♪ Bob and Brad ♪
♪ The two most famous ♪
♪ Physical therapists ♪
♪ On the internet ♪
- Hi folks, I'm Bob Schrupp, physical therapist.
- Brad Heineck, physical therapist.
- And we are the most famous physical therapists
on the internet.
- In our opinion of course Bob.
- How to use a TENS unit with hip pain.
Both side and front.
And correct pad placements.
This correct pad placement.
This could be for hip bursitis, hip arthritis,
IT band syndrome, TFL pain, tensor fasciae latae pain.
- Oh, you like that word Bob.
- So anything along this area we're gonna cover.
By the way if you've never watched one of our videos,
so what we're gonna do here is we're not gonna
really show you how to use the TENS unit.
The TENS unit.
Brad and I have tried dozens
of these units and they're all different
to some extent,
they all work to some extent.
- Right.
- Some of 'em don't have very good instructions.
So we decide that we're going to endorse just one brand
that has,
seems like it has everything.
- Right.
It's a good unit, instructions, everything.
We like the company.
They're nice to work with to get new pads, et cetera.
- Reasonable price.
And so it's called iReliev
and if you wanna know how to use their units,
they have three main units that we like.
They have the 1313, the 8080 and 5050.
So if you go to bobandbrad.com,
go to the program section
and then go to the TENS section
and under that you'll find video descriptions
that's saved, 1313, 5050 and 8080.
- And then we go through in detail
how to actually use this.
- Right.
- We're just going through pad placement
for the hip on this one.
- Right.
- Not how to use the device itself.
- Yeah, if you have a TENS unit
from somebody else, you're gonna have
to follow their instructions.
- Sure
- You can't cover instructions for hundreds
of TENS unit.
- Right.
- So, by the along with our video,
there's a printout.
If you go to the comment section,
well I guess it's under the
on the website itself, you'll find it.
Under the video link there's a pdf link.
- Yep
- So you print out.
Click on that and you'll get a printout.
So you won't even have to watch our video more than once
because it shows you where to put the pads after that.
- Right, just print it out
and you can use that for reference.
- Yeah.
So let's start off with the,
let's say hip pain which generally is off
to the side or maybe in the front.
- Right.
- Let's start off with it.
Let's say it's off to the side.
- Right.
- You wanna start with just maybe two pads?
- Sure.
So here we've got the unit.
We've got the leads on there.
We're not gonna connect the leads
to the pads just because for,
and we're talking about placement on this not connection
and use of the unit.
- So most units have two leads, they call it.
And one lead attaches to two pads.
So we're gonna start off with just channel one
going to a lead going to two pads.
- Here you go.
So you'll have it hooked up.
Let's say the pain is right here.
I gonna start, and again, you're gonna have to do trial
and error.
You may wanna go right over the top of the pain.
And then you may wanna go below it.
Just make sure the pads aren't close.
If they're touching, that's way too close.
Half inch is too close.
You wanna have the same distance as the width of the pad.
- A pad's width apart.
- So you can go down here.
I could put it here.
And make sure you go directly on the skin.
I didn't feel like exposing my rear end to everyone.
(laughs)
- I appreciate that, Brad.
I really much appreciate it
- Yeah so make sure your skin's very clean.
Wash it with soap and water.
Keep it, get it very dry and then you can go ahead and.
- Yeah, the oils
from the skin can help break down the stickiness
of the pads, plus it'll conduct better.
- Right, for sure.
Lasts longer, everything's good about it
when things are clean.
- Well we failed to say here Brad is that
there's really no absolute correct way to put the pads.
You're gonna want to experiment to figure out
which one works best for you.
You may wanna try two pads, you may wanna try four pads.
Whatever works for you.
- Now again, now that was one putting the one pad right over
that painful area.
The next option is to surround it with two pads.
Let's say here's the painful area.
One here, one here.
Or I could go here and here.
I mean, you can however you wanna put it
so that it surrounds it.
If the pain is pretty global and it's like a larger area
on the hip, then you may want to use all four pads.
The yellow on your electrodes,
they're not gonna be color coded.
They'll be black, sometimes they're white.
But they don't have yellow and green like we have.
We did that for educational instruction purposes.
- [Bob] So yellow in our case is channel one
and the green is channel two.
And you'll see why it's important
to have the channels correct here
because the current is gonna run between the channels here.
So between channel one and between channel two.
So it forms an X.
- [Brad] Now you're gonna energize all four electrodes
and see how it works.
Now if that is not comfortable, it's not working real well,
you can just rotate 90 degrees.
- [Bob] There we go.
- [Brad] And sometimes little small differences like this
can be very helpful.
- [Bob] So again, you've got current running this way
and this way.
Now you've formed a cross.
- [Brad] Right.
All right.
The cross and the X.
- Yeah, the cross and the X.
So.
All right, let's go to the groin Brad.
A lot times it's interesting, you can have.
One of the fact, the big signs of hip pain,
a hip problem, is having pain in the groin.
- So yeah, we're talking not so much down in here
in the groin area here.
We're talking the front of the hip.
Because the hip and the groin are, you know,
get close together in the old saying
of the hips connected to the knee
and the hips connected to the groin.
One thing you have to be very careful
with this is the femoral crease which is right here,
the part which bends, where the actual bending is.
You do not wanna put a pad again,
you're not gonna put it over your clothing.
Over the skin there, because when you bend it,
it's gonna interfere with the connection of the electrode.
So you're either gonna go above the femoral crease
or below it.
So if that hip pain is right here, we can't go right on it.
We're gonna go here above and...
- This is assuming that you're gonna be active.
If you're gonna lay in bed, you could put it on the crease.
- Yeah that's true, that's a good point Bob.
- But if you're gonna, especially walk around
or you're gonna be sitting obviously,
you can't put one in the crease there.
- And see, you can flex there
and it won't get into the crease.
You could go there and there.
And again, they do have a plastic...
- Sheath.
- Sheath here that the pads always, either on this
or on your skin.
Don't leave 'em lay around.
Put 'em away.
- 'Cause they'll dry out and this helps protect them, right.
By keeping 'em on the pad.
- [Brad] So because the femoral creases are your limited,
I could not do this because it's gonna get in this bend.
So I could go here and I could shift it here.
Now I'm gonna put, the current's going from channel one
to channel one, yellow to yellow.
Green to green.
So I'm gonna go here and keep my distances.
This one's getting kinda far away.
You could try that and see how it goes.
You may have to move it a little bit closer
to get it in a formation like this.
Now this one, eh it's close.
You're gonna have to see.
What happens is when electrodes don't have good connection
either because there's movement on it, weight-bearing
or whatever, they tingle more
and they can be a little uncomfortable.
- Yeah, it's like when they start to wear out too.
When they don't stick as well anymore.
You'll be able to tell 'cause it just doesn't feel right.
It's kinda weird tingling instead
of the tingling that you want.
- Yep, exactly.
And that's just a matter of working with it.
- Now we also have mentioned in the past
in some of our other videos
like let's say the pain is coming from your back
into the groin.
You could put two pads on your back
and two pads on the groin at the same time.
- Right.
So from here to here and to here.
We have another video that focuses on putting the pads
on the low back and the buttock area.
- So you could check that out.
- What's that one gonna be titled?
- Pretty much how to use the TENS unit with buttock pain.
- Buttock pain, okay, good.
- So if you wanna check that out.
As far as exercises, there's two stretches
that we really like to do for hip problems.
- Oh yes.
- One is a hip flexor stretch.
Now you can do this one of two ways.
One you can do it on the bed.
And what you wanna do,
let's say I'm gonna stretch this side.
I'm gonna get to the edge of the bed
and you can keep your shoulders on the bed quite well.
I don't want you to fall off.
- [Brad] Right.
Falling off the bed's not good.
- Yep.
So you're gonna take one leg off like this.
And see how I'm stretching the muscle there?
And you pull this up.
Actually it stabilizes the pelvis.
And you're gonna see, I'm a little bit tight there.
Watch this once.
See how that comes up?
- [Brad] The knee is coming up over here.
- Yeah, 'cause I'm a little bit tight in the hip flexor
even though I stretch this daily.
It could maybe use a little more stretch.
- [Brad] Yeah, and you know,
you don't wanna have tight clothing on with this.
So you have something loose or even shorts
so that the clothing doesn't interfere.
- And if I wanna get the other side,
I would just put this leg off on the other side
and lift up on this one.
Now you can also do the stretch using, I always like
to use a pad on the floor.
- [Brad] Or a pillow.
- Which way should I go, Brad?
Should I put this leg forward?
- [Brad] Yeah.
- Probably so, right?
I'm trying to figure out.
- [Brad] I'm wondering if I should do it
'cause I got stripes on my hip.
- If you want, yeah.
We can stretch just like that.
Go ahead.
You show it.
- [Brad] You sure?
- Yeah.
- You always do this one.
I usually don't do this one.
On our other videos, I'm referring to.
- [Bob] But it shows really well with the stripes.
- So this is the part.
You can do this.
We like to do this
to get that hip flexor muscle a little more directly.
And good shoulder posture.
I put one hand here and I think about pushing forward
on my waistline.
- [Bob] Yep, absolutely.
- And there's the stretch.
If you don't do this without something on your knee,
a pillow or a cushion or a carpet,
it's pretty uncomfortable.
At least for me.
- [Bob] Especially as you get in the 50-plus range.
- Yeah, if you're 20 years old,
you might not have a problem.
- Now you can do a figure four stretch too.
A real simple stretch.
Just take your ankle, put it on the opposite knee.
Or a little bit above the knee, actually.
And you're gonna pressure on, pressure off.
Keep good posture.
Pressure on, pressure off.
- And the same goes with the previous stretches.
You can do the pressure on, pressure off.
You know, five to 10 repetitions.
Again, you're only going to do these
if it feels like a good stretch.
If it creates sharp pain,
that means it's not ready for it yet.
- Right.
And you'll find quite often
if you have one problematic hip,
that one's probably tighter.
That might be up like this versus this one
which is down like that.
So that's the one you're gonna really wanna work on.
- Exactly.
- All right, did we cover it all Brad?
- I think we covered it well.
We hope they think the same thing.
- All right, thanks for watching.
- Take care.
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