 I mean if you do put it on your head, you could, you could be Darth Vader, couldn't you? Would you? Luke, I am your- No, I don't think you. Today we're going to talk about seven devices which my wife and I both used to aid in our recovery as runners, to get rid of muscle knots, tension and soreness, to get rid of metabolic waste and increase blood flow to the muscles. And believe me, the last two are fairly amusing, rather hilarious and ridiculous. So stick around. We're going to start with everyone's favourite, which is of course the foam roller. I'm sure you have one at home, you don't need me to tell you how to use it. We've got a smooth one here, it's fairly tired and old, we probably need a new one. Carve muscles, hamstrings, IT band, quadriceps, basically all the muscles in your legs use it to flush out that metabolic waste and bring in the fresh, oxygenated blood. But if you're looking for a little bit more of a deep tissue massage, you might want to get one of these foam rollers. This is a little bit more gnarly than our other one. It's supposed to mimic the fingers and thumbs of your massage therapist. It is quite painful when you first start to use it, but it will get deeper into those muscles to get rid of those knots and relieve tension in your muscles. In terms of costy, you're looking at around 15 to 30 pounds for a decent foam roller. That's the smooth ones, all these more gnarly ones can be a little bit more expensive. If you want to have a little bit more control over your massage, maybe a little bit more hands-on, you might want to try something like this. We got this from the body shop. It is 12 pounds and it's made of wood and you can use it not only on your legs, but it's really good on your back as well. They're just little balls of wood and they roll like this and you can roll it over your back, over your muscles in your legs. It's really nice feeling as well. It's not so aggressive, but it just gives you a little bit more control so your hand can direct exactly where they're going to go. Another device that will give you a bit more hands-on control but is a lot more expensive, I think around £80 UK, is the stick. It burst onto the scene a few years ago and everyone was using these at the time. You grab it with both hands like this and it's got these rollers here which help again with getting rid of those knots in your muscles. You can be quite aggressive with it and it really hurts when somebody else does it, but it's a great feeling. It's really quite an interesting device to use. It's a bit more targeted, a bit more aggressive than your standard foam roller. Again, it lets you get in there really deep and go right where you need to go to get to that pain in your muscles, relieves tension in your muscles, gets rid of muscle knots. This next device, you probably do have one in your home already if you are a runner because like the stick, it kind of burst onto the scene a few years ago. Now everyone's got one. It is, of course, the electronic massage gun. We've got this one here from Renfoe. It cost us around about £100. Different fittings for the end so you can target different areas of your muscles and do different things with them. Charges via USB and it runs also off an app. You can run it independently but you can run it off an app which has different programmes on it and the programmes will run and tell you to change to different muscle groups or it will change speed automatically depending on what the programme is designed to do. We love ours but we do also have a smaller one which we take with us when we go out onto different events or if we're travelling. We've got this little one here from Bob and Brad. Again, it's around £100, much smaller but does exactly the same thing. You turn it on via a little button at the back here, hold it down and you can see how it vibrates in and out. The other one does just the same and then you press down on your muscles and if you're doing it to somebody else, it is hilarious because you can really cause them some pain and have yourself a lot of fun. But these devices are really the de facto standard these days for massaging, self-massage particularly but massaging those muscles in the legs, quadriceps, calf muscles, hamstrings, IT band, to get rid of that metabolic waste, to deep tissue massage, to iron out all those little knots that you get and that little bit of gristle that you'll find in those muscles. You can feel when you put your thumb on them, you know they're there, just get that massage gun in there to get them out, get that fresh oxygenated blood into those muscles to aid your recovery, to help you run next time. With seven items on the agenda, you can't actually be halfway through but we're kind of halfway through now. So if you are finding the video useful, interesting, if you're enjoying it then please do click the like button and if you haven't subscribed, we really do appreciate your support of this channel. We are growing, we'd love you to subscribe and click that bell notification icon as well so you're notified every time we upload a new video. Right on with the review of these crazy items. Moving on to the slightly more hilarious items, this is one of my wife's crazy purchases. It's by a company called Fourth IQ, I think is how you pronounce it and it is an electronic knee heat massager. It is bizarre, it makes a heck of a lot of noise, you can get them on Amazon for about £100. Now I think it is meant to go on your knee but I have seen people put them on their shoulders. Oh, I've turned it on, put it on your head. Actually, do you know what? That, that is quite a weird sensation. It also heats up as well. You can put it on your elbow, I guess, as well. There's straps to attach it, listen to how loud that is. Honestly, when my wife is sitting in the lounge using this and I'm trying to watch TV, it is an absolute nightmare. You can see the lights in there as well. I've no idea what those lights do. I think it's probably part of the heating element of the device. I mean, you know, it massages, it's a bit warm, whether it makes any difference at all, I don't know. But you know, if you want to spend £100 on a knee massager that you can also use on your elbow, your shoulder and your head, for a laugh, then why not? On Amazon it reads, the fourth IQ cordless knee massager, powerful infrared heat and vibration, knee pain relief for swelling, stiff joints, stretched ligament and muscle injuries. So there you go. However, that is not the most hilarious item we have purchased in our quest for runner's muscle recovery. No, we do like the idea of the Normatech leg recovery system, but the Normatech leg recovery system is around £900 to buy, and it's not a purchase that we are likely to make anytime soon. So we looked for alternatives, and we did indeed find an alternative in these £99 Renfoe leg massagers. Now, let me just show you what there is here. See somewhere here, there's a plug to plug it in with this look, and then it all, hang on a minute, oh no, that's come off now, let's just chuck that over there. Right, you've got this thing here, which is your control unit. So that will control how powerful the compression is, how much air is pumped into those leg stockings, and you've got different programs that, you know, do the calves and then the quadriceps, etc, etc. So that's your control unit there. Then coming out of the control unit are all these air pipes. So these are all filled, these are all pump air into the stockings, and the stockings are here. So you've got the one that goes on your foot, on your left side. So it says left here look, you can see left there. So this goes on your foot here, and this goes around your calf, and you wrap it round, and there's your leg bit, so there's your bottom of your leg bit there. Okay, and then you've got the right one, again the same thing is your foot goes in, and so those are the leg ones there, the bottom of your leg, and this is for your hamstrings and your quads. So this bit, this says left here, so you wrap this around your left quad, and then you've got another one for the right quad there, and you can see the tubes come off here, and they all get tangled up, and just it is an absolute nightmare. But now that said, do you know what, they're not bad. Once you've faffed about getting them on, it is a nightmare to get them on, and to just unravel all, it's like getting the Christmas lights out, it's basically that. But once you've done that, once you've got them on, it's not bad. It fills up with air, it compresses the muscles in your legs, so by compression, it's the same as doing that massage technique. It gets rid of the metabolic waste, the deoxygenized blood, and it brings, it allows fresh oxygenated blood to then come back into your muscles to aid recovery. So it does actually work quite well, and if you haven't got £900 to spend on the Normatech system, then these Renfo ones will do absolutely fine, although you will get a lot of hilarity out of them as well. Of all the items we've had a look at today, including the hilarious ones, I think the one that will provide you with the most rounded recovery experience is the massage gun. I'm sure you have one at home. If you haven't go and get one, it's the one I'd recommend that you get out of all these items that we've had a look at today. It's the one that will give you the most rounded recovery experience, so getting rid of muscle knots, reducing tension. You don't have to just use it in your legs. We've used it on our backs, shoulders as well. So get yourself a massage gun because that's the item that will really help you as a runner to get rid of muscle knots, relieve tension, and get you ready for your next run. And when you're ready for that next run, then this video here will tell you exactly the kind of shoes to wear for the terrain and the type of run that you're going to do, and until next time, we'll see you on the start line. Bye-bye.