I first found out about the Thera Cane in the self-massage book The Trigger Point Therapy Workbook: Your Self-Treatment for Pain Relief, which I highly recommend to everyone!
I personally use it when I have really sore/tight spots from heavy weight training. I also sometimes use it when working on my clients who have really tight, deep muscles/scar tissue from old injuries and accidents.
If your body is full of trigger points then this can be a great tool to use to “iron” them out. In the manual that comes with it, it says you may need to work on a spot up to 20 times a day! If you do have a trigger point(s) that need that much work, you may need to ask yourself why they are they so bad?
It could be due to:
Chronic poor posture (standing/sitting).
Structural problems.
Bad training technique.
Bad lifting technique at work.
Stress and nutritional imbalances/deficiencies.
If you are getting chronic trigger points from any of the above, you will need to address the issue whilst using the Thera Cane to relieve any pain. Otherwise you are just working on the symptom and not the cause.
When you do self-massage on yourself, you tend to put less pressure on the spot that needs to be worked on. This is more so if you have a low pain threshold.
A massage therapist will generally put more pressure on the area that needs to be worked on, having a greater effect on the problem area. Plus it takes no energy from you, as you just have to lie there. But for the most part, the Thera Cane is, in fact, much more effective than using a foam roller, a tennis ball or a medicine ball for self-massage.
Here is a video of me working out a nasty knot on my upper back with the Thera Cane:
In this video you can see what else you can do with the Thera Cane:
Get yourself a Thera Cane here!
On this page there are two other self-massaging products similar to the Thera Cane which will do the same job.