A recorded discussion (YouTube) about choosing between clinical and portable shockwave therapy devices for chiropractic practice. Speakers compare the flagship clinical unit (Mark 3) and a portable unit (Mark V), explaining tradeoffs: clinical units offer greater longevity and easier part replacement while portable units serve traveling clinicians. They describe three target uses—surface-level trigger-point/pain relief (gentler/faster settings), deeper regenerative stimulation (slower, deeper settings), and noted penetration depths: their devices reach up to 8 cm while competitors range from 4–12 cm. Practical workflow recommendations (when to use each unit in-clinic) are included.
Questions this video answers
Mark 3 (clinical flagship) and Mark V (portable model).
Up to 8 cm (they state some competitors go up to 12 cm or stop at 4 cm).
Uploaded/created by Jeff Langmaid on November 21, 2025.
Chapters
And it sells itself. When you get somebody better in one visit, they're like, how do I do more of this doc? You finally found the thing that's going to do it. And I think one of the biggest pieces of feedback we get is like, why aren't we teaching this? Yeah.
Right.
And thankfully the answer is we are now. All right. Right. We're 40 years behind, you know, the European system, but we're finally learning about it in school because it deserves its day in the market. It deserves to be a part of an option for our patients that's non invasive.
Yeah. And if I'm not mistaken, Shockwave Centers of America, two different units.
Yeah.
What's the difference between the two?
Nice thing is there's very little. We built our flagship, which is our clinical model, which we call the Mark three. I'm a super marvel nerd and so I named them after Iron man suits. But the Mark 3 is the first perfect unit, the one that actually works well for him and he crushes it in one of the movies. And then we have our portable model which is the Mark V, which he carries around the suitcase in the second movie. Um, but we created the second unit, that portable unit for the clinic, the clinician on the go. So pts and kairos who will go to events and they need to actually have it with them. When you go smaller form factor, you give up some niceties when it comes to the longevity of the device. Yep. So if you're a higher volume doc or the machine stays in the office 100% of the time, the clinical one is going to be the better choice for longevity. Easier to swap parts out in the future because it's one of those things like pretty much every other technology is that things will wear out over time and how easy is it to change out and how often do you need to do it will make or break the decision making process. Right. A lot of our providers will go with clinical and then they'll end up with a portable one as their second unit. Yeah. Right. And for me, I use the clinical one in its own room with my consult stuff and then the portable one comes out with me. If I need to wheel it up to my, my semi open adjusting area, I can do a quick trigger point therapy or I can do a quick elbow that doesn't disrupt the flow of everything. But if I'm doing like a hip and a low back and stuff like that, I may take them to that separate room back there. So some of it's going to depend on the practice we have Independent contractors and mobile Cairos to have the portable one. Of course that makes total sense clinical value wise. They're going to be the same. The how they produce the shockwave is going to be the same. They use the same handles. It's all about how often am I going to use it and where is it going to be actually utilized the most? Yep.
What haven't I asked that you think is really important for docs to know?
Well, what can we do with shockwave? What are the parameters and where we would use it? Where wouldn't we use it? So there's three major items that we can target with the device. One, at the most shallow, which is going to be your trigger point and just your pain relieving aspect of Shockwave. So when I look at the device, I'm going with a faster and a more gentle shockwave because I don't need it to penetrate very deep. Right. Our devices penetrate up to 8cm deep. Some other devices on the market go up to 12, some of them stop at 4. But depth of penetration is important for safety. For what kind of patients can I see? Which ones can I not see with it? Right. Um, and so for us, if I'm doing a, like I said, a gentle one, that's surface level, awesome, that's easy. Takes two or three minutes. Then you get into a little bit deeper and a little less fast and it's going to be that stimulation of healing. And so that's the regenerative aspect of shockwave. Right. And so that's where we're, we're targeting tissue that can replicate itself to repair and make sure that we're getting full healing in an area that may not have healed properly the first time or something that just needs a little boost in the right direction.
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