- All right, Bob and viewers,
watch this if you want fast relief
for neck and upper trap pain.
Plus, learn the precautions that you need to know
to avoid potential problems.
- It's all guaranteed.
♪ Bob and Brad ♪
♪ The two most famous physical therapists ♪
♪ On the internet ♪
- All right, neck and upper trap.
In other words, these muscles right up here, commonly-
- Very common.
- From poor posture which so many people have, including us.
Yeah. At the computer-
- You drift into it.
You try to fight it, but it drops-
- What the hell are you doing with your hands like that?
- I'm typing.
- Oh! He's typing or the cell phone or driving.
It's all the same thing, Bob.
But I did wanna mention one thing.
The last technique is the easiest one
and the one you wanna wait around for
if you want the easiest one.
- What a coincidence.
(both laughing)
- Okay. Precautions.
Just like the title said,
there's a couple things you need to know.
First of all, I apologize. I said the "H" word.
It's a family show.
Bob, I apologize
and viewers. - Slap you.
- But anyways there is a couple legitimate precautions
when you're working with massage on your neck.
Bob, you wanna talk about the-
- One, you wanna stay away for the carotid arteries.
- Yep and the reason that is, there's a sinus in there.
And if you put pressure on that,
it actually could decrease your blood pressure
and heart rate.
- And it could cause you to faint.
- Yeah. Get dizzy.
Now actually they used to use that, I guess be in surgeries
like back in the Civil War-
- To put people out?
- Yeah. They'd put pressure on there.
That's what I learned in PT school.
I don't know if it was actually true, but anyways,
the next one, this is kind of important as well.
If you have a massage gun that reciprocates
and gets deep like many of them do
and all of ours do, they work really well on muscles
but do not use 'em on your neck.
- [Bob] It's too much bony surfaces there.
- Yep. It'll hit that spine.
You could actually throw your neck out.
- [Bob] It'll rattle ya.
- Yeah.
(Bob vocalizing)
- It'll rattle your noggin for sure.
If you wanna use it in the upper traps.
That's okay. - That's acceptable.
- When you get up in this area you gotta draw the line
hard right there and stay away from it.
- No. - No.
No, no, no.
All right. - Bad.
- Okay, Bob, we've got five options.
You don't have to do 'em all.
You'll pick out whatever you like.
- What works for you.
And usually you can calm it down
in probably less than five minutes.
I put five minutes on the title, that's being conservative.
It's probably gonna take less.
- Very good.
- The first one we're gonna use...
- The hands.
- The old manual massage
which most people have available to them.
Bob's gonna show it from the front.
I'll show up from the back.
Ah! Shake out the hands a little bit, prepare.
And we're gonna work on the muscles.
Bob, should we do the circular one first?
- [Bob] Sure.
- So you're just gonna make circular motion
deep into those muscles and you actually
wanna get all the way up to where the bone starts,
the suboccipital region.
- [Bob] Right along the skull line.
- Yep. The old skull pan is what I've heard it called
in some rustic manner.
How'd you like that?
- [Bob] Cool.
- Cool. Okay. (laughing)
And you work down and you work both directions.
Clockwise or counter clockwise. Do what feels best.
Now it does not work good when you have a microphone on,
so I would avoid that at home.
(Bob laughing)
- And then you can do splaying, right Brad.
- Yeah.
- You put your fingertips together and pull 'em apart.
- This feels much better than you would anticipate.
- [Bob] Together and pull 'em apart.
- Yeah. Oh!
Especially up by that suboccipital.
- And finally in the last one, Brad.
I like grabbing onto my traps with my fingertips
and sliding my hand forward,
while I'm bringing my head back
at the same time. - Yeah, a little extension.
Now I like to go directly on the skin.
You seem like you can get ahold of the skin.
Get a better stretch.
- Right. Absolutely.
- All right. Next up, sorry.
The second option is if you have a Thera Cane
or if you have a regular cane
or a cane that has a hook on the end, works by far the best.
We don't have one.
- Right. We just have a regular cane here.
- Right, with the pistol grip sort of a thing.
- But you could use,
there's a lot of ones that are called Thera Cane
and called, I think, Buddy something like-
- Thera Buddy or something like that
- [Bob] Thera Buddy (laughing)
- They look like this.
- [Bob] Yeah. They're look like that.
- And you can get 'em online easy
but you'll find the knot usually, but you work with this.
Once you find that trigger point, the tender spot
you put it on there and hold pressure for 20 to 30 seconds
until it releases.
- I like to move when this is in place too.
I do some extension, - Ah!
- and side bending.
- You know, that kinda reminds me of
the what do you call that - [Bob] fits my purpose.
- threading or the-
- [Bob] Flossing. - Flossing, yeah.
This does not work really good up into the neck.
It kinda does, mostly on the upper traps, lower neck.
I kind of did. (both chuckling)
All right one.
The next one, we might wrap number three and four together.
We'll see how it goes.
But if you have a tennis ball or a lacrosse ball.
We're gonna show what you can do lying down.
This you need to do on a hard floor
or a carpeted floor, not in bed.
Now, Bob just put it right-
- Under by trap.
- Yep. And this is more for the low neck, upper trap area.
- While it's in that position, you could actually
take your hands and put 'em under your neck
and bend back like this.
- Oo, Yep.
- Or you could go like this or you could roll on it.
- Yep. Yes.
- And try different spots.
- [Brad] Exactly.
- I got the opposite side now.
- [Brad] There you go.
- And Brad, you could go ahead and do it with a sock, right?
- Yeah. If you take a sock and you drop your tennis ball
or lacrosse ball down into the bottom of the sock,
you can do this very nicely up against the wall.
The reason you have the sock
is so the tennis ball is controlled
and it doesn't fall to the floor.
You can do it without the sock
but you'll see what happens.
There, I can get it here.
And again, low neck, upper trap,
I'm not gonna get up into my upper neck very easily at all.
- That's good for somebody who can't really tolerate
lying yet on the ball.
- Yep. The nice thing about it, it's easy to roll.
And that actually feels really nice too
when you get that roll up in there and you find that spot
and you can just push on it and hold it.
Oh yeah. All right.
We better cut before I get-
- Now for a device.
It's a little more pricey, but it does work really well.
I use every day is the Back Pod, right?
- [Brad] Yes.
- So you're gonna go ahead and same thing,
it's not gonna move on you, you just put it in place
and again, you can put your arms like this, go like this.
You can move a little bit on it.
- [Brad] Yeah. I really like that moving with that Back Pod.
- Really gives some good counter pressure
and helps really stretch your back out.
For many of you it'll be too much to start.
You might have to put a towel
or a pillow underneath your head.
- I wanted to mention
you can try that technique with a softball.
It's pretty aggressive.
And you're gonna have to have some muscle to make it work.
- Eventually you could work up to that.
- Yep or you can put a towel over the top of it,
folded up towel, to help.
If you don't have this. I've used both.
This definitely works better, but this works
and it gives you an option and it's a lot cheaper.
All right and finally, but not leastly is the-
- We'll stop.
Oh, finally we're gonna get to the one
that Brad's been hyping so much.
- Yeah and there's reason for it, Bob.
Actually, we're very happy with this back massager.
It's easy, you don't have to do any manual work
and they work very well.
- It does have a plug. You do have to plug it in though.
- Yeah. It does have a cord.
You do need to plug it into your outlet.
So get yourself in a comfortable chair.
Actually, a recliner works good, I've found.
And the nodules on there rotate,
plus they heat up, if you want them to.
And you'll just work with it here.
And I had, my daughter was home for a weekend
and she slept wrong.
She came up with a terrible neck ache
and she used this and boy, she took it home.
- Did she?
- Yeah, she did and it got rid of that neck.
I could not, I had a hard time getting it out
with some of our other tricks, but you can also use it
down your mid-back and to your lower back.
And a bonus. - Legs.
- Yes. I've found it works great
to put it on my hamstrings while I'm in a recliner.
Just sit there, read a book, watch TV.
Down into the calf.
So it's little misnomer.
It's more than just a neck massager
it does the whole backside of your body pretty much.
But it's a sweet deal and-
- The hands provide the counter pressure.
So you can actually get a little-
- Yep and you could adjust that.
- Deep down to the muscles.
- Just grab this here and you pull on it like this.
- Really easy. (chuckling)
- Yeah. Real easy.
It just happens that I jammed it all the way up
into the one position.
- This is the part we're gonna cut out on there.
- All right just take the credit.
- For the thumb though.
Well, Bob in conclusion,
we've got a five minute back-sage.
- I feel better.
- Yeah, you feel better. I feel better.
We've got everything from balls to pods, to guns
to things that wrap around.
- Now, if it'd only help us look better.
- To your fingers.
Yeah, no, nothing is gonna help with that, Bob.
We are stuck with ugliness.
(Bob chuckling)
(musical flourish)