♪ Bob and Brad ♪
♪ The two most famous ♪
♪ physical therapists ♪
♪ on the internet. ♪
- Howdy folks, I'm Bob Schrupp, physical therapist.
- Brad Heineck, physical therapist.
- Because we are the most famous
physical therapists on the internet
- In our opinion, of course, Bob.
- Today, we're gonna show you how
to fix a pulled or strained muscle.
We've got the best home protocol for fast recovery.
- That's right, Bob.
- We're gonna go step by step, right Brad?
- Exactly, Bob.
Any muscle your body.
- By the way, if you're new to our channel,
please take a second to subscribe to us.
We provide videos, how stay healthy, fit, pain-free,
and we upload every day.
- That's right.
- Also go to bobandbrad.com.
We're giving away something amazing, here folks.
We're getting away a SleepOvation mattress.
This is not the mattress. This is a sample of the mattress.
It's much bigger. - [Brad] Yeah.
- [Bob] It's got the normal sizes...
- [Brad] Regular sizes.
- [Bob] So go to bobandbrad.com, go to the giveaway section,
you'll find the contest there.
You can also find it on Facebook.
It'll be pinned at the top of the page.
Go to Twitter, Instagram, or Tik Tok,
if you want a 60 second version of our program.
Really quickly, about the mattress,
700 individual mattresses, it has.
It has channels, air channels, very comfortable.
A lot of people think it looks too soft.
It is not. It is still
plenty firm.
- Yes.
- We're also going to give away a couple
of SleepOvation pillows.
Here's the full one.
And here's the cross-section of one.
It actually has springs in it.
- Yeah, but you cannot feel them.
- You can not feel them at all.
A really good, I think, side-lying pillow, Brad.
- Yeah.
- I don't like it as much for lying on my back,
but really good for side-lying, which I tend to do.
- Very good, Bob.
- Okay, can we go on?
- Next topic, the main one, pulled or strained muscles.
I would have to say, Bob,
everybody has had a pulled or a strained muscle
throughout their life.
- I'm in that camp, many times.
- I can honestly say I've been pulling my hamstrings
more in the last two years of my life, than ever before.
And I'm learning how to manage them.
It is different when you're doing it to yourself
versus a patient.
It's a little more...
- And you're older, Brad.
I hate to say it, muscles don't heal as fast
when you get older.
- Exactly right.
So we're gonna talk to you about how to manage
and improve a pulled muscle fast.
- Sure.
- As fast as possible, anyways.
First of all, you're gonna protect it.
When you pull a muscle and it hurts and you can push on it,
like in my hamstrings, I can push and find that tender spot.
When you walk, it hurts.
You just gotta give it a break.
Don't start stretching it.
- Yeah, don't stretch it right away.
- You think, "Oh, it's a pulled muscle.
I gotta stretch it and get it to relax."
What happens is you've got the muscle,
let's say these are the muscles fibers,
we stretched it, strained it, and if you tore it,
the muscles actually came apart.
But let's say it's just a strain or a pretty strain-
- Or some micro tears.
- Yeah, micro tears...
And if you stretch it, you're just making it worse.
You need to give it a rest.
Cold pack, use some NSAIDs, ibuprofen as...
- Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatories.
- Right. And usually, you may know what works for you.
- Drugs (laughs)
- Or call the doctor. - Right.
- Or a pharmacist, they can give you some information.
- That whole thing, when you're pulling it, stretching it,
you can also be disrupting blood vessels
that were already disrupted.
- Right. Make it worse. - Make it worse.
- Do not start out stretching right away.
Let it settle down.
And it may take, it may take one day to settle down.
It may take a few days, depending on the severity of it.
Just go by what your body tells you.
And now with my hamstring, I was limping,
the one time I pulled it.
So I didn't start stretching until
after I could walk without pain, you know.
That took a few days, that one time.
- A few days, or it could be a few weeks.
- Yeah, it could be.
If it's a tear, I didn't put tear in the...
- Title,
- Because a tear's a big difference
between a strain or a pull.
If you actually tore the muscle and it separated...
- It's all degrees.
There's first degrees, second degrees,
third degree strains.
And there are probably some tears there.
- I mean, when the muscle rips completely apart.
- Right, right, that's a whole different story.
That's surgery.
- That's time to go to a doctor.
- Right, right.
- Okay. So we're gonna just give it some rest.
Now, when you can start to feel it,
let's say it is the hamstring,
and you can start to press in there
and it's not so tender anymore.
You can start to walk without the pain.
Then, it's time to get in and start doing a massage on it.
You know, muscle, the fibers run in a certain direction
in the hamstring is vertical.
You know, if it's a bicep, they run this way.
I'll go to the bicep. It's easier.
You're gonna start doing a cross friction massage.
- So you're gonna cross the fibers to massage it.
- Right. You're not gonna do it, if you start doing it
and it hurts, and it continues to hurt,
and it gets worse after about 20 seconds.
Too early. - [Bob] Right.
- On the other hand, if it hurts at first,
but after about 15, 20 seconds, it starts to feel better,
it's like, ah, that's better,
that's when you're gonna continue
with the cross friction massage.
- I'm gonna say this also, Brad, about gentle massage.
Like let's say the tear is right here,
if it hurts right on the tear,
maybe you could work around first, to start off with.
- There you go.
- You could go above, below, and work around it.
Anytime you can start getting blood flow to the area,
it's usually gonna help heal it.
- Now, if it's a small muscle, like, let's say
if it was on your wrist-
- Or forearm.
- A lot of time you can massage it easily
with your other hand, but your fingers get tired
after a few minutes.
And then you've had enough.
But if it's a larger muscle group, for example hamstring,
which is probably one of the most commonly pulled muscle.
Man, I'm doing this to myself, just recently.
It's like, ah, it's a big muscle group.
I'm getting really tired.
- And you don't feel like you're doing anything.
- Right.
- Quadriceps, calf muscle...
- These big muscles, if you are inclined to do so,
or you may already have a massage gun.
So let's...
- Big difference. Really makes a big difference.
These guns have really come down in price now.
They used to be $400.
And now they've come down to, well, they vary,
but like $150.
- Right. They're much more reasonable.
And you can use them for not only pulled muscles,
just sore and tired muscles.
To increase circulation.
- Right, it's nice to have one on hand,
especially in your family.
Because you'll be passing around, generally.
- You'll be fighting over the massage gun.
- This comes with five heads.
So what's nice about this is,
almost every situation you have,
it can be accommodated by the different heads.
This was more of an air filled.
But you use the pointer one.
- Right. 'Cause I want to get into a deep muscle.
And I really, I would say I'm sold on this, Bob.
Because I start using this, it saved my fingers
and it really gets into that muscle.
I'll show you how I'm using it on my hamstring.
Let's get this, going.
It has six different levels of intensity.
I've been putting on number four or number five.
And what I would do is I would get into that hamstring
and I thought it was getting better.
As a matter of fact, right now, I can find tender spot,
it's much harder.
But when I first started doing with my hands,
it was harder to find the tender spot.
So I thought, "I'm healed up, I'm doing good.
I'm better, I can start running more aggressively."
Then I put the massage gun, and it's like, "Whoa."
- [Bob] Different story.
- Yeah, it's getting in there,
it's hitting the injured spot.
And each day I get that spot, and it was getting better
because the massage gun or your cross friction
is breaking up scar tissue.
And that's what we want to do.
- [Bob] And helping to heal stronger.
- Right.
- Hamstrings, by the way, the tear tends
to be either mid-hamstring or up by the butt.
- Right.
Mine, actually, is kind of medial.
Which is a little unusual.
- [Bob] Oh sure.
- One way or another, I was able to find the fibers
that are irritated and healing, breaking up the scar tissue.
And usually, I'll go about three minutes or so with this.
- You got to show them the name on the massage gun.
- Ah, whatever, I was gonna be modest Bob,
but if you look, it's kind of small, zoom in on that.
We liked this massager so much we got our names put on it.
It's a great gun, great product.
And it's a really good price.
- [Bob] Pretty silent too.
- So you're going to use, if you are using that
or using your hand, you're gonna continue,
even if it's feeling better,
continue to do it for maintenance program.
And it really does...
I find it very invigorating. Feels great.
- Well, Brad and I just talked about this.
One of the thing is, and what we'll talk
about this a little bit later too,
but I think the timing of doing the massage,
a lot of time, when you start getting back into activity,
I do massage on the muscle before I do activity.
- Good point.
- It really stretches the muscle.
Almost, a lot of times, don't even need to stretch it then.
- Sure.
= Because the massage has stretched it.
And, you're just so much more ready for the activity.
And also then you're much less likely to injure it again.
- Right.
Now, one thing I've been doing, I've been doing massage gun,
and then I actually do a stretch after I massage it.
And it's been doing very well.
- Sure.
- You kind of have to experiment with your body
and which muscle group it is.
- Really gotta listen to your body on these pulled muscles.
- Exactly right.
And then it's, like, when do I start, in my case, running?
When do I start running again?
Because that's the activity that I irritate it,
I pulled it while I was running.
But I want to get back to running.
So how do I get back?
For walking, it's working well,
and then I want to get to that running.
So I started walking and then I would run. I just jogged.
And I could feel it, you know, if it was talking to me,
it's like, "Ah, boy, it feels like it could strain again."
I back off.
- I went through the exact same thing.
I tore my calf muscle.
It was more on the lateral aspect here.
I don't know if it was peroneus,
but I would actually get on the treadmill and use my arms.
And I would walk, then I would run a little bit
with taking the weight off.
- Off your foot, yeah.
- And then I slowly started adding the weight.
The same thing, Brad,
you can tell like, "Oh, that's starting to get too much."
- It's starting to irritate it.
- But, that probably did more for me
to get this thing to start healing.
'Cause, if you just go back and start running,
it's gonna tear again.
And then you're going, "Whoa, my God. What did I..."
You gotta progress into this.
- Exactly.
I started the walk-run and then I started jogging.
Just jogging a mile.
If it felt good, well, then I'm gonna jog
a little bit further.
Now I'm up to little over two miles.
And now I actually started to increase the speed.
I have to admit, I started to increase the speed too fast.
And I ended up walking home.
- Imagine that. Imagine Brad Heineck...
Brad's got two speeds, zero, 150. That's the speeds.
- It is difficult for me to get that,
this whole progressive thing.
And I'm a therapist I should...
It's a personality thing.
- Did you want to mention strain counterstrain, Brad?
- Yeah, we can do that.
And that can be thrown early on and you can do that,
you can do that one right away.
The reason I held off on that,
'cause each strain counterstrain technique is different
for each muscle group.
If we did all the muscle groups,
we'd be here for another couple hours.
But if you do have,
if you want to do the strain counterstrain,
which is excellent technique, early on.
The technique takes 90 seconds.
So all of our titles say if,
say you have a hamstring and you want
to figure out how to do the strain counterstrain
simple technique takes just a couple of minutes.
The treatment is only 90 seconds,
but type in hamstring 90 seconds,
calf muscle 90 seconds
Bob and Brad.
And then that will come up.
- Exactly.
Especially the 90 seconds Bob and Brad
will probably pull up all the titles.
- Sure.
- So you can look through to see which one it is
that you're having trouble with.
- We'll have to do a playlist or do something perhaps
with that so that can be...
- Right, organize it.
- We really both have had great success
with that particular technique on injured muscle.
And the nice thing about it, it doesn't hurt.
It's relatively easy to do.
- It's a little weird to me that it works as
well as it does sometimes.
- But it's been studied.
It's been around for over 30 years.
Lots of science studies on it.
So anyways, that is part of this protocol.
- By the way, Brad and I can fix just about anything...
- Except for...
- A broken heart.
- But we'll continue to work on that.
- The heart's a muscle, by the way.
- It is.
I was just trying to imagine...
- That confused both of us.
Why can't we fix it then?
- We've got the massage gun, we can do the the rib cage.
I don't know.
- All right. Thanks for watching.