After 21 years as a (middling) long-distance runner, I’ve made peace with the fact that some part of my body will always be sore, tight, injured, or in desperate need of massaging. I’ve spent hundreds of hours poking myself with lacrosse balls, squeegeeing all of my limbs with a foam roller, and bending myself into a pretzel with resistance bands, chasing that elusive rush that comes with finally untwisting a knot, but nothing ever really seemed to hit that deep aching spot in the muscles.
Relief finally came three years ago when I got the Roll Recovery R8 Deep Tissue Massage Roller—one of our recommended gifts for runners—which is a plastic clamp that looks more like a medieval torture device than a massager. Around my house it is affectionately known as “The Clamp.”
The R8 is a spring-tensioned clamp with grooved rubber rollers on each side that squeeze and massage limbs. It applies so much pressure that some people may find it uncomfortable to use. However, if like me you’re someone who loves deep massages and the kind of poking and prodding that others may even think painful, you might find the R8 to be an excellent self-massage tool.
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