I picked up a pair of Mag Mobility balls last week, and I’ve been playing with them every day (yeh, yeh…I laugh it up). If you’ve spent any time tooling around on my Youtube channel, you know that I’m a sucker for jamming lacrosse balls into tender parts of my body in an effort to reduce pain and gain mobility (I don’t care if that doesn’t make sense to you. It works).
I can work some magic with a single $3.00 lacrosse ball, but they do have their shortcomings. For one, there are some areas of the body that are best attacked with two balls; namely the erector spinae along the back, the sternocleidomastoids in the posterior neck, the upper trapezius muscles, the forearm extensors, and the hamstrings (though the monkey bars of death work pretty well as a workaround).
There are several different “mobility” devices out there that serve as self-myofascial release (SMR) tools, resembling two lacrosse balls pinned side-by-side. These devices are affectionately known as “peanuts”, and whether you buy one like Dr. Kelly Starrett’s Gemini, or make your own by tying two together with duct tape or voodoo floss, you’ll find that they’re quite effective at ungluing tacky tissue. That said, they’re pretty specialized; you can hit all the hard to reach places I listed earlier, but what about the rest of your body? Sure, there are worse problems in life than having to un-tape and re-tape two lacrosse balls on a semi-routine basis, but I couldn’t name one.
The other beef I have with single lacrosse ball SMR usage is the issue of trapping the ball to the wall while you try to hammer out scapular stiffness and knotty traps. I’ve become quite good at it over the years, but the need to completely re-position the ball every 10 seconds gets old after a while. Products like the Rogue Supernova power rack add-on accessory are a tempting purchase, but again, it’s a one-trick pony (a $65 one-trick pony).
Ok, so we have our two needs; a lacrosse ball that can be transformed into two balls (hehe), or split into one on demand, and a ball that will stay put while you’re trying to smash it into your back.
Balls stuck together in “peanut” form.
In walk Mag Mobility balls to save everyone’s day!
These balls offer a simple, but elegant solution: heavy duty magnets. Each ball contains a magnet that allows you to join them together into a peanut, or slap it to your power rack (I’ve also used it on my refrigerator successfully) for some scap grinding fun.
Mag Mobility ball mounted to my power rack and ready for heavy petting.
The balls are very easy to separate, but the magnets are still strong enough to hold together in peanut form, even while applying very heavy pressure on the edge of my forearm extensors. I wish the magnet was just a hair more powerful when used on my powder-coated rack, but it holds up well enough to do all the damage I’m looking to do to myself…still beats the heck out of trying to free-roll it against a wall (like trying to put a dog in a bath tub…).
On the Mag Mobility site, they demo the ball on a barbell, performing one of the Supple Leopard’s barbell trap smashes. I didn’t have much luck with this while using my standard Olympic barbell. The ball kept sliding around. That said, it worked great with my rectangular Swiss bar.
The asking price on deez balls is $34.99, which may seem a little high for two magnet-stuffed lacrosse balls, but if you were to make you’re own, you probably wouldn’t be too far south of their dollar amount. Plus, I’ve already gone over the price of similar mobility gear on the market, and considering their versatility, they’re right in the sweet spot.
I really love these things, and my clients and kids have gotten a kick out of them as well. If you’re interested in picking up a pair, check them out at the Mag Mobility site