck pains, shoulder pains or back pains. The Finnhook, crafted from birch plywood, provides a simple and effective release from muscle tension and soreness, even on those hard to reach areas.

Video:

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They seem to have re-sellers in many countries. With a little know-how, I imagine that it would also be quite simple to construct this device yourself for "experimentation" (the design is patented and copyrighted!) ;)

 

[anothermagyar]

Hi Aragorn,
Thanks to share, it is great idea, as a lot of people I have neck-shoulder pain many times.
:)

 

[Jacques]

Hi Aragon,

Since I have that problem too, I'm working with balls and I have great results.

You can buy this kind of ball everywhere and you do it while being laid down on the ground.

You need two balls since you do both side (left and right) at the same moment.

I must say that my wife is a holistic gymnastic teacher and it is her who gives me the right exercises to do.

 

[liffy]

Foam rollers are also quite useful for massaging the entire body by yourself.

 

[Carl]

Thanks for the tip Aragorn. I've been using a hammer to achieve this exact effect for quite a while, and might check out this product today.

Foam rollers are also quite useful for massaging the entire body by yourself.

Strangely enough I also used a foam roller today for the first time. They seem to be very effective and also pleasurable, would definitely recommend.

 

[Voyageur]

My best Christmas present this year was a little tool called FinnHook. I was a bit skeptic at first, but once I tried it I got hooked! With a little practice, it feels like the best massage you ever had, OSIT.

Looks like a good one, and well made, too.

Thanks Aragorn.

 

[Nienna]

My best Christmas present this year was a little tool called FinnHook. I was a bit skeptic at first, but once I tried it I got hooked! With a little practice, it feels like the best massage you ever had, OSIT.

They sell them on Amazon.

http://smile.amazon.com/Finnhook-Trigger-Point-Massage-Tool/dp/B003FBZYNO/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1420121290&sr=8-2&keywords=finnhook

I've always used my fingers to do this and it is tiring and you can only reach a few places. This looks like it would be a great! Thank you.

 

[SeekinTruth]

Very interesting. Thanks for sharing these ideas, y'all.

 

[H-KQGE]

These are great, I'm going to try them out. Thanks for sharing everyone. :)

 

[Seppo Ilmarinen]

Thanks for the tips everybody. I'm going to buy FinnHook and try it out!

 

[hiker]

Thanks for posting about the FinnHook, looks like it would be a great tool to target specific spots in the shoulders/ upper back/ neck.

I have generally been using a foam roller, and it is a marvellous tool too. Previously I made the mistake of doing the rolling too fast, for too long and "too painfully".

Apparently, to enable the proper release of the tensions, you should do the rolling quite slowly, "feeling" the tight spots and focus on breathing (and not hold your breath as is almost automatically done when encountering painful spots). Also you shouldn't put too much pressure on a particular spot, making it feel too painful. Some advice says that on a scale of 1 to 10 the pain should be about 4. If there is too much pressure/ pain, the tension will not release.

After making these corrections, there's a major difference how much more relaxed I feel after doing the rolling.

Now on to how to roll properly. I’ve seen people hit the roller faster than Usain Bolt coming out of the starting blocks and try to zip through their entire body with the speed of a soccer mom heading to TGI Fridays after dropping their kids off at practice and have only 2 hours to get their drunk on. This is akin to hitting the speed bumps in your local grocery store parking lot while going 60. It’s fun as hell, but doesn’t serve the intended purpose. Remember, the receptors in fascia are slow twitch, meaning they need prolonged tension to see any change. Ripping through your foam rolling quickly is as big a fail as a Gronkowski end-zone spike in week one.

So rolling slowly is kind of a big deal. You should aim to cover roughly 1 inch per second, stopping and breathing -trying to go to your happy place- on the tighter spots. If you push to a point where you feel like you can’t breathe deeply, you’re not getting the tissue to release, which means you’re probably just tensing it up even more. Slow it down, go easy, and make sure you are thinking of breathing, releasing, and making whatever tissue you’re working on become more supple and fluid, not simply to create a world of pain.

_http://deansomerset.com/foam-rolling-is-not-stretching/

So let’s discuss what foam rolling MAY actually do. Please keep in mind that these are just my opinions of what happens and have some scientific backing, but they have not yet been proven.

Within the muscle there are neuroreceptors that sense length changes and positional velocities. The big guys are the golgi tendon organs and muscle spindles. They sense whether a muscle is stretching rapidly and cause some reflexive contraction and also whether force production in the muscle is too much and may cause some internal injuries. You see these stimulated when the doctor whacks your knee to test your reflexes.

Additional to these are some of the fascial receptors, which respond in a similar way but in a much slower manner. There’s actually 17 different types of fascial receptors which sense everything from temperature to joint angle, even down to what the concentration of oxygen in the blood is as it enters the tissues. The big length tension ones we can talk about here are the ruffini fibers and the pacini fibers. These work in a similar way as the golgi tendon and muscle spindle, but over a much longer and slower timeline.

When you use a foam roller and hit an area where these receptors are hyper sensitive, you’ll feel a ball of muscle contraction in a very small space. These hyperactive sarcomeres are working overtime because they’re essentially locked in the “on” position.

When you compress these hyperactive segments, it creates an overload on the receptor as the nervous system slams the neuromuscular connection with more stimulus to try to shake off the compressive element and avoid the pain and trauma. If there’s too much compression it can cause the muscle to contract harder, but enough compression to cause some overload can help stimulate and then fatigue the receptor, which helps to “release” the muscle or sarcomeres affected so there’s less tension. From the sliding filament theory, this helps to expand the length of the sarcomere, allowing more range of motion to occur.

_http://deansomerset.com/foam-rolling-isnt-stretching-still-important/