I’m sure that most of you have seen or heard of the Bellecore body buffers because a few of the pro OCR athletes use them and they are at many of the American races. Naturally I was curious and wanted to find out more about them and see if it really worked as well as I had heard. On Bellecore’s website they claim it:
“delivers a powerful deep tissue massage pre workout to warm up muscles and post workout to help athletes soothe sore muscles, help with muscle recovery and lactic acid release.”
That was very intriguing to me because I’d love a tool to help me recover and to help relieve the pain from intense workouts or nagging injuries. If something could help me recover quicker or even prevent chronic injuries, without having to spend $100’s on massages or physio, then I would be very happy.
Before I get into my thoughts I want to explain a little more about what the Bellecore Babybelle is like. At first glance many people think it is really just a car buffer because that is actually what it looks like. It is quite different though, most of all the Babybelle spins in a very different way, it actually spins and at the same time it moves side to side. This type of movement is very different and it is designed to massage your muscles not wax your car.
Now that you have an idea of what it does and how it works lets get into what I loved about it and what I didn’t like so much about the Babybelle.
Likes:
- Wakes up your muscles when they are cold and gets them ready for a workout.
- Shakes out the pain and makes them feel completely refreshed and ready to go.
- Grinds out deep nasty knots in your muscles using the edge of the buffer instead of just the face.
- Eases any pain or soreness in your joints (because you can actually use it on most joints).
- Relaxes whatever muscle I use it on and releases all the tension. Sometimes my muscles are super pissed at me after a workout and are almost totally seized up. The belle core tells them that it’s going to be ok and they just relax again.
Dislikes:
- Shaves the hair off after a while of using it. I use it mostly on my calves so they are bald now.
- It can start to burn the skin if you push too hard and leave it on the same spot for too long.
- The on/off button seems to be in a place that makes it extremely easy to accidentally push all the time. I often accidentally pushed it and turned it on while it was lying on the floor and it would bump and roll around vigorously until I got to turn it off again. It’s not actually a big issue but maybe a little annoying at times if you leave it around plugged in like I do. Maybe an on/off slide switch would have worked a bit better but then again if you don’t leave it plugged in all the time this won’t be an issue.
- The biggest issue I had was that I would sometimes buff my legs after a workout or even during a workout and if I was wearing compression pants they would be drenched in sweat and that would ruin the pad cover on the buffer. As you can see in the picture below the diference between a new pad and the used one. As soon as I used it on my wet pants the fluff started peeling off. Later on I actually read the instructions and it says to only use directly on dry skin so that was my fault. Now you have been warned though so don’t be using it when you are all sweaty unless you don’t care about replacing the pads more often.
** I did not experience any issues with quality, craftsmanship, or any issues like that in the three months or so that I used it.
Those are the things that I found I loved the best about it and the few things that I disliked about the Babybelle. As you can see there weren’t many “real” issues with it, unless hair removal is a really big issue for you, but let’s be honest, I bet most guys shave their chest anyway!
To give you an idea of how I use the Babybelle now, this is what my typical warmup or recovery is like. I like to combine it with my rollertek roller because the roller will put a lot of pressure and really grind out the knots but when my muscles are SUPER knotted and tight a hard core session of rolling can almost make them more sore the next day (like a really intense deep tissue massage or graston scraping). It would be difficult to keep rolling day after day if I ever let my legs get that bad because they would be SO freaking tender, but adding the body buffing after an intense session of rolling would totally relax my legs again and let them recover much better. Now I will warm up and loosen my muscles for a couple minutes with the body buffer, then I will really put the pressure on with the roller, then I will go back to the buffer for a minute or two to loosen it up again, then to finish it off I will use the edge of the buffer to really beat out the knot a bit more. That will leave my muscles feeling way more refreshed and loosened up before or after a workout.
Now for the real question, is it worth the money? The Babybelle isn’t exactly the cheapest thing you could buy as far as recovery tools go, but when you start looking into any of those “self-massagers” then it really isn’t that pricey.
For me personally I would say that it is absolutely worth it. I have had some nagging injury issues that I just couldn’t seem to fix with other methods or devices but ever since I started using the Babybelle my hamstring issues have completely gone away. Now I can’t exactly say if it is because it healed the problem or it just allowed me to warmup better before a workout and recovering better after, but something helped a lot! To me, anything that can prevent me a trip or two or eight to physio is worth every penny in my books. Physio and massages can really add up and aren’t as convenient as something in your own home so I will always choose a device that helps prevent that need to go to physio or something like that.
If you have any questions about the Babybelle don’t hesitate to let me know or better yet the people at Bellecore would be happy to answer them as well!
Photo credit: Tanner Farenik, Spartan Race
Tanner Farenik is a husband, father of two girls, avid OCR athlete, blogger, product reviewer and contributor to 3-Seconds.com
