♪ Bob and Brad, ♪
♪ the two most famous physical therapists on the internet. ♪
- Hi 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.
- Brad, today we're gonna go over 10 tips
to help you increase your knee bend
after you've had a knee replacement.
- Right, this can be challenging a lot of times.
And it's amazing how sometimes
one thing will work really well for one person,
it won't work for the other.
And then there will be another exercise
that works really well for that person,
but the other person it's-
- Yeah, so this, - It's individual.
- this is kind of a smorgasbord of options
because you'll find some like, just what Brad said,
some work and some don't, and, - Exactly.
- It's weird, just putting, you know,
a different angle sometimes makes the difference.
- Exactly.
- And if you are new to our channel, by the way
please take a second to hit the subscribe button
that's on the left side of Brad, your right.
We provide videos on how to stay healthy, fit,
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- Wow. That was a mouthful, Bob.
- Yeah. Let's start with the first one, Brad,
which everybody seems to know,
that's just the floor scrubs, right?
- Sure.
- So you go ahead and you're gonna get a towel.
- You need a smooth floor.
- Yep. And what you're gonna do is,
what we tell people is to go ahead and warm up first.
- Right. The old wax the floor,
when I used to work in a couple hospitals and
when I was in school, wax the floor.
Obviously, if you're at home and you've got carpet,
this isn't gonna work.
- Right, then you have to maybe get a cookie sheet,
- Sure. - if you're on the carpet.
And then you can go ahead and do this.
- Something to make it slippery.
- Right. And then, every so often,
what you're gonna do is you're gonna go ahead
and take your foot and put the heel on the toe
and you're gonna push back and give it a stretch.
- Right. He means the foot of the good leg.
- Right. - Right.
- Exactly. So this is the involved knee
and this is the non-involved. - Right.
- And then if it gets too far, then you can go ahead.
I'm sorry.
Most people start off around the ankles.
- Exactly, Bob, good point.
- And then if it gets too far, then they go off the toe.
- Yep, exactly. Right.
- All right.
We're ready for the next one, Brad?
- Sure, Bob.
- Go ahead and take a belt.
This is the one that Brad's dad probably used
as a punishment for him to keep him ready.
- Bob, Bob, my dad was a gentle man.
- The old strap.
Okay, so you're gonna go ahead
and just line it up like this, right, Brad?
- Yep. This is a little, gets- - Even more involved.
- Right, if you're a mechanically minded person,
this works great. - Probably use the towel underneath it.
- Sure, yep.
- So what what's nice about this one, Brad, though,
besides giving it pull back and giving it a stretch
is you can do what we call contract-relax.
- Sure.
- So what you're doing is, you know,
bring it back about as far as you can go
and then you're gonna hold it, secure it. - Yep.
- Now I'm gonna try to straighten the leg.
- So he's trying to push his leg forward.
- I'm trying to do this. - Yep.
- But the belt is not allowing me to do this
and it's called, we're contracting the muscle
and then we're gonna relax the muscle.
So we push and then we relax.
And while we're relaxing, we try to go further.
- Right. So the push is gonna last for about five seconds.
- Sure. Pushing, pushing, one, two, three, four, five.
- Now I'm relaxing. - Right.
- And the theory is that muscle will relax
a little more after maximal contraction,
therefore allowing more range of motion.
- It's a little bit shocking
how well this works sometimes, Brad.
I just did this on a patient yesterday. - Sure.
- And they were kind of stuck and we did,
I go, did you try contract-relax?
We did some of that and we got another five, 10 degrees.
- Sure. - I mean, just a very simple way.
- Nice little trick. - Yep.
All right, now we have to introduce our product, Brad.
- Right, because what we're doing here
with a towel on the floor is completely archaic to what,
we actually have a new device
that makes the towel on the floor is just worthless.
- Time to throw it away, throw it away.
- Why not use something that really minimizes,
and this'll work on carpet or work on floor.
It's small, it's light.
And it's just a wonderful device.
- It's called the knee glide.
And what I have found, Brad,
especially when people are first starting out,
a lot of times they can hardly even push that towel
or they can't handle it. - Sure.
- But with the knee glide,
there's so much a lack of friction there,
it glides so easily that anybody can move this thing.
- Right. Exactly.
And as a therapist, it's much more easy
to work with a patient with the knee glider.
And we're really boasting this up
because it's our invention.
Literally, we just brought this on the market
in the last few months,
and we're just gonna push it in.
I usually just use my foot.
This would not be here in the clinic,
and I just can easily push.
I can get the goniometer and measure it.
And then I have the person warm up with this.
The first thing they come in,
actually my patients, they know where it is.
They grab it, they set it on the floor
and they start warming up
while I'm doing some paperwork.
And then I start working with them.
- Well, I'm gonna tell a story, Brad, real quickly.
We had a patient that came in
and we saw her for a full month
and we couldn't get her knee beyond 72 degrees.
- Tell them, Bob.
- We couldn't get her knee beyond 72 degrees
which is about like this.
- Sure.
- And she went away, she came back a couple months later,
and we had this device available to us. - Yep.
- And the doctor ordered for us to try to get her to 90.
With this device, we were able to get her to 90.
- Yeah. - Because we could really crank on that
and she didn't mind.
And we could even do contract-relax with this too, Brad.
- Sure. Yep.
- And we also sent one home with her
and it actually did the job.
We're past 90, 95. - Sure. Yep.
- But the other nice thing about this, Brad, is the angle.
Because a lot of times, people,
that flat is too much for their foot.
So this angle works out really good for.
- Right, you've got a downhill there.
It's amazing what a little bit of help makes a difference.
- So did we sell it, Brad?
- I hope so, because it is a wonderful product.
We'll show some more.
- All right.
Now, we're gonna go ahead and take a ball
or you could take a glider rocker, Brad.
I'm skipping, but I'll go back to the other one.
- That's fine.
- So, you want to do this one, Brad?
You'll probably fit more on this ball than I would.
- Yep. Yeah, that's right.
- It's a little lower.
- So if you're gonna do this at home,
and I do have patients who will use this at home.
They'll get on the ball,
furniture on both sides so they're stable.
- This one's probably a little low for you too, isn't it?
- Well, yeah, it needs some air in it, but it'll be okay.
It'll get the idea across.
Now, I'm gonna plant this leg.
This is the knee that needs to bend more,
and you're gonna simply roll on the ball.
And you can see, as you roll forward,
the knee flexes and bends and stretches.
Then the bonus on this is you can come
at it from two angles,
not just the rolling,
but you can add a little bounce
and that'll come at it and stretch it a little bit more.
And I have a lot of people that get on here.
They're afraid at first, but once they get on it,
they say, oh, this is kind of nice.
It relaxes them.
Again, when you're relaxed,
you get better results with that knee flexion.
- If you have a glider rocker at home,
you can do something similar
with just the glider rocker will work.
And that moves us to the next one, Brad.
You can actually,
and this isn't gonna be the right kind of wheelchair,
but it'll give us a good visual to show you
what kind of wheelchair you should have.
So, and both you and I have used this method.
- Yeah. I really like this method.
- So basically, if you have the large wheels,
and that's what you need is you need a wheelchair
with large wheels.
And what you can do is you can go up against the wall
and let's say, this line here represents the wall.
- Well actually, here, let's say this is,
- The wall. Okay.
- We could do it just like this, actually.
- I'm gonna put my feet up against it
or just really the one foot, really. - Yep.
- And I can just push, keep kind of rocking forward.
- Right. - Just gently.
- Exactly. Now the thing, I think,
that really makes this a winner
is that the person is completely in control. - Yeah.
- And the large wheels give you a lot of leverage.
So you have a lot of control.
- It's not that hard to push yourself
and put a little stretch on.
You can just gradually work your way up
and then you can get to a certain point
and you can lock the wheels, - Sure. - if you want.
And just keep the pressure on this.
- And one thing nice about this,
it gives you a visual guide for progress.
When your knee, if the wall comes up right here,
you can see how close your knee gets to the wall.
And you always want to get that gap a little smaller
and a little bit smaller.
- Yeah, get to that point where you're actually touching.
Yeah, so, you're right.
That visualization as a goal always helps. - Yeah.
We're coming at things from every angle as therapists.
- Another one, Brad, that I have found,
sometimes when people get stuck is that,
sometimes it's just their kneecap has got a little
adhered down a little bit after the surgery.
So I think it's always good to,
I don't know if you're gonna be able
to see this one very well, Lonnie,
but I think it's good to go ahead and stretch that kneecap
in all directions, actually, Brad.
I go ahead, I stretch it out this way.
I push it down. - Yep.
- And I push it up, even.
- Right. So these are,
patella mobilization's a technical name for them, but, yeah.
You gotta learn to relax those quadriceps to do that.
- Yeah, if you tighten up the muscle,
that kneecap's not gonna move at all,
you gotta be really relaxed
and you can take two fingers and push it around.
But I've just found,
a couple people that we got stuck on
that we weren't moving all.
We did a little bit of this and all of a sudden
we got again, five, 10 more degrees, Brad.
- Then the incision will be down here,
if it's all healed up well,
you might do some scar mobilization on that.
- Because I found with that, too,
that sometimes that's causing the pain. - Yeah.
- So, yeah, you do some rubbing on the scar.
You really want to make sure the scar is healed
before you do that.
Because you don't want to open it up. - Yeah, you're talking
three or four weeks after surgery.
- How about stairs, Brad?
Do you want to show the stairs since this?
- Sure. You bet.
- You were showing me the one that you guys tend to do.
- Okay, if you have a nice stairwell at home,
and the steps obviously going up at the bottom,
and, you know, if you have a rail on both sides is perfect
but one side usually works good,
depending on how stable you are.
You put the foot up there,
and this is the knee we want to bend,
hold onto that rail.
And you just simply rock forward into that step,
holding onto the hand rail.
Again, both works really nice.
And I'm gonna keep my hand here so you can see it
and you just stretch and hold.
You can do a little bouncing and back.
Now, this is one that I tell people at home,
you know, you can spend five minutes doing it
or every time you walk by it throughout the day.
You can spend 30, - A good reminder. - Right.
30 seconds to a minute, just doing some quick stretches.
And you're doing it more frequently
through the day than just one time with a-
- And I've had some people that will, you know,
sit like on three steps up. - Sure.
- And then they'll go down to two,
and then they'll go down to the one
as a way just to stretch too, here.
Just another variation of that.
- This is, you know, nowadays people are getting knees
at such a young age ans they're pretty fit.
And, you know, we're not gonna have someone
that's 85 years old, - Doing that one.
- do that particular exercise.
- They won't be able to get up.
- Do you want to do the one
on the wall real quick with the?
- Sure. Oh yeah.
This is one that I have used
for people that have knees that are very challenging.
You get them laying on the floor,
or we do it on the plinth,
and we use our knee glider and put that on the wall.
Now, normally I wouldn't do it on the edge like this,
we'd have a wall going across,
but this gives the right idea.
There you go, go ahead, Bob.
And just work up and down on that.
- Yep. And you could stretch it down like this
and it glides really easy
and it makes it really easy to get into that flexion.
- Exactly. And I put ankle weights on so you get little,
- Oh, you do? - Yep. - Cool.
- Put a little gravity helping you out.
- All right.
This, by the way is available at OPTP.
We'll put the link down below
and please subscribe if you haven't already.
And remember, Brad and I can fix just about anything.
- Except for, - A broken heart.
- Exactly. Maybe this can kind of work
with a broken heart.
Look, I think it's a good look. - All right.
- Some kind of massage.
- Let the kid go home now.
All right. Thanks.