Ice, Ice BABY! This is a very common question and one we can’t wait to help you with. The idea of how to use ice to best treat your injuries is one we hear over and over again. Questions like: How do I use ice? Is ice therapy even a good thing? Does it even work? These are all amazing questions.

If you want to learn more about some of the specific physiology and the good, the bad and the ugly about ice therapy vs heat therapy, then give a read of The Ultimate Guide to Ice vs Heat for Injuries. In The Ultimate Guide we go deeper into the underlying reasons why icing may or may not be the modality of choice for you.

That being said, assuming ice is the right fit for you, let’s dive right in! First off, check out our video on exactly how to use ice for the best affect:

So How Long Should I Ice It For

Generally speaking, we recommend when applying ice locally to leave it on the target area for 10-15 minutes tops.

This is for a few reasons. The first one is that any longer than that can actually damage the skin! Second, if the tissue gets cold enough, the body will sense this and actually begin increasing the amount of blood flow to that area (the opposite of our goal when using cold therapy) to attempt to warm the area.

How Should I Apply It

We are going to apply either wet or dry ice to the area. What’s the difference? Wet ice refers to the placing of ice directly onto your skin, or on a surface (like a towel) that has been soaked through. This type of ice treatment will transfer the cold temperature much faster and is often less comfortable. It is also riskier when it comes to damaging the skin. Dry ice refers to the use of a cold source (ie. ice pack or bag of peas) separated from the body by a dry towel or sheet to slow the conduction of temperature between the cold source and your skin. This type of treatment takes a little longer to cool down the area but is safer overall.

For obvious reason, our preference and recommendation is the dry ice therapy.

Do You Currently Have an Injury?

If you currently have an injury, we are doing our best to create online physiotherapy programs to help you achieve your goals! You can check out all of our current programs and hopefully find one that helps you!

We also have a ton of free resources to help you work through any injuries that you may be dealing with.  But if there is anything we can do to help, or you’re looking for information we don’t have, please let us know!

This is the quad grinder. The goal of this one is to see if we can improve the flexibility from the front side of the quadriceps muscles in the front of the thigh down towards the knee to decrease tension on the kneecap.

To start with you’re going to need a foam roller, a lacrosse ball, a water bottle, something that you can get some flexibility to work out on. I’m going to show this with a foam roller.

What we’re going to do is lay on our belly, nice and tall. Pin this foot up to balance, and hold nice and solid almost like in a plank position. Now, what you’re gonna do is roll back and forth on all different parts of this quad from the front side to the backside kinda like a cylinder. You’re gonna roll back and forth.

Now, what I want you guys to work on with this is once you find a spot that’s nice and sore if it’s comfortable on your knee you’re gonna then push down, lean your weight on that spot and bend the knee through. Come back down, push away on that spot, bend the knee through.

Now, if that’s too uncomfortable to bend the knee that’s fine just hang on it. You can breathe in, out, and sink further into that. So again, back and forth holding that as you hang out on that pressure, okay? That’s it. So use your roller or your ball. A roller’s gonna give you a little general pressure around. If you get into a ball it’s gonna put a lot more local pressure on it and it’ll be a little bit more tender. Choose your poison and have a good time! Keep moving.

Hey guys, thanks for sticking with us all the way to the end. If you are having knee pain, patella femoral syndrome or something going on there, you have a diagnosis. We created a program just for you. You can head over to physio ready dot com, find our patella femoral syndrome program there and use our promo code ‘move10’. You’ll get $10 off your first program. Hope it helps. Thanks for watching and don’t forget to subscribe.