♪ Bob and Brad ♪
♪ The two most famous ♪
♪ Physical therapists ♪
♪ On the internet ♪
- (clapping) Get up the energy, Brad.
(Brad growls)
Hi, folks, I'm Bob Schrupp, physical therapist.
- Brad Heineck, physical therapist.
- Together, we are the most famous physical therapists
on the internet. - In our opinion, of course.
- I was just going to start saying
take the energy back down again a little bit.
So, today, we're gonna talk about five simple recipes-
- Five. - To heal back pain
that won't go away.
Plus we're doing a giveaway.
- A giveaway. That's something new.
- No, it's not.
If you're new to our channel, then maybe it's new to you,
but we always are giving something away,
so go to bobandbrad.com.
- That's right. - You want to show the sign?
And go to the giveaway section.
And this week we are giving away
the Thermotex heating system here.
- [Brad] It happens to be on my back right now.
- And we're going to talk about that in detail.
You can also go to Facebook.
It'll be pinned to the top of the page,
the contest, that is.
Go to Twitter, Instagram, or TikTok
if you want a 60-second version of our program.
- And don't forget our podcast.
- Yeah, our podcast.
- All right, if you think we ramble too much,
go to our, we have our clips,
Bob and Brad clips.
- Yeah, 60 seconds, yeah.
- Well, they're gonna go up to three minutes now.
- Oh, really?
- Yeah, 'cause we need to be a little more detailed.
- Yeah, we don't talk as fast.
- Yeah.
All right,
so the first thing we want to do
is we want to start getting some motion in the back.
Almost always,
you want to get the joints moving,
get that fluid moving and blood going.
- Circulation. - Circulation.
- That equals healing.
Life is better.
- So, let's do a trunk rotation, Brad.
- Oh sure. - I'll do it
since you're all geared up.
So, when you wake up in the morning,
the first thing you're gonna do,
and this works for just about any back pain,
wouldn't you say, Brad?
- Right, unless it's really flared up bad where movement,
but that all, we're going to explain that.
- My microphone's falling off.
- Don't worry about that.
- So, you're gonna wake up.
You're gonna lie onto your back.
Notice I already I said lie.
And then bring your legs up into a hook lying position,
we call it.
And you're just going to rotate back and forth like this.
Now, some of you, the untrained eye,
you might think that I'm moving my hips.
Well, I am, but I'm also twisting my back a little bit
and opening the joints and closing the joints.
- So, notice his heels are close together.
His hips are moving and his shoulders are down.
- And you can actually bend way over
and you even give yourself a little bit of a stretch,
and you go the other way,
which I can't do here, but now-
- Oh, be careful, Bob.
- So, anyway, it'll get that back moving
before you even get out of bed,
and then you roll over onto your side
in order to get out of bed correctly.
You don't go up like this.
You roll over onto your side
and use your arm to push you up.
- We call that log rolling.
- Log rolling.
- In physical therapy school, that's what I learned.
- All right, the next simple recipe,
we should have recipe cards.
Next simple recipe is we want you to try some deep heat.
Now, that's where the Thermotex comes in handy.
This is an expensive treatment.
We're not going to lie to you, but it works really well.
Actually, Brad, I just bought one for my mom.
- You did?
Took three years, didn't it?
- Well, it took quite a few years,
but she had a fall, unfortunately.
- Oh, she did?
- Yeah, she fractured a rib.
- When? - Yeah, a week ago.
- Oh, I hope that she's okay.
- Yeah, she's okay.
You know, they don't do anything for it, as you know.
And she was still having pain,
so we got her a Thermotex.
The reason I got her a Thermotex
normal heat only penetrates skin-deep.
- Right, just a few millimeters.
- It's not going to get into the joints of that rib
or around the rib.
- It feels good on the skin,
but it's not going to get the viscus,
and can I tell 'em, Bob? - Yes, tell 'em.
- 2.36 inches.
This has been measured scientifically.
It's going to get through the muscle and into the joint.
It's not going to burn it. It's not aggressive heat, though.
It's just a warm heat, a therapeutic,
and this has all been scientifically-
- Tested. - Tested, exactly.
- So, yeah.
It's going to easily get into that rib area for her,
and she already said she tried it.
It feels really great.
The thing is you can leave it on, really,
you can actually leave it on all the time
because it only costs a couple of pennies a day to run it.
- Right, did they recommend 45 minutes per treatment?
- Right, right,
and it takes, you know, 10 minutes to warm up,
and again, it's not a real aggressive heat,
and it can go right through your clothes.
That's the way-
- Right, far infrared, conventional heating,
it has to actually contact your skin
to get good conduction to the heat,
but far infrared will actually go through an air gap
if the pad is not directly on you.
You're still going to get benefits.
- Right, so, you know,
they recommend like twice a day for 45 minutes,
and it's really not that hard,
because you put it in your chair
or you strap it on yourself.
If you go through our link,
you get two extra straps like this so you can strap it on.
I use it for knots up in this area all the time.
That's what it works well for. - People might be wondering
why I'm wearing it like a parachute,
but that's what it's for.
For the upper back, you can have that option,
but otherwise, there's three panels here.
You can put it around your leg, on your hip, you know,
on your mother's case, for her ribs.
- Right.
- Yeah, it's very versatile.
It's called the-
- Platinum. - Platinum model yeah.
- So next one, Brad, this is going to depend on
how your back feels when it bends forward
and how does it feel when it extends.
So, if your back bothers you
when you're doing mostly flexion things,
now that would include sitting.
- Right. - And for a lot of us,
when we sit, we're kind of flexed.
- Right.
- Then you're going to want to work on the opposite of that.
You're going to want to do extensions.
- We'll get this out of the way.
- So, you're going to actually get down onto your stomach,
and you might just lie here first
on your stomach for awhile,
and then maybe even get up onto your elbows for a while
and just see how your back tolerates that.
If it's fine, it actually feels a little bit better,
you might actually take your hands
and do kind of micro press-ups.
- Just gently working it.
Not creating any pain
but getting some movement.
If it hurts the first time, but after that,
the second and third time it's loosening up,
that's a good sign.
Continue to work with it.
- Well, make sure you don't do this
where you're actually picking up the pelvis.
- Yeah, right there.
- The pelvis needs to stay down.
If you can only go this far, you can only go this far.
And you keep working on it,
but that's the general rule you're going to follow
if you have a flexion bias
where it hurts when you flex.
Now, if it hurts the other way, when you extend-
- Like this.
- Yeah, when you stand or you raise up.
Actually, if you even have tight hip flexors,
Brad, I want to have people try this once.
I want you to bend over and grab a piece of skin like that.
- Ooh, that's kind of weird, Bob.
- Now you stand up, and what happens?
You can't stand all the way up.
So, what happens is your back extends more.
So, if your back extends more
and it hurts to be just standing,
you need to work on flexion.
- So, I just want to make sure people
are understanding in case,
so what he's saying is this represents
those muscles being tight. - Inside being tight.
- Don't do this, especially in public.
- It's not a treatment,
but I don't know if you could see that, Brad,
if you could point that out.
Like, if I stand now,
the movement's got to come from somewhere.
- Right, the hips don't move.
- Yeah, so now I'm arching my back further.
So, that's very common in people
who have spondylolisthesis or spinal stenosis
that those hips might be tight,
so we need to have those stretched out.
We need to have the hip flexors-
- Which the prone press-up that you just demonstrated-
- That does it.
Not as aggressive as some, but that also has a component.
- We also want to do,
I'm going to make a sacrifice here, Brad,
and I can even use a pillow.
I can also stretch the hip flexor
by doing this and stretch it like that.
- Yeah.
Yeah, so if you want to put a pillow under this knee,
it can be more comfortable.
- A lot more comfortable.
- Bob is being very brave today and tough.
- So, that's one way to do it.
You can also lie on the bed
and put one leg off the edge like this
and pull the other one up like that.
- So, this is a stretch, too.
- But also, what really-
- You're getting up the way you just said not to.
- Don't do what I say. - He's guilty.
Gotcha. - Don't do what I do.
Do what I say.
So, you can also use a lacrosse ball,
and actually, Brad, if you want to take one,
but I'm just going to show it here
even though you'd have to do it on a hard floor.
- Right.
- You can actually just roll around on the ball itself
and work on those hip flexors.
- So, yeah, so you're getting it right in here.
It's kind of a weird feeling,
but you just, you have to approach it,
and get used to that.
- Yeah, and you want to find the tender spots.
I mean, if it hurts,
that's being said that it needs some work.
So, the better option for this
is actually to use a massage gun,
and we've got, this as a, which one was this, the C2?
- C2, C2.
Kind of like the band U2, except for it's C2.
And there's five adjustments, but you can get in,
I wouldn't do it standing up,
because you don't relax- - No, right,
you want the muscle relaxed.
- You want to be lying down and get in there.
Just be careful in your inguinal crease
where you've got the lymph nodes.
You don't want to beat those up.
So, work it around so it's on the muscle,
and you can get in deep.
Ooh, yeah.
It makes me feel like I have to go to the bathroom.
(wheezes)
- A little too much information.
Okay, so now if you,
I'm going to go back, Brad.
I actually skipped this part.
If it hurts when you bend forward like this,
you also want to make sure you have plenty of motion
in your hips and your hamstring
in order so that you can bend over
without bending your back.
- This is a big thing coming up.
I've noticed more videos, more comments, people-
- On your posterior chain.
- And Bob has really been doing some good homework on this.
- Yeah, so what you're gonna do is you're actually
gonna want to do the same thing.
You're gonna want to mobilize the glutes and the hamstrings.
- Sure.
- So, the glutes, you can use a lacrosse ball,
and you're just gonna lie on top of it,
and you're gonna find the tender spots.
There goes my mic again.
And you're going to roll around onto it
and hit the tender spots and loosen up that glute.
Now, for the hamstring-
- You could use a tennis ball if you want.
- You can use a tennis ball,
but these lacrosse balls really work well.
- Yeah, they're a little more aggressive.
- They're more aggressive, yeah.
For the hamstring, you can actually find,
if you can have a high table like this,
you hit the hamstring and you find the spot
and then you can even do flossing like this.
- I like this.
- This works well.
- You can feel that hamstring move across it,
and it's a good way to actually do a massage without,
you know, by yourself.
- Right, exactly.
And you can move it around
and really move it in the right spots.
You know, this was developed by Kelly Starrett
the founder of the Supple Leopard
and we have the book here, but yeah.
- Ooh, yeah.
Yup, boy, this is good.
- You can also use the gun on your glues and hamstrings.
- Oh yeah.
I use this on both.
We've got my glute as well as my hamstrings,
but, here, move, Bob.
We've got to show these people the really way,
and you could do this on a bed if you wanted to,
but you know, I work it now by my SI joint,
but yeah, you know, the hamstrings.
I like to do this so I can relax it,
and work in.
- You know, Brad,
you can actually even bring it this way,
like this way.
Bring it this way.
That's putting more stress
on the hamstring where attaches to the ischium,
the sit bones,
and then you can actually massage it.
- A little trick, I took that ball off,
and I use the flat plastic head,
'cause a plastic,
if you're doing it over your clothing,
it really is smooth, and it's easy to-
- Yeah, and you could even tack it down a little bit,
Brad, and even try to do that.
And do a little flossing that way, too.
- Yeah, there's so many ways to use these massage guns.
- It's a lot easier to do this
than to use the ball or whatever, but-
- It is, it takes less effort.
- Either one is fine.
- You get better results with the gun, I think.
- So, you'll find once you gain that motion,
you're putting less stress on your back
and your back's gonna start to feel better.
There's a reason your back keeps hurting,
and it usually is because
you're stressing it somehow.
So, you got to stop the pain-makers,
as we do in our old program.
We actually have a program on sciatica.
If you go to Bob and Brad, it's a absolutely free program.
- It's a series of 40 separate videos
addressing different components of back pain and sciatica,
and you don't have to watch them all.
You pick out the title that works best for your situation.
Watch it, and there's a PDF printout on paper
of a review of the video.
The exercises, completely free, Bob.
- Go to Bob and Brad,
and it's under the Program section,
and look for Sciatica, back pain.
So, if you have back pain,
even just, and no sciatica, it's still helpful.
- Exactly.
- All right, thanks for watching.
(upbeat music)