♪ Bob and Brad, ♪
the two most famous physical therapists on the internet.
- Booyah.
- Hi, 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.
- We are going to show you how to improve your balance
in only five minutes.
This is something you can do at home.
- Right.
- And you it's going to help you prevent falls.
And it's very important because falls are probably
the number one reason
we see a lot of the people we see, Brad.
- Right.
- Because they've got injured.
And a lot of times after you fall and break something,
it's a downhill slide.
- Right.
The statistics for a broken hip
once you get up in your 70s and 80s,
the chance for you to recover from that is not real good.
- A hundred per cent.
- Right.
- You'll recover, you just won't recover a hundred percent.
- Right.
And your balance actually starts to decline a little bit
in your 50s.
- I have noticed that.
- Yeah, we're both in our 50s and we noticed that.
- We're starting to see it already.
- Right.
This is where you can put it in your routine
whether you're completely healthy,
and actually for any age,
or if you're recovering from a stroke,
if you have Parkinson's disease,
these are all excellent tips and they can be done at home
if you follow our instructions.
Now this video's going to be
a little more than five minutes.
- It's going to be more five minutes
because we're doing commentary with it.
- Right.
We're mixing it.
But once you get the routine down,
actually you can do it in less than five minutes.
- Very good.
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You got that focused on there.
- I got it underlined, Bob in blue.
- Yeah, there we go.
You like us.
We like you.
We give you positive vibes.
It's all kind of a hippie thing.
- Wow.
Say no more.
That one never came up before.
Okay.
So should we get on with it?
- Yeah.
By the way, should we mention our Booyah stick?
- We should, Bob, because this is a wonderful tool
to use when you're working with balance
because you need something to support yourself
so you don't fall and when we're challenging ourselves.
- Yeah, it's not mandatory.
You could do this without it.
I don't want people to feel they have to get one.
- Right.
They're just handy.
You could use a cane.
That works well.
- And it comes in two pieces here.
You can take it and put it in your luggage.
But as we said before, actually,
we prefer for you to walk through the airport with this.
And when you see somebody else with the Booyah stick,
you go, "Booyah."
- Boo.
- It's the proper greeting.
So, all right, Brad, (indistinct).
- Let's get on with the program here.
What you will want to get is
what I did is I just went down to the local big box store,
Menards in this area,
and I picked up a piece of white trim.
It cost me about $2.37.
- For all of them or each one?
- It was one length.
- Oh, it was.
And you just cut it up.
- Yeah, but I just cut it up
into two foot lengths and then I got some pink tape.
This is just duct tape you can buy over there
in the duct tape area.
They make duct tape in many colors.
It's nice to have it a color, a bright color,
particularly if you're dealing with someone.
- Like Parkinson's or their vision is an issue.
- Right.
- And I'll tell you having done this
by using tape on the floor, which we did right here.
I don't know if you could see that, Liz.
Once that tape is on the floor,
you can't get the tape off the floor.
- Yeah.
- Look at what we've done here.
- This is real handy.
- This is a nice alternative
and you can put it anywhere,
bring it with you.
- Precisely.
- Do it outside if you want to do it.
- So I have it down on a pattern.
You can see it looks like a cross.
See, they're just here and they make it like that pattern.
And that's for a specific reason.
We're going to actually use it
for stepping over the pattern.
We're going to start here.
This is going to be the start block
on the back right hand corner.
And I'm going to take a step forward.
Now, if you drag your foot and you move those,
that's obviously what you don't want to do.
And that's a real common problem,
particularly with someone who maybe has had a stroke.
- Again, the advantage of using these over tape
is that you have to step over these things.
You actually do have to.
- Precisely.
- You have to pick your feet up.
- Yep.
It forces you to elevate as we want to be done.
I'm going to go here and then here.
Okay.
Here and then here.
This is the pattern.
Here and then here and then here and then here.
And a therapist, this makes a lot of sense.
- Right.
- Because it forces you to step up,
like Bob just mentioned,
but we're also going to the left,
forward, and stepping backwards,
and then to the right again,
which really can challenge someone
if they've had that stroke
or a traumatic brain injury
where the mind neurologically splits things in half
and we want to challenge both directions.
- And when you're working, like in your closet,
you're going to have to step back to get.
- Right.
- And there's just throughout the day
in activities of daily living,
you are going to make these maneuvers.
If you don't train for them, you're going to fall.
- Right.
I've just worked with someone
who had a total knee replacement.
He's 72 years old,
as well as he's got early stage Parkinson's,
and this is a absolutely perfect thing
for him to work on so that when he's in the house
and he is at the kitchen cupboard,
you're stepping side-to-side,
you take a little step backwards.
It's a really good thing.
He had the cane.
And if someone is (indistinct),
make sure you have a belt on.
- Meaning that somebody else is going to be with you
while you're doing it, especially if you are unsafe.
We don't want anybody falling
while you're trying to improve your balance.
- Precisely.
Go ahead, Bob.
- Sure.
I'm going to go along with him.
- Right.
Bob's going to make sure that I'm safe.
And early on, if the person is unsteady,
that alone can make them feel much more stable.
Now, with my gentleman, I had to give verbal cues
because he had Parkinson's.
Make sure you take a big step
so this foot has room to get here.
Because what can happen is the person will take a step here
and then there's no room.
So it forces the person to take appropriate size steps,
and then back, and then over.
So that alone, what you'll do is go forward
and you work both directions.
You can do that two or three repetitions
depending on how fatigued the person gets.
If you're a higher level person
and it's time to get rid of the stick,
you can still hold onto the stick
if you need it.
And if that's getting easy,
you can take the stick here and go over.
And when that gets too easy,
actually hold the stick over your head
which makes a pretty significant difference in your balance.
- That'd be very tough to do.
- Yeah.
And again, this is working level easy to hard.
And then we're going to jump to the next step, Bob.
Strictly balance, just strictly balance.
Again, you're walking relatively easily,
but still you don't feel steady.
- What you're saying is this is advanced now.
- Right.
- This is a little more advanced than what we just did.
- The next step up.
We're going to put one foot here.
Now what I'm going to do is face at a diagonal here
as opposed to my toe's not in line with the stick.
- It's in between two sticks.
- Right.
And now I'm going to be balancing on one foot.
First thing you're going to do is
see how you can balance on one foot.
Now, if you can balance on one foot
for five seconds very easily,
then you're ready for this.
- Okay.
- If you cannot go for five seconds,
you can do it,
but you're definitely going to need the stick.
- You're going to be at risk.
- And you probably are going to want to have someone
holding onto the belt so that you don't fall.
And then the pattern is relatively simple.
You're going to step forward
and just touch your toe here in front,
touch your toe to the right,
and touch your toe behind you.
And then this is a little more difficult.
Go across and touch your toe over here.
Okay?
So it's touch and there's no definite pattern.
You can break it up if you want.
Once you get it like this,
I can do this easily.
Well, then you can try it without the stick
and just have it there ready to go.
If you're unsteady,
make sure you have someone there to help you out.
Here, here, here, you're here.
The next step up is go out a little bit farther,
really reach out, and not only going to work balance,
but we're working strength on the other leg.
- Now this is probably for someone who has not had a stroke.
- Right.
- This is maybe the average person that wants to improve
because these are difficult.
- Yeah, this is because when you're reaching out
it requires a lot of strength.
- It's almost getting to the point
of the athlete a little bit.
- Precisely, Bob.
- And you could obviously switch ankles then, right?
- Right.
Yep, for sure.
We're going to start here, here.
And if you had one side that was involved
whether it be from a injury, a stroke,
you're going to start out with the good leg first.
If this was my strong leg,
now here would be my involved leg.
It might be difficult just to do this.
- Right.
- We're going to use that stick to hold the balance.
And then you continue to progress to a little bit farther,
a little bit farther.
Boy, going across the midline, you're going to notice that.
I mean, my balance is relatively normal.
I feel it's pretty good for my age
and this is challenging for me.
So you may want to just not even go across the midline.
- To start off with.
- Yep.
And just do the easy ones first.
Okay?
And you're going to find out
if you did this for five minutes,
your leg is going to get tired.
You're going to be fatigued.
And if you're recovering from an injury or a stroke,
whatever, probably a couple minutes
and you're going to say,
"I need to sit down."
So have a chair handy so you can sit down
and give it a rest if that's your situation.
- So again, it took a long time to go through all this,
but if you start just doing the exercises alone
without talking,
you're going to knock this off in five minutes easily.
- Oh, right.
And then you're going to do that a couple times a day
and you'll find within a week
you're going to notice tremendous improvements.
Make sure you're safe.
Have someone there to help you out, have a belt,
have your stick ready for balance.
And you're ready to go.
- And remember, Booyah.
- Booyah.
Whoa, Bob.
You're killing me.