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 Bob.
Neck pain and knots gone in seconds with trigger point,
we're gonna do some stretches and posture changes, big issue for a lot of people right
Just as you could tell, my neck was bothering me, and how do you get rid of it? It's annoying
Because we're schooled in this field
We know all these different approaches you can try and kind of do a shotgun approach
and try different things and see which works and likely you're gonna find one or two of them that work well for you
And the other ones just discard them
One thing I want to clarify Bob.
By the way, is that what you want to clarify? Well look all the people out there
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Alrighty Bob
Neck pain, if you were having neck pain, and you're having pain, numbness, or symptoms down in the arm to the hand
These may work, but this is not what these are specific for, so if you're having that arm pain
We need to go to one of our videos that specify neck and arm pain
So we're talking about more you want to show on me Brad kind of what areas you're talking about, right here
In the shoulders in here. They're basically from here between the shoulder blades
That even might be some extension too
But if it's going down past the shoulder down in here. you need a look at more specific videos that we have so
three-phase approach you know it's like the
tripod, it's very steady, three legs, three different approaches
That's why this is guaranteed to work,
You need to pick from each three, right you might luck out on one of them,
Well the first one is a trigger point, now there's trigger points in your neck and your upper traps, okay?
That's in the levator scapulae muscle which we're gonna show you a stretch for that as well
but one of the nicest things for trigger point is
to get out in there with a deep soft tissue massage or a pressure point like the Theracane
If you don't have a Theracane you don't have to go out and buy one, you can use a tennis ball
I'm gonna show the Theracane one, so if you've got that knot in your neck and it's
Usually not up in here
that works so well, but it's for that knot that's down here that pain right in here
You're gonna work that hook of that theracane right here
That's why they get these handles on in here, and we're gonna hold that and you'll find it
You'll get on it like right now. I'm right on that point
I'm gonna hold it for and once you get past 30 seconds
It should be one of those pains that feels so good
and then it releases, once you put the pressure on it might go up to like a six or seven and
After thirty seconds it drops down, everything feels relaxed
You're down to maybe a one or two, you take that off
and then you get some range of motion going and
everything settles down with it, nice quick way to do it, again if you don't have one of these, tennis balls work great
This is definitely my go-to thing Brad, and I do this a little bit different
I like to find the spot, and then I do motion with it
Yep, right
That's just the difference between us two, and everyone their own tricks of the trade so to speak
You want to show it on the wall? The wall? Sure. Now this is actually a sock with a tennis ball in it
And the reason we do that is simply so you can get the placement of the ball in the right place
Because if you're by yourself, and you you take a tennis ball
And you're trying to get to that spot it's a little bit cumbersome and it may fall too. Yeah
We're just gonna drop it into that right spot
and we could hang on to it
Like this you can do some rolling action on it, right to left, and you'll get on it.
There it is. I got it Bob
I already worked that one over. I'm gonna do the other side, see how easy it was to change
That's a nice thing or you get a tennis ball, again to me
Even with that you could still be doing some neck motion with it, in my mind
You like to do
rotation with that Bob? Side bending, rotation, turning, it just seems to work for me
That's all, and you feel it release while you're doing it
Yep. Yes. Bob was thinking of something else
You can use a lacrosse ball, they're a little more aggressive
They're just firmer, a lot harder
You know that may work, too. You can always play catch with them
That's right play with your dog, now the other thing that you can do to actually accelerate this
is if you put a hot pack on it,
And one thing we really like as far as hot packs is we like the Thermatex
The reason is because it's infrared. This is really not a hot pack
This is infrared energy, which is gonna go deep
Yeah
It's gonna get in past deeper than two inches into that muscle or into that joint, a hot pack only goes a few
millimeters, this goes 60 which is 2.36 inches
So able to get into that tight muscles,
Brad and I were just talking about this because we've kind of become
it's become a habit in our life where we just put it in our chair
At night especially on these cold winter nights
And this is the
platinum one and this works out really good because it covers almost every area of the body you can use it
So on this I would sit in my recliner
and that's what I do, put it like that up high, I like it because I
get to the knots before they become really bad, and this just
It gives me relief and I wake up the next day
And that's gone and you can combine that, heat it up for 15 minutes or so and then go after
With the trigger point with the Theracane or the tennis ball and get rid of that knot
This is really expensive to run, it costs they figured what four cents a month to run
I think it was if you left it on all day long. Yeah, there are only 36 watts,
Let's go on to those key stretches Bob. That's phase two, the stretches
If you're working at your computer
workstation or sitting and you've got that neck pain there, you might want to try some chin tucks
Yeah, start to stretch the muscles back here because oftentimes we sit with this poor posture
We're not even aware of it, and then we started developing that neck pain
So we need to straighten ourself up do some chin tucks
And you can do a little overpressure with that in other words on your chin you're gonna
Gently push, I like to do with that part of the palm right between the thumb and the pointer finger
But not real hard
I guess you don't now Brad, it fell behind here.
There it is okay
The action's got to keep going here Brad, so
Now Bob and I do this a little bit differently too, and you can experiment with either way, I like
to roll up a towel like this and just keep it handy and after you do your chin tucks
you can start a chin tuck and hold here and just
extend
backwards and this
Supports that neck and head and makes it feel real comfortable, and you may think why are we doing these when my pain is down here
This neck might affect the pain that's going on down here
Neck pain radiates down into the shoulderblades,
This is kind of a bad example
But when you're having a heart attack, and you're feeling pain down your arm, the damage is happening here in your heart
But the pain goes down your arm. Precisely Bob. Good point okay now the other stretch
You need to get up sometimes. This is a nice stretch too. You come over to a wall and
Get your bottom up against the wall your buttocks your shoulders and then bring your head
So you can touch the wall now there's gonna be some people who have what we call head forward posture and may not be able
To get their head to touch like I am so you go back the best that you can okay
and then you can put some over pressure and
then here
If your head does touch I like to even stretch,
It's similar to the one on the chair, but you got the wall to support
And then you can put your shoulders back and do some wall angels, which works the posture of the shoulders
And sometimes if you just fatigue the muscles
That'll relax that pain, it's good because it's covering the neck and the scapula, all these muscles are connected. It's not isolated
Yeah, I would definitely do the angels included with the chin tuck
And lastly but not leastly is a stretch for the levator
scapulae muscle
which goes from the upper neck down to that shoulder blade and
here, I got a pocket and this is my Christmas shirt because a few days of Christmas here and
Grab over here, you're gonna look down in that pocket for some candy or something like that
And we're gonna go the hand down here
You lean until it locks the shoulder into place, so that's stabilized, we look down here
And I already feel a pretty good stretch
If you want a little bit more just with your fingertips as all don't grab with your hand because it's a gentle stretch
And when you're doing this stretch as well as the other ones just relax and breathe, good deep breath, exhale
That feels good. Yeah. Yeah, do the other side Bob. Just to get balanced out
I did the same and boy if you breathe and relax and let it stretch
Don't force, it makes a big difference. Yeah, think of this as our Christmas gift to you by the way, there you go
Lonnie thought I looked like an elf or something like that before
All right number three posture changes right, now we already covered the wall,the stretch, the angels
Same thing that's working posture as well, but we're gonna give you something a little more than that
Just let it fall down there Bob. I'll put it over here, okay, so what are we doing now?
Well, let's go to the foam roller because this is one of our favorite
devices to improve our posture, you need the three foot one and it's nice to get the soft one
We really like these from OPTP. You can see it on our preferred list below our video, but they're soft
They're comfortable. They're not too soft though. It's still firm and
right down the center of the back and you can see Bob's posture is nice and straight
This is kind of the lazy man, or lazy woman's way to
decrease the pain in your shoulders and such, well I like to think of it as being efficient, all right there we go
but it's stretching everything out and you're gonna think this isn't gonna
take away my knots, it may
Just by getting in the correct posture and staying here and laying here for five minutes,
You'd be surprised, exactly, and then with this tool
You can still do some chin tucks and see if we can get a little more stretching along with the posture correction
Yep, and like I said we're stretching all the chest out. We're getting everything in the right place
I do want to point out for some people
If they do have that head forward posture I was talking about, it may be uncomfortable.
But if your head does not go down because it's very uncomfortable your neck has already contracted
You can put either a small towel roll, or they make a nice little arch roll that goes right there
And that can be much more comfortable, especially if your posture is not ready for it
And then after a while you'll be able to remove that and get into that good posture. I think you knocked my glasses crooked Brad, wow
I normally wait till afterwards, but anyways
So those are some real key issues to get those
knots and that pain in the neck especially if you're really working overtime this time of year
Yeah, really a lot of breaks to help too, right I feel so much better just doing them. That's right
It does make a big difference, so once again, we can fix just about anything except a broken heart
There you go Bob, and it's come in right here.
Right here. Thanks.