♪ Bob and Brad ♪
♪ The two most famous ♪
♪ Physical therapists ♪
♪ On the internet ♪
- 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.
- So this is the number one,
Stretch & Exercise Program for Neck Pain,
for a Pinched Nerve, and so on.
This was
based on the book by Robin McKenzie, Treat Your Own Neck.
This is only about 10, 12 bucks, Brad?
- Right, it's right around in there.
And McKenzie writes it for the lay person
or the patient
versus, you know
the clinician.
- Right there.
For the everyday person.
- Right.
- So.
- And McKenzie's been around for a while,
he's passed now.
But his system has been around.
It's worldwide has been around
for what, 40 years?
- Yeah, so we're gonna you the basics of it
in this video,
but there's a lot more in this book.
So.
I, I want, you know, if you,
if you like what we're doing here,
I would recommend you get the book.
- Get a little more detail.
- All right.
So let's start off with,
it's kind of a progression of exercises here.
You start off with a chin tuck,
which you always do.
The chin tuck, no matter what exercise you're doing.
But eventually you may find one of these
that works best for you.
And that's the one you stick with.
And what we're gonna recommend with all these
is you do it for like 10 repetitions,
but you do it like up to six to eight times a day.
And that's the key here.
You don't just do the exercise once and say, "I'm done."
- But there's some rules you have to follow
in order to get that results.
- Yeah, maybe you wanna mention that right now, Brad,
the pain,
what, what the pain should be doing.
- Right, now this all depends.
If you've got neck pain that refers
to the shoulder blade is common or down into the arm,
you wanna focus on those symptoms.
If you just have neck pain back here,
either way things have to improve.
By the time you do your first chin tuck,
maybe not the first couple,
but by the time you get to four or five,
you should start having some progress.
In other words, the symptoms in the arm or the shoulder
are getting less.
Or if it's just in the neck,
the neck is starting to get less
and you can go a little farther.
That's the green light.
That means, continue to do it
that six to eight times per day.
If you do it, and it just hurts like crazy,
and it's just irritating things, then it.
- We're gonna have to show you an alternative way to do it.
Because if it makes things
worse,
you're definitely gonna stop
and or adjust.
If it makes it better, or if it stays the same
you can keep working on it.
- And there's,
are we gonna mention our series here?
This may be a good time.
- Sure.
- If you do these, what we suggest,
and none of them seem to work,
you can go to our website.
- Yeah.
- Go ahead, you're good at this.
- Go to the program section.
And under the program section, you'll find one on neck pain
and we've got a whole series of videos.
You can look for videos that'll
tell you what to do if this didn't work.
- Right.
There's other options and other stretches
and range of motions.
And you just look through the videos, look at the title.
If the title fits what your needs are, click on that.
Usually around 10 minutes.
They also come with a PDF printout,
which has a preview or a review
of the whole
video,
as well as the exercises.
So you don't have to go back and look.
It's a wonderful deal.
- Thanks Brad.
Why don't you show a chin tuck in the chair, Brad.
- There we go.
- And then I'll show it on the mat.
- First thing.
This chin tuck we're talking about,
we've,
we have mentioned this before in a few videos.
- Yeah, a few thousand times.
- You have to put yourself in good position.
Don't use a soft cushy recliner chair.
Get a firm chair.
It's nice to have arm rests and firm upright backrest.
Get your bottom back in there.
It's critical this is done.
Good posture.
And your head's gonna be like this,
is probably why you got the neck pain at the beginning,
maybe poor posture over time.
And then we're gonna go back and tuck the chin.
I tell my patients bring your chin in towards your throat,
but don't go back like this or down like this.
It's straight back.
Like someone's taking a pie.
You're gonna put it in your face.
You're gonna
back up.
So you might do that.
And I've had patients where,
"Oh, it hurts to do that."
So you go gently into the pain
and not don't push it.
Don't aggravate it.
And after like three or four repetitions
you may find, oh, it's starting to improve a little bit.
Then you got the green light
to go further up the 10 reps.
After you're done, if it feels better
then you do it, you know, every hour or two.
- Yep, and even with that,
if it starts feeling better or are you doing okay,
you can actually do a little overpressure.
- Exactly.
- You can actually take your fingers and push on your chin
or you can take the web of your thumb
and push back like that too.
- And don't get too aggressive with it.
That doesn't mean,
oh, if a little
push is good, a lot more as better.
You need to be progressive and gentle.
- Now, I haven't to be honest.
I haven't used this much Brad,
but sometimes people
if they have trouble with the chin tuck.
- Yep.
- You could take a roll towel like this,
and have lie down and actually work on chin tucks like this.
It's just,
for some people that seem to have trouble with the concept,
they seem like they do a little bit better at this.
- [Brad Heineck] And sometimes just laying down
and taking the weight.
I've had people do it without the towel roll,
just lying flat.
So you can experiment with that either way.
You might find you can't do it seated
but laying down, all of a sudden, you can do it.
And then you progress to the seated position.
- So it's a good warmup exercise
and it's a good repositioning exercise
that you can do throughout the day
to make sure that you don't have that forward head,
that you're putting your head back.
All right.
Once that
is okay,
you're gonna actually go to the first
main stained, mainstay exercise, I would say, Brad.
- Sure.
- You're gonna do the chin tuck.
Yeah. You're gonna have a good, solid back.
You're gonna lean against that
and you do the chin tuck
and then you're gonna work on extension.
Now this is like the key exercise of all,
probably the, all the ones
we're gonna show you on this video.
- So extension means looking up towards the ceiling.
- Now, what you're gonna find.
And Brad and I have seen lots of patients with this
is a lot of them just can't do it.
Like it hurts.
- Yeah. Oh, it hurts.
And sometimes into the shoulder blade,
it makes a pain in the arm worse.
- Yep.
And if you're one of the lucky ones that can start working
on it right away, just keep working on that.
And you want to go further and further and further.
You wanna go as far back as you possibly can.
I remember when I took the course, Brad,
they were, they were working on me
and I couldn't believe how far back they could get me.
I mean.
- Yeah.
- So you want to go back further, further as,
again as long as pain's not getting worse down the arm
it's maybe even getting better down the arm.
- Right. Right.
And overall, you know, if you do it repetition
'cause we're not gonna go back there
and hang out for 20 seconds.
- Right.
- Just go and go back and come back up.
It should feel better as you do more of them.
If it gets worse and worse and worse
then we've got some other options.
- Yeah, and that's where you're gonna start using a towel.
And most of our patients have
needed to require a towel.
- I almost always,
no I'm not saying I have good results
but the towel is a nice way to progress.
- Yeah. I go, I go pretty quickly to the towel.
- Yep.
- So you can roll it up like this.
Or do you wanna show it yourself?
- You show there's first Brad.
- I'll start, especially if someone's
got a pretty good neck pain.
I'll have a thicker towel.
It's more comfortable.
Put the towel typically low
on the neck.
And.
- But you can experiment.
- Yep.
- You can go up and down.
- Yep.
- You can put your hands here.
I'll show you this.
And oftentimes people say to me, "Oh, that feels better.
I can go back farther.
It doesn't hurt nearly as much."
Sometimes we'll have them go up with their hands.
I'll do it this way.
- Yeah.
- And that little pressure up,
puts a little traction along with that range of motion.
- He's locking his mic.
- Yeah. Yeah.
So anyways, you could try either way.
Work with it.
And you know, it's good if it feels better
and you get better range of motion.
- So you also can take a towel and use the salvage,
which is the woven part of the woven end of the towel.
- I just call it the edge.
- Yeah. And you know, Brad and I actually have discovered
that a belt works really well, too.
- Yes.
- It actually may be working even better than this.
So you're gonna use this.
And the advantage of the salvage
is that you can hit at specific level of the neck.
So like, let's see,
you're finding out that the lower dull part didn't work.
I can also, I'm gonna hit my mic aren't I?
- Yep.
- So I can hit,
yeah, I'll get it there Brad.
Right there.
I can go right onto a specific level.
I like to keep it slanted up a little bit
to the towel because that's the way the bones are shaped.
And, and then you can do the same thing.
You can go up.
And again, you can hit different levels
and see which one works the best for you.
- Now, if you have arm pain associated with the neck
it's probably a pinched nerve.
And sometimes that painful arm, when you go up,
it's not comfortable.
So you, this is a little difficult, but you can do it.
Take your good hand, leave this one down
and, and work it the other way.
- Oh, thanks for remembering that Brad.
I forgot to include that.
So.
All right. That's why we work together, Brad.
- Yeah.
- All right. Next one.
You're gonna eventually try to work away from the towel
and then you're going to do extensions.
And when you do extensions,
if you start getting way way back,
you, you can finally work on this.
You can go back and you just wiggle your nose
like an inch to each side
and you try to go back further while you're wiggling.
So it's kind
of a self mobilization, all, all this, wouldn't you say?
- Yeah.
- And I know, I don't know if we have this on here
but you know, just,
you could just support with your hands too.
And I just tell people, shake your head.
No,
just not a big, no,
just a little
no.
- And while you're doing it, you try to go back further.
And so again, the idea is the magic happens
when you get the deck way, way back.
And by then, you're starting to hope
that the pain has completely come out of your arm.
- You'll, you'll notice this.
If your range of motion improves going back,
almost,
I've almost all the time.
The symptoms are centralized,
either going up out of the arm,
going more towards the center of the neck
and everything overall is getting better.
= Yeah.
Many, many of my patients I saw,
they'd start off
and they didn't have this much movement.
- Yep.
- And then, you know, by the end, they're
they're getting full movement.
If it's not working at all
the one thing we want you to try is
you're gonna still gonna do the chin tuck,
but let's say the pain's on this side.
You're gonna do the chin tuck.
And then you're gonna actually side bend.
Try to put that ear on the shoulder.
Yeah. Brad's gonna show the angle.
- So if the pain's here, we're not gonna look down there.
I mean, you could try that,
but we're gonna initially start by tilting this way
and then monitor,
does the pain or the numbness get worse in the arm?
Or the shoulder blade or not?
If it,
and you might have to bump into it a few times
and see how it responds.
And after repetition, three or four repetitions
if it clearly is getting better in your arm
then you're gonna work that some more.
- Yep.
And that's, you do this exercise instead of the other one
if this is one that works.
You figure out which one works.
This one is the one that works for me.
- Yep.
- And I just recently had a dentist do that.
- Oh yeah.
- It's just like a magic with him.
I mean, it was like,
he thought I was his savior
because
I mean, he was having pain, all the,
I mean he couldn't work.
- For sure.
- I mean, that's, you know, so he, he
I think he found out too,
when he worked on people, he had his neck one way.
- Yeah, for years he's probably had to.
- For years and years.
- Unbalanced posture that came back to haunt him.
- And me the same thing.
I write what, you know, my notes are a certain way.
And that's why I got to do a chin duck
and go the opposite way every so often.
All right.
Check it out and good luck with it.
(mellow electronic music)