Ben Greenfield describes a rapid self-directed recovery protocol after acutely tweaking his IT band while running. Over the 48 hours after the injury he combined oral supplements (Phenocane, Capraflex), mechanical support (pat strap placed ~2 inches above the knee, 110% compression pants with ice), manual therapies (rumble-roller foam rolling, portable muscle-massage tool), topical treatments (RockSauce with arnica, Ancient Minerals magnesium oil), and advanced modalities (twice-daily 15–20 minute electrostimulation, 10–15 minutes nightly infrared). He reports being able to run pain-free for 20 minutes 48 hours post-injury before a race 10 days away.
Questions this video answers
48 hours later; he went for a 20-minute run pain-free.
Phenocane: two pills every three hours; Capraflex (Mount Capra): five in the morning and five in the evening.
About 2 inches above the knee.
Two electrostimulation sessions per day, 15–20 minutes each.
About 10–15 minutes each night before bed.
Chapters
Hey, it's Ben Greenfield here. I've got a quick story to tell you. Two days ago I was out for a run and I slipped in the ice, totally tweaked my IT band, which is the ligament that runs on the outside of your knee, and had intense pain. On the outside of my knee. I walked a mile home and was pretty much laid up the rest of the day, almost unable to even bend my knee. I started into the recovery protocol that I'm about to outline to you that evening. Here I am 48 hours later and I actually went for a 20 minute run this morning completely pain free. So I'm going to show you what I did to actually help me to heal as quickly as possible. And I realize that you may not have access to some of the stuff I'm about to show you, but a lot of this stuff you do have access to and anything that you aren't able to get your hands on, I can help you get. Just leave a comment underneath this video or contact me at supportngreenfieldfitness.com and I'll help you out. Because I know that that for people training for a 5k or a marathon or a triathlon, recovering quickly when you get injured can be super, super important to achieving your goal. So I'm going to show you exactly what I did. The first thing is that I started into taking a couple different supplements. Now I'm not all about just popping drugs to make pain go away, but they can make a difference in reducing some of that inflammation. So the first thing that I used was called phenocaine. And phenocain is kind of like the healthy person's version of ibuprofen. It's able to shut down inflammation using essentially what comes out to the same type of things you'd find in like a curry, these natural anti inflammatories like cumin and turmeric. But it is a high, high, very concentrated, potent blend of these things. And I popped two of these every three hours starting just a few hours after I got injured. So I did the phenocaine, it's called phenocaine P H E N O C A N E. The other supplement that I took was called Capraflex, made by a company called Mount Capra. And this has what are called proteolytic enzymes in it as well as glucosamine, chondroitin, fev, garlic, ginger and a bunch of other anti inflammatories that weren't in this one. So I kind of put these two Together for this one, I took five in the morning and five in the evening. So Capriflex and Phenocaine, those are the first two things that I did to help myself heal as quickly as possible. The next thing that I did was I wanted to keep my knee from bending and producing more friction at that joint, while also compressing and allowing as much blood flow to get pumped back up out of that area as possible. So I did two things for that. The first was I put one of these bands about 2 inches above my knee. This is basically called a. Well, it's called a pat strap. You can also get an ACE bandage and use it the same way, but it goes about 2 inches above your knee, especially if you're talking about it. Band friction syndrome works super, super well. I've got a program called bulletproof knee@bulletproofnee.com. this is one of the things I highly recommend in that program. The other thing that I did to keep the blood flowing was I used this compression gear. These are actual compression pants. They're made by a company called 110% and they've got little sleeves in them that you can put ice into. So what I did was I put these pants on, I opened up this sleeve, and I actually dropped ice cubes into this sleeve. The 110% compression gear comes with actual ice packets, but I actually dropped ice in there because I find that that can get to even a lower temperature than these ice packets that the things come with. So I did a combination of the compression pants as well as this band to keep my knees straight and to keep the blood flowing. Okay. So in addition to that, I wanted to work out a lot of the trigger points and the tight fascia that can cause an area to almost go into a spasm once an injury occurs. So I did a comb of foam rolling and I use this thing called a rumble roller. It's a little bit different than a regular foam roller because it has these little ridges that stick out from it. I ran this along my it band and on either side of my knee. And I foam rolled so far four times since I hurt my knee. And you know, we're only talking about like two minute foam roller sessions, but up and down that entire joint. Also, in the car on the way home, because I was out of town after this injury, I used this, which is like a portable massage, like muscle massage tool. And I ran this up and down the outside of the knee there in the car. These are very, very easy to get, and I like to travel with these, I keep them around in case I do get injured or just to keep muscles from getting too tight. So this is called a muscle track. I'll try and put a link to this when I publish this video over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com okay, the next couple of things I'm going to show you are the actual topical treatments that I used. The first was kind of like an icy heat type of thing. The one that I used was called Rock Sauce. It's put out by a company called Rock Tape.
I won't read off all the ingredients to you, but basically one of the primary ingredients, aside from the pain fighting menthol type ingredients, is arnica gel. And arnica has been used for literally thousands of years as a topical anti inflammatory. The other thing that I used was an ancient minerals, magnesium oil. Magnesium kind of competes for calcium on the binding side of the muscle and it keeps the muscle from really tightening up and spasming. It can also improve blood flow to an injured area. So what I did was this stuff a couple times a day as well as magnesium rubbed in three times a day. Finally, the last two things I'm going to show you are kind of fringe, a little bit harder to get your hands on, but they certainly work very, very well. I've been doing two electro stimulation sessions per day for 15 to 20 minutes. I've been using one of these compe electrosym devices. You simply attach a couple wires out of it to these patches that I put on the outside of my knee. You could use it anywhere that's injured. And it sends like this light electro stimulation to the area which improves blood flow and massively decreases pain and leaves the area less likely to spasm and try and protect that knee joint that's injured. And it allowed me to free up range of motion very, very quickly. It actually works quite well when combined with ice because you can deliver a higher electrical current when you're icing the area. And then the last thing that I used was infrared device. This is one that I picked up from actually one of my friends. This was made by a company called Niken. There are other infrared devices that are out there on the market. But essentially what I did was about 10 to 15 minutes of infrared over the area each night before I went to bed to again improve the blood flow to the area by increasing the temperature. And essentially it's similar to what's called a cold laser, if you've heard of that before. It's very popular in some medical clinics for treating pain and So I use this infrared device. Well, so that's it. I know that seems like a ton of stuff. The reason that I kind of went ape nuts with my recovery is because I've got a big race coming up in 10 days. I don't have a day to waste when it comes to getting in my key workouts leading up to that race. So for me, it was very, very important to recover as quickly as possible. So although that may seem kind of extreme and kind of like a ton of different things, ultimately everything that I showed you, really, if you add up the total amount of time that it took me to do all this stuff, it's maybe an hour a day. And here I am, 48 hours later, almost completely pain free and able to run again. So that hopefully shows you how you can use a lot of these recovery tools to help yourself not only bounce back from injuries more quickly, but also just recover more quickly from day to day wear and tear and your daily workouts. So until next time, this is Ben Greenfield. Hoping I've helped you out a little bit. Have a great week.
