How familiar are you with the Marc Pro device?
If the answer is "not very" and you value fitness and performance then you're hopefully in for a treat.
The Marc Pro is a tool you need to at least be familiar with going forward for one powerful reason. It's shifting our expectations of what's possible with rehab and recovery.
Without wanting to sound too over the top, the Marc Pro has the very real potential to revolutionize aspects of the medical and athletic industries.
So let's explore what the Marc Pro has to offer and why it may give you a competitive edge, keep you doing what you love or just enhance your quality of life.
What Is the Marc Pro?
The Marc Pro is an electrical stimulation machine that uses the strategic placement of electrodes to influence muscle and nerve activity.
Originally designed to combat chronic pain, the Marc Pro has become more widely recognized as an elite recovery and rehabilitation tool thanks to its patented non-fatiguing frequency wave.
The machine itself has two pre-programmed settings.
- Low frequency: useful for stimulating muscle contractions in the form of a muscle 'pump'
- High frequency: a stronger frequency able to tetanize muscle - in the form of a sustained contraction, and interrupt pain signals
Many professional athletes across the globe use the Marc Pro to gain a competitive edge. The majority of Major League Baseball Pitchers now adopt the device to improve performance outcomes.
Interestingly, there are also a number of other, more everyday uses for this technology beyond elite sport.
So let's build on these ideas and delve into fourteen everyday benefits of the Marc Pro to revolutionize your rehabilitation and recovery.
Benefits of the Marc Pro
Test these benefits of the Marc Pro out for yourself. I don't think you'll be disappointed.
Optimize Post-Exercise Recovery
One of the Marc Pro's marquee features is its ability to speed up post-exercise recovery. Traditionally, we work hard before letting the body recover. The Marc Pro allows us to optimize this process dramatically.
A large part of the post-workout recovery process is the need to evacuate waste and draw in fresh nutrients via the Lymphatic System. Interestingly, this process is a passive one. The Lymphatic System ultimately requires an active muscle 'pump' to function. This is why we discourage prolonged sitting post-workout in favor of active recovery.
However, the sedentary demands of the modern lifestyle can often make a movement-rich day difficult. This is where the Marc Pro can help. We can use its patented non-fatiguing frequency wave to create an active muscle pump for long periods of time post-exercise. This can turn your more passive moments into active recovery, having you better prepared to go hard again the next day.
Related: Here are twelve other ways to optimize your post-workout recovery.
Speed up Swelling Removal
Similarly, we can use the very same mechanism to expedite the removal of swelling post-injury.
This is an absolute game-changer for Physiotherapists (Physical Therapists), sports trainers and athletes alike.
Clinically, swelling can linger for weeks post-injury. And the longer it hangs around the more likely we are to see extra pain, disuse muscle atrophy, tissue stiffness and overall poor function and quality of life.
But not anymore.
The Marc Pro's ability to stimulate an active muscle contraction without fatigue can optimize this process over a long period of time. And with this comes faster post-injury rehabilitation times.
Constant movement is often impractical, particularly in the evening, so it's hugely favorable to have a device that can do this for you.
Decrease the Need for Pain Medication
As mentioned earlier, the Marc Pro's origin was chronic pain. But it also has broader benefits for pain. Its high frequency utilizes the Gate Theory to short-circuit pain signals.
The Gate Theory suggests non-painful stimuli can override painful stimuli.
For example, take the last time you stubbed a toe or bumped your head. It's likely your immediate response was to rub the area. Rubbing is an attempt to short-circuit those pain signals by introducing non-painful ones - just like the Marc Pro.
By using non-painful electrical signals we have the potential to create natural, medication-free pain relief.
Just remember your pain is there for a reason. The Marc Pro has the potential to help manage pain and reduce its impact on your life, but you still need to address the cause of your pain eventually.
Related: Understand pain and its role in Fibromyalgia
De-stiffen Spinal Joints
Interestingly, we can also use the Marc Pro to de-stiffen the joints of your back.
We can create specifically targeted micro-movement at these stiff joints by stimulating the muscles over the top. Spending time doing this can free up those stiff segments over time.
The Marc Pro is useful for reducing long-term spinal stiffness. However, like pain, spinal stiffness is also there for a reason. Any attempt to eliminate spinal stiffness must be met with a shift in your postural awareness and execution of better shapes. Adding strength to the mix will only make things better again.
Reduce the Impact of DOMS
The hallmark of a challenging workout or something new is next-day muscle soreness. This delayed onset of muscle soreness, or DOMS, is seen as a natural part of the recovery process.
It's directly influenced by a number of things including the quality of your recovery. So it makes sense the Marc Pro can provide benefit here as well.
Clinically, the further down the recovery timeline you can be before going to bed the less intense the severity and duration of DOMS seems to be.
Like most natural processes that seem inconvenient or uncomfortable - pain, swelling, DOMs, etc, we don't necessarily want to stop them in our quest for better results. Instead, we want to help the body through these scenarios as swiftly as possible.
With the Marc Pro, we can lessen the impact of DOMs by having you better recovered before going to bed. Furthermore, it can continue to help your next day recovery - decreasing the extent of its impact on your day.
Practice Your Body's Ability to Remain Calm
If you're familiar with Your Wellness Nerd, it's likely you've heard the name Wim Hof mentioned. For those unaware, he's a highly impressive man, doing exceptionally impressive things. In short, he's developed a way to utilize deep breathing and cold exposure to consciously control his physiology. And his Wim Hof Method has the insane potential to shape the future of health and wellness.
A nuance of his method is the ability to use deep, controlled breathing to tolerate challenging stimuli like the cold.
Interestingly this is another benefit of the Marc Pro. We can toggle the intensity to challenge our tolerance to discomfort while remaining calm.
The intensity of the Marc Pro is linear. The higher it goes, the greater and more intense the muscular response. Despite being capped at nine, the higher intensities may not feel as comfortable for some as it will others.
However, you can explore the outer edges of your comfortable tolerance by practicing slow, controlled deep breathing.
Controlling your breath in the face of challenging stimuli can eventually train your stress response. More importantly, you can lower your baseline. This is highly useful if you are quick to anger or anxiety, easily stressed or just looking to improve your threshold for, and tolerance of pain.
Related: Learn more than a dozen incredible everyday uses for the Wim Hof Method
Replace the Need to Ice an Injury
The Marc Pro is also a powerful substitute for icing an injury.
There's a growing concern within the medical and athletic communities that icing an injury may actually delay the healing process - not speed it up. And if we are to remove the RICE protocol altogether we need a suitable substitute.
The Marc Pro is a strong candidate for this due to its ability to de-congest and re-perfuse tissue without creating muscle fatigue.
In short, it has the ability to optimize the body's pre-programmed healing response when icing may get in the way.
Clinically, the faster we progress through the swollen stage the faster we can reduce pain, increase post-injury function and expedite our return to full activity. And the Marc Pro may just be a natural, relatively consequence-free solution.
Buffer the Consequences of Sitting
Sitting is the antithesis of everything our musculoskeletal system needs to function smoothly - especially when trying to rehabilitate or recover. Its ability to stiffen muscles and joints and promote congestion is unsurpassed in modern society. This is thanks in part to the sheer amount of time we spend glued to a chair each day.
This is where the Marc Pro's non-fatiguing frequency wave again comes in handy. It's the ability to actively pump away congestion and keep your tissues fresh while you work, sit on the couch or commute that's highly beneficial.
The need to stand up and physically move your body is clearly still the priority. However, the Marc Pro gives you a great alternative for those moments when you can't get up and move.
Prevent Loss of Muscle Activation Post-Injury
Another current hallmark of any musculoskeletal injury is the eventual loss of muscle strength and activation. This is usually the consequence of prolonged disuse and the ongoing presence of pain and swelling.
However, the Marc Pro's ability to keep tissue and fluid moving means we can limit any secondary muscular side-effects.
Importantly, this means we can ultimately reduce time spent retraining and re-activating muscle post-injury. Not because the Marc Pro reclaims this function faster (it's pretty good though), but it can stop you from losing it in the first place.
Combat Lymphedema
With all this talk of pumping away congestion, it makes perfect sense the Marc Pro can benefit those with Lymphedema.
Lymphodema is a condition where the natural function of the Lymphatic system breaks down as a result of surgery, cancer, trauma, infection, etc.
These musculoskeletal and medical issues do not create extra congestion but compromise the Lymphatic system's ability to remove that congestion, allowing it to pool.
The Marc Pro allows us to optimize the available function of the Lymphatic System and help reduce the impact of any associated symptoms.
Speed Up Recovery Post-Surgery
Another benefit of the Marc Pro is the ability to speed up recovery from Orthopedic surgery.
Many are bedridden in the days post-operation - in part due to swelling, pain, and expectations of the need to rest.
However as world-renowned rehab specialist and creator of Mobility WOD - Kelly Starrett suggests, if you're not ahead of your swelling in 24 hours after surgery, you're behind.
And for an athlete hoping for the fastest return to activity, this can make all the difference.
Clearly you want to make sure those electrodes aren't over any metal implants or replacements, but you can certainly activate surrounding muscles for hours on end. This is a huge advantage over traditional post-operative programs.
Optimize Surgery 'Prehab'
Similar to its post-surgical benefits, the Marc Pro can also assist in bringing much-needed surgery forward.
In cases where surgery is needed after a traumatic injury - like an ACL rupture or broken bone, better outcomes are achieved if surgery is initially delayed. This gives the surrounding tissue time to recover from the initial trauma before undergoing more during the operation. It also allows us to get any swelling under control.
The Marc Pro's ability to expedite the removal of swelling can have an athlete under the knife much sooner, opening up the potential for swifter post-op recovery and return to sport.
Prompt the Right Muscles to Fire
We've discussed how the Marc Pro can limit the loss of muscle activation and function post-injury. Interestingly it can also be used to reactivate uninjured muscles as well.
Clinically, the modern world leaves many of us a little asymmetrical. And with this comes certain deactivated muscles. With the Marc Pro on high, we can strategically activate these muscles when normally they may not.
For example; low back dysfunction often renders the buttock muscles a little sleepy. And often on one side. Adding the electrodes to the area and turning up the intensity when squatting is a novel way to re-teach the body how and when to function.
After those maximal, sustained contractions we can then easily switch the settings back to low and help optimize recovery.
Loosen Tight Muscles
Yet another benefit of the Marc Pro is its ability to loosen tight muscles.
We've covered the best way to stretch using a power band and the PNF model before, and the Marc Pro has the potential to be PNF on steroids.
The PNF technique suggests we need to maximally engage tight muscles in order for them to maximally release. This goes beyond just passively holding a stretch and hoping it gives.
And this is where the Marc Pro can help. If you place the electrodes on a tight area, switch the frequency to high and turn up the intensity, you will strongly contract the muscle.
Maintain this intensity (comfortably of course) and the muscle will begin to relax in a matter of seconds.
Here's Brian Mackenzie of Power Speed Endurance demonstrating this effect.
As Brian explains, just make sure you spend a little time on low afterward to reduce the potential for any treatment soreness.
Please note, we do not speak on behalf of the Marc Pro company, nor is this a paid promotion. We're just a fan of what the Marc Pro can do.
However, if you are interested in purchasing the Marc Pro to optimize your rehab or recovery, consider using our unique discount code: YWN for 5-10% off your purchase price. We will receive a small fee at no extra cost to you.
