- All right, everyone.
Spring is here in Minnesota
and Wisconsin. - Spring has sprung.
- And people are getting out unbelievably.
You can see 'em on the sidewalks, all over the place,
running, hiking.
And along with that, muscles that are moving them
are getting pulled, strayed, injured.
We're talking about the hip muscle, hamstring and-
- Calf.
- That calf muscle.
If you have any of those problems, stick around
we're gonna show you a number of just different ways
to make those feel better.
Get you back out on the trails, back into your activity.
I better quit babbling.
- Don't miss it. (Brad chuckles)
♪ Bob and Brad ♪
♪ The two most famous ♪
♪ Physical therapists ♪
♪ On the internet ♪
- Bob, and I think you're gonna agree with this.
A lot of people including myself years ago,
when you pull a muscle, you strain a muscle.
The knee-jerk reaction
no pun intended is to stretch
the muscle. - Stretch, right away.
- And that is not
the thing to do. - Why?
- You've already strained a muscle.
You've got some micro tears in the muscle tissues
if you stretch it-
- You'll make it worse.
- There you go.
So we're gonna show you what to do initially.
We will get to stretching it, but first of all
what are we gonna do?
- We're gonna rest it
and we're gonna use a cold bag.
- That's right.
Give it a break.
- How come yours is bigger?
- Well, because- - There we go.
- If you got on your thigh, you'll use it here.
You know,
Small one- - My calf.
- For the calf.
Again, cold packs are nice.
Get the ones that are gel filled or a homemade one
which we do have a video
on how to make a homemade cold pack.
All you need is water.
Some rubbing alcohol.
And they work very well actually.
- You might as well also try some NSAIDs.
Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs.
- Right, so ibuprofen is, you know,
the go-to with that or some whatever else you like
or your doctor instructs you to use.
Once you get it to settle down a little bit-
within a day or two.
- A couple of days.
- Then we're gonna do some soft tissue work.
We've got a plethora ways of doing it.
You don't have to buy anything
but we'll show you some things that you want to buy
or you maybe already have at your grasp.
All right, now most people have
either a tennis ball, a softball.
If you don't have one
go to the neighborhood park, search around, you'll find one.
You don't have to spend any money that way.
One thing we wanna do, if you gotta pulled calf muscle
you can just put a tennis ball works well.
Under like that and you can just start to roll it.
- You find a tender spot and you work on that spot.
- Look at these socks by the way.
Pretty cool, huh? - Yeah, right.
- You don't have to have those kind of socks
to get these results.
- Yep. (chuckles)
- You can go to the calf.
And you can go up into the hamstring.
Now, the hamstring for a lot of people,
you find this is too small.
- And that's why a soft ball comes in.
And actually, if you're on a high surface like this,
a table, you can actually put the ball
under the hamstring. - Hamstring, yep.
- And you can actually floss
while you're working on the hamstring.
- So flossing, he means what he's doing to this leg-
- Is moving up and down, working the hamstring
while I'm flossing it or massaging it.
- Right. It's a really simple, effective way to do it.
And it's like I... The price is great and it works good.
You have to kind of work with it.
You'll find the knot, the sore spot.
And when you get on it, work with it.
- You work on it.
- Don't get too aggressive right away.
The next thing I wanna talk about.
This does work on the hip.
If you're on a hip, the tennis ball
but you're gonna adjust the weight
- Stay off the boney part of the hip.
- Yep. And you'll spend a couple minutes on here.
And again, you'll find where the injury is.
You wanna work on that if it's not too painful,
if it's too painful, work around it.
And the muscle tissue surrounding the injured area
- A foam roller works well.
- Yep. These are wonderful things.
Some people already have them.
And again, if I'm doing the calf muscle
you can do both at once, if you wanna get more aggressive
if this is my injured calf, you know
you can go over the top.
And that changes the aggressiveness a lot.
And then roll to the side there
in case the injuries ride a little.
Inside, go right up to the hamstring
and the same situation both hamies cross
to get on one, roll on the side, wherever the injury may be.
You know, I really like this for the hip.
- Yep.
- Yeah, because you can get in-
- You can find the spot.
- Yep, and this is a medium density.
It's not really hard.
The black ones are more dense and hard.
But when you get on the hip, I like the softer one.
If you do wanna get one of these
and they tell you when you're buying one,
what density they are.
Oh, boy, that was good.
I'm feeling better already
and I wasn't even injured. - All right.
Let's move on Brad.
All right.
A little more expensive option is to actually
use a massage gun.
And we actually are releasing a Bob and Brad massage gun
into the Walmart stores.
So this is the EM19, very nice unit.
It's actually got 20 speeds.
Have you ever heard a gun having 20 speeds Brad?
- I have now.
- But it works really well.
I use it on my calves every day.
- Yeah. - I did this morning, Brad.
So there's not a day that goes by.
It feels really good.
This one has a lot of amplitude,
which means it goes very deep.
And the other thing is, stall force is nice.
I mean I can make a stall.
- Right, you push... Yeah. (chuckles)
- How hard I push.
- Yeah, we have tested this gun extensively
and it is quality gun at a great price.
So you don't have to worry about that.
Bob, you wanna talk about-
- Yeah, I'll talk about this if you wanna hold on to it.
It actually has six different heads.
I like this head.
It's the bullet head.
Very aggressive property.
- And you use that on your calf.
- Right.
- I can't, I'm too wimpy.
But I don't, my calf is not that tender
or doesn't need it but-
- It's got a flat head.
It's got like a field goal.
(Brad laughs)
It's got two balls.
- Yeah. So actually what I'm gonna do Bob is...
Whoa, turn it off. I'm gonna use on my hamstring,
I'm gonna change to the larger-
- And by the way, while you're doing that Brad,
I mentioned that the gun is only available
in 500 Walmart's so far.
So we'll have a list of which stores it is available at
in the link below.
So check out and see if your hometown
has one of the fortunate massage guns.
- That's right.
Now for the hamstring.
I like to use this larger head
and I can get in there real deep.
And again, we talked about the flossing.
If you have a roller,
you can just use that for flossing
and roll back and forth while you're doing that.
You can-
- I was gonna say, you can slide it
on a garbage (indistinct).
- Well, yeah, you could use any sheet of plastic.
I happen to be using a clipboard.
It works really well.
You know, on carpet it's an issue trying to go like,
it doesn't work at all.
We do have-
- The knee glide.
If you happen to have one, you can use one of those.
I wouldn't buy a knee glide just for flossing with this,
but they do work well for other things as well
if you have arthritis.
Now, if you're using this on the hip,
I'm not gonna pull my pant, like all the way up here.
- Thank God.
- (chuckles) And you can do this seated position.
- Hip or buttock.
- Oh, yeah, I like to get right around my SI joint
which is closer to the sacrum. - Sacrum.
- Yep, and that piriformis muscle.
I had a gentleman, he had hip replacement
and he used a gun almost similar to this or other C2.
And he uses extensively before surgery
for about two months.
It helped keep the muscles loose
and it made surgery go better.
- I'm gonna warn you though if you are elderly,
I would not recommend this gun.
I mean, this is a big, powerful gun for big muscles
and it's not for somebody who's a slighter build
and maybe, you know, osteoporotic.
- Right, yeah.
It's for the more active- - Athlete.
- More muscular person.
We're gonna get into stretching,
'cause after you massage for a few days
you may be ready for some gentle stretching
to get that muscle back in the gear.
- All right, I'm gonna show you some stretches
you could do here.
First, we're gonna start with the hip itself.
You can actually just pull the hip towards you
and you actually, you're gonna keep this one straight
while you do it.
And you can do either side of course.
- Even, I would stretch even the non-injured side
just so that you maintain the healthy one.
- Then we're gonna go into a hamstring stretch.
And I like the 90/90 position.
So the hip is 90 degrees and you start 90 here on the knee
but you actually work out, try to straighten it.
- Yeah, here.
You wanna try this Bob? If you wanna-
- Sure.
- You can use a belt at home.
You don't have to have a stretch strap,
these work well 'cause you don't have to grab,
but this makes it easier.
And if, like Bob's getting his knee almost straight
when you do that, you're pretty darn flexible.
- Right. We'll go into a hip stretch here,
- Yep, good. - (indistinct).
You can actually just start with the legs flat
and you cross the ankle over the knee
and you actually push the knee down towards the bed.
You can use your hand,
you can use your active muscles
to do so. - You think the other angle.
- But this works really well.
And of course you can do the other side.
- Ah!
- And then you could do it also
in a figure four with a, the leg raised.
- And then actually that where you pull it up
and do the...
- Like this?
- No, with the other leg.
- Oh, this yes.
- That's pretty aggressive.
- This really gets it going.
- Now you got a flexible hips body.
- Yeah, I work up a hips lot.
- Six and a half foot you got- - That's right.
- That's right out there.
- That's right, I'm a Gumpy
(Brad laughs)
and a Pokey.
All right, what else Brad?
- Well, you can do the hip extension off the bed.
- All right.
- This is not for everyone. - (indistinct)
You go to the edge of the bed.
Keep the shoulders well on the bed.
And as you get the leg over to the bed
I'm stretching this hip flexor.
And I'm gonna bring this leg up.
- Yep.
- You can see how actually it's stretching
that hip, pulling up.
- All right, we still got the calf to address.
- All right Brad, you wanna try the calf?
- Yeah, so the calf muscle,
I'm gonna show you the basic one.
Doing it standing.
You can go up the covered or anything like that and stretch.
Let me get this chair out of the way.
Keep the toes straight towards the front.
Not out to the side.
Stretch.
Keep the knees straight, lean into it.
Try and keep the heel on the floor.
You can bend the knee and stretch.
So you get the deeper soleus muscle.
I usually do this one on the wall like this.
So this one is getting stretched.
Hold these 15 to 30 seconds or pressure on, pressure off.
Just like that.
Cadence for 10 repetitions.
My favorite or one of my favorites
is going to a inclined board. - Right.
What you created yourself.
- Yeah, I made this one. - (indistinct).
- Anybody can make 'em,
we have a video on how to make one of these.
If you're handy and you got some spare wood lying around.
Oops,
but this-
- That would not be me. (chuckles)
- Yeah. Yeah.
It's not for everyone.
It's one of those deals.
They're not very expensive either,
but this I feel is superior versus the wall stretch,
but not necessary.
But anybody who walks a lot or runs
I think really should,
if they invest in one of these-
- I think everybody should stretch their calf (indistinct).
- Yeah, you're absolutely right.
I didn't wanna sound too swollen.
(Bob laughs)
Yeah, so if you're anybody, get a calf stretcher
you don't have to do this, but stretch 'em on the wall.
Do what you need to do
'cause those muscles are working a lot.
- All right, have we done everything Brad?
- I think we did Bob.
We covered that, that was a lot,
a lot more than anticipated. - Remember Brad
and I can fix just about anything.
- I forgot about this, except for-
- A broken heart. - That's right.
And none of these stretches are gonna help anything to do
with a broken heart. - Nothing that helps so far.
- Not even the massage gun is gonna help,
I don't think. - That's right.
- Maybe we can work something in there.
- Right. - Be careful.
(upbeat music)