How the Mebak 3 Massage Gun Helped Me Keep Playing Golf

When I was fifty-two, my doctor told me I had a bulging disc in my lower back. His advice was simple: stay active, keep moving, and don't let it turn you into a man who sits in the recliner all day. The problem was that the thing I loved most, golf, was also the thing that left me stiffest the morning after a round. Not during the round. Eighteen holes were fine and I could walk the course with my push cart. The bill always came the next day, when I'd hang on to the kitchen counter just to pull my boots on.

I tried the usual fixes first. Stretching in the garage before I left for the course, a heating pad on the couch at night, even a foam roller that my wife Linda bought for me and that ended up leaning against the laundry room wall after a week. None of it was bad advice. It just wasn't specific enough. What I needed was something that could find the exact knot that was tight and work on it, and that's what sent me looking at the Mebak 3 nearly six months ago.

I'd seen the younger guys at my municipal course using massage guns after their rounds, and I figured if one could help a thirty-year-old who plays twice a week, it might do something for a sixty-one-year-old with a decade of stiffness. I read more reviews than I care to admit and got lost in a lot of specs. What sold me on the Mebak 3 was the battery life and a set of attachments that didn't require a manual the size of a phone book.

Here's what I can tell you after six months of using it, typically four or five nights a week. A massage gun is not a cure for a bad back. I'm not a doctor and I'm not going to pretend to be one, and if your pain is sharp or radiating down your leg, stop reading and go see someone who studied for this. But for the kind of deep, dull stiffness that shows up the morning after eighteen holes, the Mebak 3 works better than anything else I've tried. Most nights it doesn't even need to be plugged in, because the battery lasts longer than my patience for charging things.

For a decade, the morning after a round meant hanging on to the counter to pull my boots on. Six months in, that's not how my mornings go anymore.

The way I use it is simple, and I think that's why it stuck where the foam roller didn't. After a round I take ten minutes in the garage. I start with the round head on my lower back at the lowest speed, just to let the muscle know I'm paying attention. Then I work down to the hamstrings, because that's where a lot of the pull starts when you walk eighteen holes. I don't press hard. The gun does the work. It took me a couple of weeks to learn how much pressure was right, and the same advice my physical therapist gave me applies here: if it hurts, back off. You are not trying to tenderize a roast.

The results showed up slowly, which made them easy to miss at first. Then I realized I wasn't reaching for the Advil before bed as often, and Linda asked one morning whether I'd stopped taking it on purpose. I hadn't. It just wasn't on my mind. The stiffness that used to follow a round still shows up sometimes, especially after a long drive to the course or a round in the wind. But the version where I'd move around the kitchen like a man who'd been folded in half, that version is mostly gone. I played eighteen on Saturday with an old friend from the survey crew, walked every hole, and Monday morning I laced up my boots standing up, without holding on to anything.

One thing that surprised me is how often I reach for it on days I'm not playing at all. Yard work on Saturday, a long afternoon in the truck, even a day of sitting too long at the kitchen table. The hamstring head does as much for my back as the one I use on my back itself, because a lot of my tightness starts south of the problem. I keep the Mebak 3 on a shelf next to my golf shoes so I don't have to hunt for it, and the charger lives in a drawer in the garage, wrapped around the cord keeper that came with it.

I'll be straight about the downsides so you don't wonder later. The Mebak 3 is not quiet, and if you use it in the living room while someone else watches television, you will be asked to move to the garage. It's also heavy enough that I don't carry it in my golf bag. It lives at home, and that's where I need it. And you have to be honest with yourself about the difference between tight muscles and an injured back. The gun is for the first one. For the second one, talk to your doctor. I did, and the plan we landed on just happens to include a massage gun on a shelf in the garage.

What I'd Tell You If We Were Sitting at My Kitchen Table

If you were sitting across from me right now with a cup of coffee, here's what I'd tell you. Don't buy a massage gun expecting it to fix your back. That's not what it does, and you'll be disappointed if you think it is. What it does is get you through the mornings after the things you love, so you can keep doing the things you love. My doctor told me to stay active, and staying active for me means playing golf, and playing golf means keeping my back loose enough to walk to the first tee without wincing. The Mebak 3 is the best tool I've found for that job. It is not a cure, and I'm not sure there is one for a back like mine. But I'm sixty-one, I still play two or three times a week with a fourteen handicap, and I no longer dread the day after. That's the whole point.