♪ Bob and Brad ♪
♪ the two most famous ♪
♪ physical therapists on the internet ♪
- Howdy folks, I'm Bob Schrupp, physical therapist.
- Brad Heineck, physical therapist.
- We are the most famous physical therapists
on the internet.
- In our opinion, of course, Bob,
- Today we're talking about seven back stretches
to do before you even get out of bed in the morning.
And this is for pain and stiffness for back pain and
stiffness, obviously.
- So you should do all seven in a row.
- I would say it won't take very long, you'll see.
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We've got about 17 of them ready?
- We're not up to 20 yet?
- Well, I want to get 25 and then we'll...
- Absolutely, all right, first one, you're going to do
Brad, this is a great one.
This is kind of a gold standard because it's,
it works well for almost any problem, any back problem
especially like arthritis.
If you're stiff in the morning,
you know, wake up, you know, the alarm goes off,
you're in a bad mood.
- [Brad] Jingle, jingle jingle.
- There we go.
And what'd you gonna do is you're just going to bring your
legs up like this.
You feet and you're gonna put them right
in what we call the hook line position.
And you're gently going to rotate back and forth.
Very simple to do what's it's doing,
you're not only moving the hips.
You're actually rotating and you're opening the joints of
the back and closing the joints of the back.
- [Brad] Sure.
- And that helps get nutrition in there, blood flow.
This is all good.
- [Brad] But look at his shoulders,
stay stationary.
- Yeah, they aren't going with me.
- [Brad] That's a critical component.
- Now, if you're paying,
if you have pain, when you go on one direction,
let's say I go like this.
- [Brad] Ow, ow, ow!
- Don't do that, listen, see your body.
Just go to the left side for a while.
And then after you loosen up a little bit,
try the right again and another little point, you know,
go as you start off, just you call it a windshield wiper.
Don't you?
- [Brad] Well, yeah, that's what I tell my patients.
And they can all relate to it.
- So start the windshield wiper just gradually.
And then eventually you can actually stretch
all the way over.
And if you want to get really ambitious,
you can actually bring the leg over like this.
- [Brad] As long as it feels good.
- As long as it feels good,
always no pain, no gain is not that what we're looking for.
All right, next one.
Safety comes first here,
but I want you to go to the edge of the bed,
keeping the shoulders on the bed quite securely.
- [Brad] If you think like there's a stick right here
you're gonna--
- So I'm going to bring this leg off
and we're stretching the hip flexor here.
- [Brad] Yup.
- This hip flexor goes up into the back and it really does
affect pulling your back over.
They tend to get tight with sitting a lot.
So I'm gonna let this one to put down and this one I'm going
to actually grab here or under here or Brad,
you're going to give me a towel.
So you can actually, if you have trouble grabbing that leg,
you can actually pull it up like this.
- [Brad] Yeah, it makes it easier.
- Now watch what happens to my leg now.
I'm going to pull this up and see how that one comes up.
- Just a little bit.
- So as I move the pelvis and lock the pelvis in place,
I'm actually stretching this leg.
- Yeah we want this knee to go down
and let gravity be your friend.
That's going to help stretch and to relax.
- Very simple little stretch.
You're going to have to go into the other side of the bed to
get the other leg, so.
- [Brad] Or turn.
- Or flip all the way around.
Right, so, all right.
I'm assuming that you're kind of tired here and that you're
just waking up so these are real simple ones to do.
Next one is a pelvic tilt, whoa.
I'm lying down, I wake up, I got my legs,
back into the hook line position,
and now I'm going to rotate my pelvis forward and back like
this, the cue that we give a lot of our patients.
So go ahead and put your hand in the low back like this.
And I'm trying to squish my hand.
- [Brad] Push down and do it.
- Am I showing this very well, Brad?
I can't tell.
- [Brad] Yeah, yeah.
Listen, Liz says she knows all.
- All right.
- [Brad] You can see that the mark here
for between the white and the
black border of pants and shirt.
- Again, getting good movement in there.
It's a great one to do to warm up the back,
get it ready for the day.
So you don't have that pain even getting out of bed.
Alright, next one where I'm at, this is a great one to do
if you're having a little bit of sciatica or.
- [Brad] Pain down the leg.
- Pain down the leg, and I'm just tingling.
What are you going to do is just flip over onto your
stomach, and I want you to lie like this to start off with.
And then eventually you want to get up and onto your elbows
like this.
And this is a prone prop and you can just wiggle your back
back and forth like this.
- If this is not comfortable for you,
especially if you're a little older 50's, 60's or older,
there is a better chance that you have stenosis in your back
and this will irritate it.
And so don't then you can skip this.
- Yeah this is not a universal one.
This is one probably more slanted towards the younger crowd,
- [Brad] The younger crowd.
- But if you are able to do it and you're older and it feels
good, absolutely.
- [Brad] You bet Bob's 60 and he does it very well.
- I do it all the time.
- [Brad] I'm 57 and I can't do it.
- Well, you got spon--
- Yeah, that's another situation.
- All right, next one.
Brad, can you come on over here?
- [Brad] Oh, absolutely.
- Just face this way like this.
- Oh my fault.
- When you're sleeping all night long.
Yeah, this especially if you sleep on your back.
You got a pillow under your head.
- [Brad] Yeah.
- This part here gets routed out and it's really not a great
position so I'll what I want to do is I want to stretch
that mid-back so what we're gonna do is I'm gonna,
you can take your pillow.
You're going to roll it up like this.
And I'm going to get right into that mid back.
- [Brad] If you had a throw pillow,
you could keep that close by and use that,
- But see all this is stretching Brad?
That's a really good, yeah.
This is kind of hard.
Cause it's white on white, but right there,
this is my hand shows the arch that the pillow is helping
form and it should feel good, it opens up the chest,
open up the lungs.
There should be no pain just a nice stretchy feeling.
- Yep.
Okay, again, you're going to start off.
You're going to feel lengthened.
- [Brad] Yeah.
- You're going to have good posture
when you come out of bed.
Next one is the hamstring stretch.
If your hamstrings are tight,
they're going to pull on your spine,
especially when you try to do any lifting and such.
So you've got to go ahead and stretch the hamstrings a
little bit before you get out of bed.
Very simple way to do it is just to grab right here.
And just is pull up like this.
- [Brad] Ah, yes.
- Real simple, again, you can do it with a towel
if you can't reach underneath the leg.
- [Brad] Yep.
- I'll do that with that, on the other side, Brad.
I'll pull it up like this and I'm like,
well I do feel that stretch Brad.
- [Brad] Yeah, yeah.
It's a, I was doing these this morning.
It's a good thing.
- Yeah, it's again, a good wake up stretch.
You know if your wife wakes up and sees you
doing that over on the side of the bed,
she might have a few questions for you, but...
Well she always does.
- [Brad] I can just imagine.
- All right, the last one,
Brad is cat camel kind of a universal one that--
- [Brad] Watch out Bob.
Your umbilical cord just fell off.
- This is again a universal one that many people can do.
I think where you might be limited if you can't get up on
your knees.
- Yeah, if you've got knee issues, but yeah.
- So you basically arch up like this.
- Yeah and we have other people call this
other than the cat, cow or the moose and the horse.
Just follow what we do.
- The zebra and the elephant.
- Now we have to do this in a video.
We couldn't do this one on a podcast.
- Yeah, right.
What are they talking about?
What kind of animal?
- [Brad] Yes.
But that gives some good general range of motion throughout
the thoracic and the lumbar spine.
- Yeah.
It actually, this is moving the entire spine.
- [Brad] And you could when you arch down
look up towards the ceiling.
There you go.
- I can go down like this.
- Now that looks like a cat.
I don't know the cow thing or the camel or whatever,
but that's a cat for sure.
- Jumped over the moon.
- I watched him.
I've been cat watching.
- So, you know, once you get these things down,
it's not going to take very long to do this
especially, you know, your back if it has
arthritis all night long.
Arthritic joint actually gets worse when it's sitting still.
- Right.
- Movement is medicine.
So it's actually going to feel better.
- Now, Bob, I'm still going to say, you know,
if there's like two of them, that really feel good.
Skip the rest and do those two.
- That's true.
- As opposed to not doing any of them,
really a focus on the ones that, that you like,
but all seven are good as long as they don't hurt.
- Here I picked seven just to--
- Well, seven is a complete number.
- Yeah, your favorite number.
- It is, Bob.
- Thought I'd be helping you out.
- All right I take it back.
- You're right Brad, if let's say trunk rotations
work for you, just do trunk rotations.
- You may want to lay down during the day
and do them two or three times.
- You were doing so well and now you said lay down.
Lie down. - Lie, lie.
I'm working on that.
All right.
- Remember Brad and I can fix just about anything
- Except for - Brad's grammar.
But a broken heart, but we're working on it.
- Well in seventh grade Mrs. Holford was my teacher
and I--
- So you're gonna blame it on her now?
- Well we had issues.
- Mrs. Holford?
- Ray.
- Holford? - That was her name.
- Okay, hey, you know, that's the way it was back then.