Ranked: Mobility Tools That Will Change Your Life and When to Use Them

Illustration by Sophia Mitropoulos

We all know that recovery is just as important- if not more important- than training is. Proper recovery ensures our bodies are well restored from the training hours we put into it, and ready to take on another heavy day. Without a strong recovery practice in the long run, your body will be coming after you for all the damage you’ve done and none that you’ve helped it repair from. Snatch Magazine has ranked by price all the best kept secrets of recovery in the fitness world, and we’re laying them all out for you to learn from.

The Cheapest and most accessible: Lacrosse Ball

Coming in at around $8, this is one of the cheapest and simplest recovery tools you can find on the market. Why a lacrosse ball? Their density allows for you to lean your entire bodyweight on the ball, letting the ball do the work of digging into your muscles and fascia to help create some release.

VIBRATING FOAM ROLLER

Does your foam roller need to vibrate? No, it doesn’t, but it probably helps since this device for some reason is the easiest one to half-ass. How do you half-ass a foam roller? You simply don’t put any pressure on the thing you’re rolling. The vibration helps to relax the muscle so you can convince yourself it’s worth it to put your entire bodyweight on that super tight knot in your quad. Really, it is. It’ll only get worse if you don’t.

Floss Bands

If you’ve ever strained something you know the feeling of pain that warrants the use of floss bands. Sometimes it seems like they’re doing more harm than good, but by tightly wrapping joints with floss bands, going through a series of movements, and unwrapping the bands, you allow your body to move a ton of blood through the area which almost always provides some sort of instant relief. When used regularly, these bands can help maintain mobility in your joints. They’re fantastic to use on knees, wrists, elbows, and ankles before your warm up, and even a hip if you’re really feeling tightness. If you take the time to floss band before your training sessions, you will notice why this is such a highly used elite tool.

Cupping Set

This thing will change your dang life. Many massage tools are adding pressure, cupping is an ancient Chinese and Egyptian medical practice that aids the treatment of many ailments, but is incredibly helpful for an athlete. By separating the skin from the fascia, it allows blood to flow through the area which promotes movement in the body. These cups will often times leave you with large bruise-looking circular marks, but these marks are not painful, but instead indicative of quality of blood circulation in the area. Traditional Chinese Medicine explains that darker marks mean the area isn’t getting as much circulation, and other colors may mean more stagnation. Cupping often can have an immediate effect on the body, although may not be as long lasting as other rehab practices.

Acupuncture

While this isn’t something you can buy and treat yourself, if you haven’t had acupuncture as an athlete and you aren’t terribly afraid of needles, this is something I HIGHLY recommend! Acupuncture has long been regarded as a beneficial recovery tool and a good acupuncturist could arguably replace all of your other modalities if possible to meet with them often.

Like cupping, Acupuncture comes from Traditional Chinese Medicine but has often been put behind an expensive copay in doctors offices. There is, however, a movement going on called Working Class Acupuncture that is working to create affordable treatment facilities, and helping to create programs like People’s Organization of Community Acupuncture (POCA) which provides affordable, sliding scale acupuncture in a group setting that allows for more patients to be treated at once. It’s a wonderful place for a nap and once post-COVID allows I highly recommend you try it!

Car Buffer

Okay, okay, I know what you’re thinking: “a car buffer?!” Yes! A car buffer! This is a budget friendly approach to a massager. It’s similar to one you may buy at Bed Bath and Beyond, but this is much stronger for those hefty quads of yours. Sit down on the floor near an outlet and turn this bad boy on and apply it on an angle to your sore legs and watch how quickly it helps to massage the muscle looser. Perfect (and well placed) for a garage gym, although for a period of time I kept mine in my living room for when I stretched in the evenings.

Gua Sha Scraping

Alright, I’d like to take this opportunity to clarify that many mobility tools are best used by a Physical Therapy professional, HOWEVER these tools specifically have been Branded and are behind a paywall of Certification for PTs to use in certain instances, and as an underinsured person who spent many of my potential earning hours in the gym weightlifting, I had to find other alternatives. This is the handlebar, and an absolute goldmine for helping to reduce those quad knots. Used with massage cream on bare skin, scraping the muscles away from the heart creates micro-traumas where the cells have to come and repair. This may cause bruising depending on how tight you are, but will absolutely help loosen those knots, arguably better than anything else.

Wanna Spend Money? Get a Theragun

While the efficacy of a TheraGun is yet to be confirmed, this works similarly to the car buffer, just in a more targeted area. Think of it like a lacrosse ball on the end of the car buffer. It feels amazing if you can have someone else do it to your traps and back, but it isn’t an ideal self-massage tool. It’s a percussion massager and it’s essentially a jigsaw and can be built with an actual jigsaw for under $50, but people love the name brand so here it is.

Compex

Now this is real elite recovery. Having a Compex, or a TENS unit allows you to do your own stim therapy between training sessions. This sends small electrical currents through the pads to targeted body parts and helps relieve pain in your muscles. This can be incredibly helpful in situations not only for training recoveries, but in the case of an injury, TENS units can aid in physical therapy and recovery as you retrain muscles.

Inversion Table

Inversion tables are like the thrones of spinal traction. Strap your feet into the table and using the weight of your arms and the physics of the table, you slowly ease yourself upside down. If you relax in this position, you can create spinal traction which every strength athlete desires from all too many hours under the spinal compression of a barbell on your body. This helps create space between your spinal discs and aids in relieving pressure on your nerves and muscles, as well as realigning your spine. These do tend to take up a bit of space, and some can be folded and put away, but in my opinion, the steadier the device while upside down the better.

Warm Up Your Bench Arch with these Yoga Wheels

If you’re a powerlifter especially, you know the importance of your spinal flexibility for your bench press. These yoga wheels can be used for back bends in your yoga practice, or can be used as stepping stones while you warm up for your bench arch. Unlike a foam roller, yoga wheels are meant to be used only in the center of your spine and help increase flexibility. They of course can also be used in other yoga poses and flows.

REALLY Got Money? Normatec for you baby

The most expensive thing on our list by a long shot but highly worth it is the Normatec. These space-boot looking things are air pressure massagers that you wear in a timed cycle. They feel like wearing a bunch of children’s arm pool floaties stitched together with pressure cycling through each section. It helps reduce swelling, pain, and soreness and releases toxins from the lymphatic system. These are an absolute luxury item and for many are better suited as a shared device in the gym, but if you can afford to have these as your personal devices more power to you! This is the leg attachment which is perfect for sitting and watching TV, although Normatec sells other attachments as well.

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