Treatment of pubic bone oedema with DEEP OSCILLATION®: Physiomed Interview with Olympic silver medalist Jonathan Hilbert

Jonathan Hilbert won a silver medal in the 50km walk at the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo. 

PM: Thank you very much for agreeing to this interview. Please introduce yourself briefly.

JH: With pleasure. My name is Jonathan Hilbert, I am 27 years old and come from Mühlhausen in Thuringia. I started athletics in 2004 at the age of 9 and in 2011 I moved to the sports school in Erfurt. I was a runner for a long time, but after a while I switched to walking. I am a multiple German champion in this discipline, have taken part in European and World Championships and then won silver at the Olympic Games last year.

I am now a full-time professional athlete and have therefore already had a few aches and pains. The biggest problem at the moment is this bone marrow oedema on the pubic bone. I was diagnosed with this last year shortly before the Olympics. Before and during the Olympics, my therapist and I tried out many different therapy methods. After the Olympics, the question arose as to what to do next and what other methods were available. Fortunately, I came into contact with PHYSIOMED and deep oscillation through the Olympic training center in Erfurt.

PM: You use the DEEP OSCILLATION® Personal Basic. What indications do you mainly use it for?

JH: For the pubic bone, I always use the program for oedema. If I notice something in other areas, I try that out. On very intensive days, for example after a strength endurance program and additional strength training, I often notice straight away that the muscles are already a bit sore, so I always use the muscle soreness program. That relieves the thighs, or whatever area is affected, a bit.

Yes, I think it's very cool and I'm very impressed with this treatment method because it's very gentle and doesn't always involve high intensity or a high strain on the structure, but is really very pleasant.

It's almost a ritual for me every evening after a long day of training. I then go through these 25 minutes of the oedema program on the pubic bone in front of the TV.

And I really have to say, when I have days where I have trained a lot and do it in the evening, I notice a noticeable difference the next morning compared to when I don't do it in the evening after a very intensive day of training.

My pubic bone problems are now chronic, so it is important at the moment that I remain asymptomatic at a certain level and that it does not get worse. I manage that very well with deep oscillation. Of course, in physiotherapy we also work intensively on the muscle attachments and directly on the symphysis, on the bones, which is also important and right in some ways. But I also think it is good that you can create another component with deep oscillation and that you can do something at home as an athlete without much effort, without having a lot of knowledge and without having to know a lot about it. You have the program, you set it up, you take the thing and you start. It is just very user-friendly and very simple and clear.

I travel a lot to training camps and I carry the device with me all over the world. When I'm at training camp with friends and they have one or two aches and pains, I've lent it out for two or three days over the course of the season. When we stayed in a hotel together, they would always get it and work on their problem areas a bit and were very impressed.

The feedback was always the same, that it's just a very gentle and simple method and that it can be done on the side. You can still read a bit, watch a film or relax and still do something proactive for your health or for regeneration. That's why it's really cool, I have to say.

The control dial is really self-explanatory. And it's also good that there aren't a thousand buttons, just one. And I think if you play around with it three or four times, it's really easy to understand. I have to be honest, when I lent it to someone at a training camp, they didn't really ask me much about it. I just explained it to them briefly. There were no questions. It's much easier than other devices that I've tried out in the past 13 years of competitive sport, so it's great.

PM: What other devices would these be?

JH: We're talking about ultrasound devices, like in physiotherapy or something like that, or I once took a portable ultrasound device home from physiotherapy. Then I'm talking about lymphomas, which are sometimes very difficult to use, where you don't even know "okay, how much pressure should I use now, what is actually still good and what is perhaps too much pressure, too little pressure?" And such mistakes cannot happen with deep oscillation. And then I'm talking about portable shock wave therapy devices that you can take to training camp, and the physiotherapist always had to be there because the settings are all too complicated. And here with deep oscillation everything is preset and there are also these clear program names. If someone tells me as an athlete that I have an oedema, then of course I use this program because that's what it's called. If I have sore muscles, then I use the program for sore muscles, so that's self-explanatory.

PM: How did you first get started with deep oscillation? Did a physiotherapist show you the therapy?

JH: Exactly, I was at physiotherapy and our physiotherapist Sabine Hochfeld from the OSP in Erfurt asked me if I would be interested in trying something new. Yes, and that's how it came about that the three of us met up with Ms. Clauß from PHYSIOMED. She then did it with the gloves, basically having the electrode stuck on and then massaged my abdominal area and adductor area. And it was really very pleasant. I then got in touch with Ms. Clauß and she gave me the device to test.

PM: So you could compare the therapy with the gloves and the one with the hand applicator. Did you notice a difference?

JH: Actually, not really. I even gave the device to my physiotherapist at the training camp. That day I had problems with my flexors after a very intensive training session. The normal massage techniques wouldn't have helped because I would have been in too much pain if I had applied too much pressure. I showed my therapist the device and he used it on three consecutive days. After that, I could definitely feel an improvement, even immediately afterwards. Of course, the sore muscles don't go away immediately, that's logical, but I just noticed that the tone was easing a little, that the structure was a little more supple again and that I could also feel an increased blood circulation.

That's also what I notice again and again in the pubic bone region, that it actually gets warm during the deep oscillation therapy. I really notice that there is also an increased blood circulation.

Well, I have to say that a massage with gloves from someone else is of course nicer, but when I treat myself at home it works just as well with the hand applicators. Above all, I know where my problem areas are. I know, okay, the symphysis, that's actually not a problem at all, but rather the pubic branches, where the adductors actually attach, those are the main places where it hurts for me. Then of course I can control myself with the big or the small head which region I use the deep oscillation in. It's no use to me if I put the thing on my girlfriend and say "okay, do it down here, do it down there" and then I have to direct her the whole time, that's not really helpful either.

PM: What was your physiotherapist’s reaction to the device?

JH: He hadn't heard of it yet, but he was very impressed and compared the structure of the tissue and said that it felt smoother. But of course it's always difficult to give great, meaningful feedback once you've used something. But I know that more and more people in the German Athletics Association are actually using it. I was at the European Championships and I saw it being used more and more in the physiotherapy room. And it was also often used on athletes who had flexor problems, had a small strain after the preliminary round or something like that, to get them fit for the final.

PM: You didn't have the deep oscillation during the Olympics. How did you deal with the pain? What kind of therapy did you get and how did the deep oscillation improve things?

JH: I had physiotherapy every day: two to three hours every day. Now I can also have days when I don't have to go to physiotherapy. And when I can treat it myself and just stimulate the healing process a little. Sometimes, when I really do have a high tone on the adductors, I manage to get the tone down again through deep oscillation - myself, and don't have to go to physiotherapy. Because it's no longer possible through stretching, it doesn't work anymore, but through deep oscillation it's still possible. Even after I've treated it, I notice that there's a slight fibrillation in the muscle afterwards, that is, that there's always a small muscle contraction immediately afterwards and the muscle also relaxes a little and that the abdominal muscles, which are also attached to the pubic bone, also relax. I can't do that on my own through stretching or with a fascia roller.

PM: Would you recommend deep oscillation to your fellow athletes?

JH: Yes, definitely. If you are an athlete who regularly has to deal with torn muscle fibres, for example, because you are a sprinter or do explosive strength sports, or if you have a chronically inflamed area, such as your knee, due to the extremely high physical strain, then I can of course recommend it, because then it is worth it. It is always a question of weighing up the question of “what facilities do I have that I can use”, and do I really have a body that is very susceptible to problems or do I just not have a body that has major problems, but just functions? I mean, there are athletes who are very resilient and can compensate for high levels of strain well, in which case might not need it. But for one group I can recommend it, yes.

PM: Are there any final words you would like to share?

JH: Yes, first of all I would like to say thank you for letting me test the device for so long and for being able to get my problems under control so that I can train properly and not have to interrupt my training for too long or run to physiotherapy every day, but can also simply treat myself after moderate training days and not need someone external. So it certainly takes a bit of work off the physiotherapist's hands that I can treat myself, but it also takes a lot of stress and work off me, because I don't have to drive to physiotherapy somewhere, but can just treat myself on the couch in the evening, that's a really big benefit.