NBA Star Back in the Game after Inventing Fitness Device

Perhaps the only fitness device developed by a former NBA All-Star, the Jbit MedPro is intended to provide relief of some causes of chronic pain.

Jonathan Bender says that he was forced to retire from the NBA due to persistent knee pain. He says that he invented this device to take the pressure off his knees and four years later, he was back in the NBA.

The device is composed of a waist harness and a pair of ankle stirrups tied together with a set of resistance bands attached at both ends. It is said to strengthen the core and upper and lower extremity muscles, which aids in the relief of shoulder, back, hip and knee pain. It is designed to serve a dual purpose by relieving joint pressure while posing as an external set of hamstrings, as well as providing constant resistance. Handlebars and additional bands connected to the waist extend the workout to encompass the shoulders.

An analysis of Bender's apparatus was conducted by Evan Breedlove, Jocelyn Dunn, and Eric A. Nauman, PhD, of Purdue University (West Lafayette, IN), and submitted to the International Journal of Rehabilitation and Health. Nauman, a professor of biomedical engineering at Purdue, is quoted in Jbit's literature as saying, "The Jbit MedPro is completely counter-intuitive. At first examination, it would appear to put more force across the knees, but because of the way it's engineered, it actually takes pressure off the knees by evening out the load and making the legs work the way they're supposed to work."

The team reported that "(t)aken together, these data suggest that the sport-specific lower limb strengthening device increases the necessary force in all the muscles surrounding the knee, while improving the load balance between the medial and lateral sides. This is beneficial because smooth motion of the leg requires concentric contraction of either the quadriceps or hamstring muscles and eccentric contraction of the opposing set, an excellent combination for strength training. Balancing the load across the knee joint should also be beneficial..."

According to an article published in Medical Design Technology, the company has taken off over the past six months, "having realized exponential 60 percent growth, month over month, and established a direct sales pipeline-based forecast of 40 percent growth through the end of the June."

Stephen Levy is a contributor to Qmed and MPMN.