Today I have something exciting, a gadget to help you with your run training, that is not even really a gadget. It’s the Black-Board, a device to help out your feet with mobility, strength and speed.
So what is this device?
Basically it’s two pieces of wood that are connected together, it comes with three bars that you connect to the bottom with velcro. By adjusting the bars you can do different exercises.
The idea behind the Black-board is that by doing exercises on the board you create
- more mobility
- better stability
- faster reflex
- overall better performance
Having stronger, more agile feet can make you a faster runner, so with that in mind of course my curiosity was peaked.
The Black-board is developed by a German physiotherapist Lars Grandjot and sports scientist Gregor Stumpf. Through work experience and also Lars having trouble with recovery from a twisted ankle, it caused them to seek for a better solution to workout the foot. After 2 years of development they came out with the Black-Board which looks simple in design, is easy to use and of great benefit for anybody with feet.
It comes with a small manual that has the exercises in it that you can do. For the different exercises you have to switch the bars a couple of time, but this is very simple to do. You only do about 5 reps of the exercises and of course do both feet, so in like 5 minutes you are done and you do that 2 to 3 times a week. You don’t need a lot of space and you won’t break a sweat, so you can really do this anywhere.
The first time I used it I had to read through the manual and see how to place the bars for the different exercises. But it was all really easy to follow along. After I was done I could feel my feet had benefited from this somehow. It felt like I just had a foot massage, a really relaxing feeling. So of course that raised my excitement to see what it would do in the long term.
Now the last couple of weeks I’ve been using it and it hardly costs any time, but I think the benefits it can bring if only that of injury prevention for your feet is so worth it. I actually took it to my own physiotherapist to see what he thought about it and he was really impressed, he tried it out and said he wouldn’t be surprised if in a couple of years it’s a standard item you’ll find at a physiotherapist’s office. When I told him 2 Germans invented it he said that didn’t surprise him, the Germans are always ahead in this field.
Now you might recognize this if you haven’t done foot exercises. I had an injury on my foot in November, then also in my shoulder and my knee. I couldn’t work out much and there was actually like a whole week where I couldn’t even move with my shoulder hurting, so I didn’t do much more than lay on the couch. Now when I don’t exercise my feet get kind of tight and sometimes when I’m laying down and bend my toes, like I’m making a fist with my foot, it would hurt or even start to cramp in my toes, same sometimes with stretching out my toes. If you recognize this, that’s because you’re not exercising or stretching your feet and your toes. Now the Black-board took care of that right away, even after just using it once it felt so much better already.
I’m really happy with the Black-board and the results I see and feel from it. It seems like such a simple device. Specially seeing all the technical gadgets I’m testing at the moment, these are just some pieces of wood, but they’re engineered to do that one thing we often overlook, but can benefit from so immensely and that is to take care of our feet.
If you want to find out more about Black-Board and check it out for yourself you can click here.