♪ Bob and Brad ♪
♪ The two most famous physical therapists ♪
♪ On the internet ♪
- It's gonna work, Brad.
- All right!
- 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.
- I suppose you think you're a little more famous than I am?
- I don't think so, Bob.
I'm shorter than you.
(Bob laughs)
- All right, how to fix a stiff,
painful neck at home
in what is it?
I can't read your writing there.
- Three simple steps, Bob!
- Oh a stiff and painful neck.
I see what that symbol is.
How to fix a stiff and painful neck at home
in three simple steps.
- Now people will think we don't know what we're doing.
- We do!
All right.
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- That's right.
- All right Brad, take it away.
- Bob, the neck has a lot of different reasons it could be
stiff and painful.
These particular exercises in my, and I think you'll agree,
in our opinion, it's gonna cover a great majority of them
and I have them in a specific order for a reason
because I think, particularly steps two and three,
you do the number two first and then three
and they compliment each other in that order
but the first thing I wanna show is
something simple you can do if these muscles are tight,
stiff, painful, a simple self-massage.
- It's amazing how well this can work
and this really works well, I think,
for a lot of people who have that forward head posture.
- [Brad] Yep.
- And they're starting to get pain
right where the neck meets the skull.
Yep right where there and this, you know,
quite often a lot of headaches come from that too.
- [Brad] Sure, sure.
- And by massaging that area, which you can do
with circles, Brad's gonna go ahead
and show us some techniques here.
- [Brad] Now, can you hear me Liz?
'Cause I got my mic--
- Liz cannot hear you so I will interpret, Brad.
So he's gonna go ahead and so some circles,
you can see again, he's working
right underneath the skull there.
Yeah and he's in good posture while he's doing this.
Now you can also do what we call a splaying massage,
so he brings the fingers together
and pulls them apart like this.
Now this is something you can do, you know, anywhere.
You probably can't do it driving because
(Bob laughs)
you've gotta have your hands on the wheel
but you could certainly do this in the office
or while you're watching TV, it's just a great one to do.
Now he's working his way down the neck,
again, kind of doing the splaying
and pulling the fingers down towards
the front.
So--
- [Brad] Oh my goodness!
- There you go, all right.
Brad, why don't you mic back up and we're gonna,
by the way, I want to tell you too.
If you get a pain or numbness or tingling that's going
all the way down from your neck into the arm and hand,
you wanna proceed with caution on these.
Probably you're gonna wanna do
maybe more of a McKenzie technique,
M-C-K-E-N-Z-I-E.
We got some videos on that and that works really well
for neck problems such as that.
- You can try these with it but only proceed--
- They aren't gonna hear you, Brad.
- Oh wow.
(Brad laughs)
You can try these with the arm pain and numbness, tingling
but only continue if it improves.
If it gets worse, stop.
- All right, now we're going to the towel, right Brad?
- Oh yes, the towel.
So you take a towel roll like this.
You could use a strap or a belt.
Bob's gonna use that strap there.
- This is a stretch out strap.
- If you're using a belt, a thinner one typically works
a little bit better and now we're gonna start out,
you can do chin tucks without this
but I think when you use it, it kinda gives
a little support and is helpful.
So a chin tuck here, little support at the base of the neck,
not up here.
- The reason I like the strap sometimes is
'cause you actually can get to different levels of the neck.
- You can get specific.
- Yeah I can get real specific.
I also, there's a way of doing the towel down here,
you can also go up like this.
- There you go, different angles.
- Yeah, different angles and if the sets tend to go
in that angle, so I can actually do chin tucks like this too
and again, different levels of the neck.
- And you're gonna go by how it feels.
If it feels better up here, go ahead.
If not, you can keep it here.
- I've seen it work both ways.
You've convinced me more
that it actually works almost better pulling down, Brad,
for the majority of people but I have had
some people that it works this way.
- Now as you do this, the next step,
now this is not number three,
this is a continuation of number two.
Get in a chair that has a back rest, so you can lean into it
and then we're gonna start throwing some,
we call it cervical extension or looking up with support.
Then we find out, both Bob and I have found out that
typically offers a lot of support and relief.
You can go up like this, if that feels better
or you can keep it down here
and you're gonna go back as far as that feels comfortable.
- What I saw, Brad, again and again is
I'd first have people try it without a towel.
- Sure!
- I'd have them do this
and they'd go, "Oh that kind of hurts,
"that just doesn't feel that good."
- Yep.
- So then we would go to the towel
and they would take it home,
they'd use the towel for a couple days
and they'd come back and by then, they were almost ready
to do it without the towel then.
- Well yeah, even no towel pain, with a towel less pain,
more range of motion but still not all the way.
You know, we're looking for full extension.
- Our end goal is that you can do it without the towel
and you have yep, full motion.
- Yep.
- That's your end goal, however you get there.
You might use a mix of towel and no towel.
- Or you can use your hands, kind of like this.
- You can use, your hands sometimes work too.
- Yep, little tricks.
Tricks that we'll show ya.
And then we're gonna go on to the last one,
this is for the rotation.
Now this one's a little tricky.
- It is.
- You can actually rotate right to left
and just give a little over pressure on your jaw.
- Always really good posture on these by the way,
you don't want your head forward like this
and then working on rotation,
that's actually not good for the neck.
You wanna have really good posture, a lot of times,
like you said, in an upright chair with a good back
and then, yeah, you can give
a little overpressure if you'd like, along on the jawline.
- You know, I should've mentioned it earlier
but just relax, breathing, deep breathing is
very helpful in this.
If going to the right is painful, don't go that way.
Just go to the left or vice versa, go the pain free way
and oftentimes that'll loosen up the painful way.
Maybe not the first time but after a couple days or so
and sometimes less.
If you use a towel, now this is the tricky part.
- This is the tricky part.
- I'm gonna rotate to the right, so I'm gonna take
my right hand, grab the left tail of the towel
that's on the left shoulder.
Up over the jaw
and rotate,
this might bump into my mic,
so you might hear me scritch and scratch a little.
Make sure you don't go like that.
- Yeah, I often have you take it up to the eye, Brad.
- Yep, sure.
- You know, this one goes almost across the eye like this.
- Yep.
- And I'm trying to keep this shoulder from turning,
so this left shoulder, I'm keeping it back.
I'm not going like this along with the neck.
Sometimes I even hook it around the chair,
you know, the back of the chair.
- Sure, that locks it in.
It's amazing what this technique does,
that the support around your low neck
and the act, is that okay, Liz?
Am I bumping into the mic?
A little bit.
Yeah, so I'm gonna cheat a little bit here,
I'll go back to this way.
But that wrap around the neck supports it
and really offers a lot of improvement.
- I do wanna show a bonus one, Brad.
- Oh a bon, it's a bonus day!
- So here, what you're gonna do is you can do a chin tuck.
So you're gonna chin tuck a few times like this,
Brad's gonna show you.
And then you're gonna do a side bend.
- Oh yes!
- Now this is often, the reason I brought this up,
it's my favorite one when I'm having pain
because I tend to do notes with my neck like this.
- Yeah, the old Forrest Gump posture.
- And so I never go this direction
and so I get tight in this direction,
this is how I get pain.
So I do a chin tuck and I go to the right.
Chin tuck and I go to the right.
Now yours might be chin tuck go to the left
or you might do it both directions
but generally, one is gonna feel better
and this is the one that's my golden standard.
This is the one I go back to again and again
because it definitely, when I'm starting to have some pain,
that's the one that takes it away.
- Sure, sure.
So again, you don't have to do all three of them
or the fourth bonus one--
- Do the ones that work!
- Yeah the ones that really loosen it up
and it may be all three of them.
I'm telling you, these are some techniques
I've just grown to love over the years, Bob.
- Yeah, well I think any time we can help people,
seriously, I mean, you know, you give
them a technique they can do on their own,
you're teaching a man to fish instead of...
- What about a woman?
- A man or woman, that was the old Biblical saying.
- Yeah back then you could say that.
- All right.
- Take care.
- Thanks for watching.
(upbeat tones)