♪ 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 therapist on the internet.
- In our own opinion of course, Bob.
- Today we're going to show you
how to massage the quadratus lumborum
with a massage gun.
- That's a mouthful.
- Yeah, it's kind of difficult.
- It's in your back. Your low back right?
- Well, let's talk about it right now, Brad.
The quadratus lumborum, it attaches to the iliac crest here.
Then it comes up and it attached to the 12th rib.
- [Brad] Yep.
- And, then it's got, you know, little attachments
to L four,
I mean L four, three, two, one
on the transverse processes.
So, that'd be,
this one, this one, this one, this one.
So, it's attached like that.
And, you can see if that's tight
it's going to pull a rib down.
It's going to even pull your back down
and, you know, kind of throw you off doing an imbalance.
- Are we going to have a diagram of this?
- Yes. At the end of the show, I'll show you
we'll have a diagram using the smart board.
- Right, So it'll be very easy to visualize.
- So, how do you develop a shortened,
QL?
This is the way I did.
So, I tend to sleep on my left side every night.
So, do you mind, Brad. - Sure.
If I just do this once?
If you sleep on the same side every night,
can you see how this could get shortened?
This is getting stretched out a little bit.
You know, slight probably. - Right.
Especially if you have wide pelvises.
- Yep, or wide shoulders.
- Or, wide shoulders, right.
So, this could tighten up here.
The other way you do it,
is if you
tend to sit
and one side more than the other.
And, I do. - Right
I have to make a conscious effort
not to do this,
but when I'm sitting on a high stool,
I tend to go like this. I don't know why.
- Probably stems from your childhood.
- Maybe it does or maybe cause it stems
cause I lie on my side at night.
- Sure, right.
- So, I have to make it a conscious effort to.
- Right, right.
- Now, this muscle, you'll see,
it's kind of difficult to get to.
- Yeah, it's deep. It's under a layer
of the erector spinae muscles,
which we can show you where they are.
But yeah, we need to get at it and loosen it up.
- So, you're going to need someone to help you on this.
Although, I found, Brad, I could hit it myself.
- It's not real easy though.
- It's not really easy, no.
So, Brad's going to be working on this side.
So I want to be, like this, right?
Yeah.
- If you want them to see me do it,
you got to put your head over here, Bob.
- Okay.
- Yeah.
- But, you're going to have to go up then.
You know what I'm saying?
You'll have to go up.
- Just lay down, Bob, we'll get it.
Yeah. Cause it's your right side, right?
So, I'm going to go down.
- [Bob] Oh no, you're right.
- Of course. The aging process.
- [Bob] Yeah, the aging process.
- Here, you want a pillow?
- [Bob] Yeah, thank you.
- Do you want me to double it up?
- [Bob] No, no. I'm good, I'm good.
- Alright, you're good.
Okay. It's going to fall off
because you're almost this table isn't made
for six and a half footer.
All right. So,
- [Bob] We're getting there guys.
- Now, this is one thing
you won't have to worry about.
You won't have to worry about the mic cable,
hopefully at home.
- [Bob] Yeah.
- Can you see that pretty good, Mike?
Mike's our camera person today.
Now, I'm going to get this going.
Now, you can see,
what we're going to use
is the pointed head. There's usually
four or five heads that come with.
And, the reason we're doing that is cause,
we're not going to hit the spinous process
of the bones at all.
We're going to stay clear away from that.
And, then there's a bone right here.
The pelvis bone.
You want to stay away from that
'cause it's going to hurt.
- [Bob] It goes way up to here.
- Yep. So it's nice to,
I've got cold fingers, Bob.
It's always good to,
I was doing something with my wife and she said,
"Go wash your hands and warm them up."
I mean, they were clean anyways.
So, right there's a bone and right here's bone.
And the muscle is in here.
But, right here is that large
spinous process muscle group.
And, we need to get-
- [Bob] Erector spinae.
- I'm sorry, erector spinae group. Thank you.
And, if I go through here
I don't want to have to go through that.
I'm going to go from the top, like my fingers
and kind of behind it
and start
with the gun on a low setting.
- [Bob] Exactly. Every time
you want to start on a low setting.
- Yeah. So, this gun has five settings.
So, I'm on number one,
and you're gonna start gentle.
And, the person you're doing it to is always the boss.
You got to listen to their feedback.
It should not be painful.
It shouldn't start out.
I'm just gently going in here.
And, if I go up in here,
do you feel me get to that bone, Bob?
- [Bob] A little bit.
- Okay. I'm not going to go any further.
I'm going to go in there
and then I'm going to go a little deeper.
You can see I'm getting into soft tissue.
It's muscle.
- [Bob] That actually feels good.
- And, that's the response.
If they say, "Oh, it feels good,"
then you should feel comfortable.
And, I'm going to take my time to learn this.
So, I don't go up to hard.
- [Bob] Yep, your going up and down the fibers.
- Yep. Now, I'm going to be getting close
to that 12th rib here pretty soon.
And, I don't want to shake that up,
you know, unless. How's that feel, Bob?
- [Bob] That feels really good.
- Oh, good.
So, again,
I'm working it, should I go up farther, you think?
- [Bob] I think you can.
- Yep.
- [Bob] My rib is right there.
- The 12th one's that little short one.
- [Bob] Yeah, it is.
- Just tell me when I...
- [Bob] Yep, no I don't feel anything.
- You're feeling okay?
- [Bob] Yep. Now you're probably hitting rib.
- Okay, so I went a little deeper there.
So, I'm going to back off
and I'm going to go in here
and tell me if I'm going too aggressive.
- [Bob] No. It feels good.
- Okay. So, I'm going to keep putting
pressure on gradually,
but Bob is going to continue to give me feedback
on how it feels.
- [Bob] Yep, and I should be breathing, relax.
- Yep.
- [Bob] We want to be able to allow it
to get within the muscle as much as possible.
And, if you find a trigger point, you know, if
I let you know, you may want to linger
over that for a little bit, even.
- So, let's say let's pretend I hit one right in here.
And, it hurts, ow.
So, I'm going to back off a little bit
and maybe kind of work up to it,
or if I work on it and it's tolerable
by Bob and after about 20/30 seconds,
Bob says, "Aw, that's starting to feel better now."
That means we've got that,
trigger point to release.
And, on the other hand, if you get on it
and he says, "Oh, it's getting worse and worse
over a period of,
you know, 10 or 20 seconds,"
then you just got to stay away from it.
- [Bob] Just back off from it for a while.
- And, then work around it.
Let's say, your skin,
and the skin will turn red like this.
- [Bob] Yes.
- And, that's okay.
Which brings up the good point.
If someone has sensitive
or delicate skin or there's an injury
a cut or something like that,
you can't massage around that.
You don't want to break up an injury.
- [Bob] Brad, do you mind if I try once?
- Yeah, go ahead.
Bob's going to have a go.
- [Bob] I'm going to see if I could do it to myself.
- Let's get your,
clothing out of the way.
- [Bob] I mean, you have to kind of
know what you're doing.
I mean, you have to know where the muscle is,
you know what I mean?
You have to find your way up but...
- In some ways you're better off
doing it yourself because,
you know what feels good
and where you're hitting it.
- [Bob] So, you know, you could feel,
the spine the hardness of the spine and then work
up a couple inches
and that's spot you're going to hit.
- And, how long Bob is the longest we're gonna,
we're not gonna massage for an hour or anything like that.
- [Bob] I would say the first day,
you probably want to do five minutes
or so, you know,
and then you can always move on from there.
- Right, you'll get a feel for it.
And, that being, you know, if you have good response
to that and you get done with it, things feel good
and it feels good for the next couple hours.
You know, maybe five minutes is enough.
You can go a little longer next time.
- Yeah. If you want to maybe go to 15 minutes
eventually, it's up to you.
- All right, we'll show you now the,
a little bit of the anatomy
so you can see it and visualize it.
- Oh yeah, oh we're going to show them.
- Yeah.
- Good idea.
- Okay. We're going to now demonstrate
where the muscle is and Brad,
this first one is showing from a frontal view.
- Right, so looking from the front.
And, they're going to be right in here
where Bob had mentioned earlier,
but there it shows the fibers how they run
up and down and
they're deep.
- Yup. And, you can see how attached
to the 12th rib here.
And, then it's attaching
to the transverse processes
of L one, two, three and four.
Now, some say five too.
- Sure.
- And some say, no.
- It really doesn't matter.
- It might be different on people. Yeah.
See how attached to the pelvis here,
you can see if this muscles tight.
It can actually bend you.
- Pulls your...
- Yeah
- And it may be subtle.
You may not. You're not going to be
walking on like this probably but,
there may be some involvement.
But, I like to note that 12th rib
does not wrap all the way around.
It's kind of a floating rib.
- [Bob] Gets cut off there.
- [Brad] Yep.
- So, it must've been the one that Adam gave
to Eve or what, how's that working again?
- Well, Bob,
that's another video.
- Remember Brad and I can fix just about anything
- Oh, we're not going to go over there?
- Oh, you want to go over here too?
- Well, it just shows it from this angle.
- From the back.
Again, you can see the 12th rib.
You can see the pelvis.
You can see the transverse processes
not very well.
- And this is where that big muscle,
the erector spinae muscles go
like that or over my hand or cover over the top.
- And that's why we had to get
underneath that muscle because,
it's a series of muscles.
- Boy, that's a nice, you know
these smart boards are quite a deal.
- Yeah, they're smarter than we are.
- Yeah.
- So, remember we can fix just about anything.
- Except for,
- A broken heart.
- Right.
- The heart is right about there.
- Yeah we're out of the way though
- So, we'll have to work on that.
- The QL has got nothing to do
with the heart box.
- All right. Thanks.
(soft music playing)