♪ Bob and Brad ♪
♪ The two most famous physical therapists ♪
♪ On the internet ♪
- Howdy folks I'm Bob Schrupp, physical therapist.
- Brad Heineck, physical therapist.
- And together, we are the most famous physical therapists
on the internet.
- In our opinion of course, Bob.
- Now we're gonna talk again about Tool #5
for fighting back pain that's about sitting
and sitting correctly. - Mm-hmm.
- And especially in your car.
- Right.
- There's a lot of people have long commutes.
- Right.
- And they're sitting in their car,
and it's really an important time
to battle your back pain, - Right.
- 'cause it'll make it much worse
if, first off,
if you are in this position,
a rounded C position
- Right.
- Brad, do you wanna show that?
- Sure.
- Do you mind if you are in your car seat?
- Sometimes, it's kinda hard to relate to that spine,
but if your looking at it
- Here's the head, here's the pelvis.
- Yep.
- So the head can just be forward too much
because the tilt. - Right.
- And/or they relate very much as a lumbar support here
to give support in the low back particularly
for those Sciatic people
- Yeah that's how you correct it.
- Yep.
- This.
- So yeah it is a little bit of a combination
to use the back support and then how how you lean your seat.
- Right.
- Either, are you too far from the steering wheel
or not, so..
- Yeah we found like also if you lean your seat too far back
- Yep.
- You tend to, what do you tend to do?
You tend to reach for the steering wheel
- Sure.
- And round your back out. - (hums agreeably)
- So you're gonna wanna figure out, you know
what kind of support you need. - Yeah.
- And this is a trial and error thing.
- (hums agreeably)
- Because it's very difficult.
Some people have large buttocks and because of that
- (laughs)
- they have a big gap behind their back.
- The anatomy.
- Right. - Right so
- So they they're gonna need like a big support like this.
- The other thing that can do it is the shape of a seat.
- Right.
- You know, even if you're have a more
of a straight back and you gotta hollow it out seat.
- Right.
- Boy, then you gotta get something to fill that,
and I've had that
- Some car seats are awful.
- Oh man.
Especially if they're older cars
or they be, you know, But here I
I put this in there and you know the, you're gonna know
if you have the right back support
'cause it's gonna feel good.
It's gonna feel like, Oh, (laughs) that's not a thing.
- Right. My back feels locked in.
- Yep. Feels good.
- But you could do is actually start with a roll towel.
- There you go.
- To figure out what width you need.
- So yeah, just roll it up, put some tape on her
some rubber bands and you know, if it feels
like there's a bump there and it's
pushing into your back
- Too much.
- And it's not comfortable, it's too big.
You need to get something smaller.
And you know, after you play the towel for a while,
you realize if you need a bigger one or smaller one,
and once you do that
- Then you can possibly order one.
- Yeah. And, and these bottom ones almost always work better
than a towel because they're, they're squishy
they're made for it.
There is densities on these.
- Right.
- Some are soft,
- Right.
- Some are firmer.
You have to look at the description.
- And they also have a way of attaching to your seat.
- Yeah.
- Way of it.
- Yeah. There's all different varieties.
- Here's one that actually is air filled.
- (hums agreeably) Yep.
- And what else do we have, Brad?
- Well we've got that.
- Oh, you got yours.
- Yep.
- Which is different.
- Right.
- Because, I think it's because
you really don't want to extend too much.
- I don't want the lumbar
- Too much.
- Right. Because
- You wanna be straight.
- If you've got sciatica,
I've got spondylolisthesis, which, not sciatica.
- Spinal stenosis.
You probably don't wanna have that lumbar bulge
that support here, like.
- So this one is good for spinal stenosis?
- Oh this one changed my whole life.
- And this is good for spondy.
- Yep. Big difference when I changed to this one,
I can ride in a comp car very comfortably.
If I go without it, go in my wife's car
and I forget to put this in there.
As a matter of fact, last weekend I got about
five miles from home and I realized.
- I've done that before too.
- Turned around to get this.
- Yep.
- Cause we had 150 mile drive and I knew I was gonna be
saying bad words.
- So I'll be, we'll be clear on that Brad,
you really don't want too much arch.
I mean with spondy or spinal stenosis
like reach above and it bothers you.
- Yep, exactly.
- So couple other points, Brad.
- And this is memory foam, which to me is very helpful.
- Yeah. A couple other points.
- (hums)
- No matter how well you sit it's not good
for you to be sitting for a long time.
- (hums agreeably) Right.
- If you can, if you can, you wanna take breaks.
- Right.
- If you're going on a trip and at least every
half hour, hour
- Yep.
- Get up, walk around a little bit,
go to the bathroom, go, you know, walk around the pumps.
I don't know what you do.
- (laughs)
Yeah. It really, I mean I've had patients
who were taking a three hour trip and I said,
just schedule, you're gonna stop more than once.
You're gonna make two or three stops,
get up and go for a little walk
and it'll be helpful. And it is.
- I found even like if you have a lumbar roll,
the mechanical one?
- (hums agreeably)
- To actually make you go out and go in
give your back a little bit of movement.
- Right. You mean the built in ones?
- Yeah, the built in ones.
- In the vehicle. Yeah.
- But if you don't, doing a little bit of this,
arching.
- Yeah.
- And flexing.
- Yeah. The point is, is you can put yourself
in perfect posture, but even perfect posture
- No, it's, it's not gonna help.
- You still need some motion outside
of staying in that for long periods of time.
- If you do have back pain or back injury or sciatica
- (hums agreeably)
- You really wanna avoid the long trips if you can.
- Yeah.
- I mean it's just not a good time to take a long trip.
- You know, it's helpful if you're not driving.
- Yes.
- And you can tilt your seat back.
- Tilt the way back.
- That's a very good point.
- Much better.
- Brad, do you wanna talk about the dead head dead?
- The dead pedal.
(laughter)
- So, and I never knew this until about 10 years ago
or so when my back was giving me a lot of problems.
But you got your gas pedal on the right foot.
On the left foot, You know, you got your clutch
and brake depending, but way over on the left
there's typically a little plastic
spot where you can put your foot on
and what that can be used for.
I don't know if it's there.
- It looks like a pedal almost.
- Yeah.
- But stationary.
- Yeah. It's part of the frame of a car and there's a
rubber foot pedal there if you will, but it's not a pedal.
You can use that and push your bottom back into the chair.
- Right. Good position.
- Yeah.
- Right.
- And that's, I don't know if that's what's it's there for
- So everybody be looking out to see if they have it.
- Yeah. See if you got a dead pedal.
- Right.
- Just a little pedal that's motionless.
- Alright. The other thing, don't have your hands
on the steering wheel like this,
- (hums agreeably)
- Because you're gonna bend forward.
- Yep.
- Keep them at like a, at a...
What position are they? Three and nine o'clock?
- (laughs) Yeah, I got a sister-in-law,
she drives like this.
- Does she really?
- It's like, boy, I think she's getting better now.
- I do the knees.
- I was afraid to talk to her. What?
- I do the knees.
- It's cause your legs are too long, oh the driving
with your knees.
- Yeah.
- (laughs)
_ Alright, and avoid reaching to the back seat.
You're twisting your back,
- (groans)
- And I know you're always trying to reach back
and keep the kids in line.
- Back, back in the old days.
- Back in old days.
- Can't do that anymore
- No we can't do that anymore.
- Back in the sixties
- Right
- When we were kids (laughs)
- Remember my dad and I, we had a big van,
and he tried to reach back and get at me
- He couldn't reach.
- So you just laughed.
- Thankfully yeah.
- Under your breath, of course.
- Alright, also, do not lift any hot heavy objects
- (hums agreeably)
- After you've been in the car for a long time
because your discs are gonna be pushed out a little bit.
- Yep.
- And your back's gonna be fatigued, so I mean
it's just not a good time to
- Yeah. Not a fatigue from exercise, but a fatigued from
- Being flexed.
- Yeah. Being flexed.
And even like, even like Bob said
if you got a lumbar support,
you're still stressing your spine.
If you're in fixed position
- Yeah. Your shock absorber basically.
Because the car, you know, is going over bumps
- (hums agreeably) and it's all minor.
- Minor, right.
- But over time at all, it all adds up.
- So. Alright. Anything else Brad,
you wanna mention?
- Well, no, but this is kind, are these, are these gonna
be the PDF printouts?
- [Bob] Yeah. Yeah.
- [Brad] We got some pictures of Bob about 20 years ago.
- [Bob] (laughs)
- [Brad] So you know,
- [Bob] Check 'em out.
- [Brad] Yeah, go on this, you wanna tell 'em
how they get to this?
- [Bob] Yeah, go to bobandbrad.com,
go to the program section
and they'll be a program on back pain.
Actually, we have one on sciatica too.
- [Brad] Right.
- [Bob] And as, as Brad mentioned,
there's PDF's you can actually print out
and you'll take it along with you and
- [Brad] It's gonna show pictures of things we talked about.
And of course, Bob did a real nice job of
writing out a brief summary so you can review this
anytime you want without looking at us on the video.
- Check it out.
- Be careful.