Must-Have Gear for Muscle Recovery: Your New Living Room Accessories

My husband and I call it the roaming pain. One day my elbow is sore from golf, and the next day it shifts to tight calves from walking hills. Then those muscles recover and the roaming pain settles in my forearms from writing. And on and on the roaming pain goes, where it will stop, nobody knows.

When we’re active it’s bound to happen. Most of the time it’s a good ache, meaning it’s a sign we’re working our muscles. Other times, it’s a bit more stubborn, sticking around longer than we’d like. That’s why we’ve accumulated an arsenal of gear, tools, and devices to combat every ache and pain from head to toe. Through the years, with a bit of trial and error, we’ve settled on a solid collection of gear that seems to help everything from tight quads to sore feet to an aching back.

The Incredible Foam Roller

A fixture in our living room, the foam roller is used daily. The foam roller puts targeted pressure on your fascia, releasing trigger points where you’re feeling tightness or soreness and enable fascia movement. The fascia is the fibrous layer of connective tissue that surrounds all of our muscles, kind of like plastic wrap over meat. I also use it to open up my chest muscles by lying on the roller with the length aligned with my spine and my arms open to each side. And, it’s great for improving posture!

We love the JFIT High Density Smooth EVA Roller, because it has a smoother texture and is not too hard, not to soft. It’s 36 inches long, which is perfect for most movements and stretches. For travel, there’s the Pro-Tec 12-Inch Foam Roller that can be taken anywhere.

Life is Great on a Foam Roller: The Why and How provides details on how to use this essential tool, along with a time-marked video explaining how to roll on different muscles.

Foot Massage Roller

We take our feet for granted, but when they get tight, they can become extremely sore and begin to pull on other muscles. The ChiFIT Reflexology Food Massager is a nifty tool to treat those tight feet, but also can be used on a preventative basis. It’s ergonomically arched to fit the curve of your foot and its portability lets you take it anywhere.

Reflexologists espouse that our organs have a corresponding part on the sole of the foot, and that the state of organ function can be adjusted by the corresponding part of the foot massage. The foot roller also provides stimulation at the acupuncture points of the feet, promoting blood circulation and pain relief.

When you begin using a foot roller, start out gently by placing minimal weight on your foot as it rolls. As you adapt to the roller, you can place greater pressure on your feet for a deeper massage.

Massage Gun to the Rescue

For sore muscles, a massage gun offers another effective tool in the toolkit. Using percussion therapy, it concentrates targeted pulses of pressure into the muscles and tissue of the body, helping to relieve muscle pain, stiffness and soreness, and increase range of motion. If used correctly, percussion therapy guns offer great benefits.

We have two massage guns, one larger and the other more compact. Both do the trick and are easy to use. The Sonic Handheld Percussion Massage Gun was our first and it took some getting used to. It’s one of the more popular ones on Amazon with a rating of 4.5 stars. The Sonic offers five levels of intensity and eight massage heads. I find that the higher the intensity, the less jarring on my body. The unit is fairly quiet and weighs 2.5 pounds.

Our second massage gun was a gift and it’s becoming my favorite. It’s the Hyperice Hypervolt GO and it also earns 4.5 stars on Amazon. The device is more compact, and I like the lighter weight at 1.5 pounds. It’s a bit pricier and only comes with two attachments, but adaptors can be purchased separately.

Ease into using the massage gun and don’t apply added pressure to the gun as you roll it over your muscles. Let the device do the work. Play around with the intensity and duration to find the sweet spot. Be careful how long you keep it on one area. If you use it more than one to two minutes in one area, you run the risk of irritating the muscle and developing a bruise.

Ah, a Yoga Bolster

We spend so much time with our bodies forward, our neck down, and our arms in front. This causes sore necks, strained backs, and tight chest muscles. And, over time, this is what causes rounded shoulders and a neck-forward posture. It’s essential and therapeutic to open up the front of our body to counterbalance the times it’s more closed.

A yoga bolster offers an effective way to open up our chest, ribs and core. It is a soft, yet supportive, round cotton cylinder that you lie on. I typically relax on it with my arms straight out to the sides, or bent at 90-degree angles. When you’re tight, this position feels oh so good. This short video by Mai Trainer shows how to use it.

When lying on the bolster, you will feel your chest, armpits, and abdomen loosen, alleviating the tightness that may have been pulling you forward. It also provides a relaxing moment to just unwind.

What is an Occipital Pad?

All that screen time and sitting can tighten our necks and suboccipital muscles. The suboccipital muscles are a grouping of muscles located on each side of the back of the neck just below the base of the skull. These muscles are responsible for posture and movements between your skull and top vertebrae. When they become tight, it can cause headaches and pain in your neck, shoulders and upper back.

Hands down, the occipital pad is my favorite way to release this tension. The Pivotal Therapy Occipivot is made in Tennessee and is recommended by chiropractors. I’ve had mine for years and recommend it over less-expensive models that are less firm and not as effective. You lie on the floor and place the wedged dense-foam block under your neck and suboccipital muscles. Gently move around to find the tight muscles and rest on the pad. It offers a myofascial release and trigger point relief.

Tennis Anyone?

Tennis balls offer an inexpensive, portable self-massaging tool to work out the kinks in a more targeted fashion. The ball acts like a small foam roller, loosening soft tissue, releasing muscle tension, and increasing blood flow. To use it, place the tennis ball under your sore body part, typically the back, quads, and buttocks. Move around gently until the ball presses against your tight muscle. Apply pressure to the point where you feel it’s therapeutic, but not too hard.

The tennis ball is also excellent for massaging your feet, rolling the ball under your foot from heel to toe. When running the ball along your inner arch, press as hard as you can tolerate. Tension in our feet often influences soreness we feel in our legs, so relieving tension has benefits beyond our feet.

Toe Separator and Stretcher

For those who wear closed-toe shoes or stand a lot, you may be dealing with the discomfort of bunions or sore big toes. This was me some years back. A friend recommended a Pilates toe stretcher and I used it each day. The stretcher can help with discomfort, pressure and inflammation. It also helps to strengthen the feet.

To use, you hook the straps on the big toes and gently pull them away from each other, as you keep your heels in place. This video provides a good overview on how to use the toe corrector. Although the stretcher I have is no longer available, the Alayna Premium Toe Straightener is available on Amazon, earning four stars. I found that the combination of this stretcher and, surprisingly, wearing supportive flip flops helped considerably.

Massage Stick

For those times when you just want to chill and watch a movie, a massage stick is a handy, lightweight tool for rolling out the knots in your muscles. It works using the same principles as the foam roller, releasing trigger points, increasing blood flow, and relieving soreness and stiffness. Most weigh less than a pound, so they’re perfect for rolling this and that as you’re sitting. I find it great for my shoulders, quads, shins, and arms.

The Doeplex Muscle Roller Massage Stick is 17.5 inches long and is rated 4.5 stars. This massage stick is designed with freely spinning rollers and grips on each end.

Yoga Strap

The yoga strap was developed to put us in all sorts of contorted yoga poses, but I love it for one thing: stretching hamstrings. Yes, you can plant your foot on a countertop and do the job, but a yoga strap works wonders when your hamstrings are tight and need a bit of loosening. The Gaiam Yoga Strap is made with high-quality cotton and is six feet long.

To use, wrap the strap around your foot, lie on your back, and extend your leg out and above you, holding the strap taut. Hold the strap and pull it towards you until you feel the desired stretch. As you deepen this stretch, you’ll expand your range over time.

Rather than have your gear stuck in a closet, keep them out and visible so you’re more apt to use them. If the tools are in sight, they get used and quickly become an integral part of your routine. Goodbye, tight muscles. Hello, muscle recovery.

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