- ♪ Bob and Brad, ♪
♪ The two most famous ♪
♪ Physical therapists ♪
♪ On the internet. ♪
- Howdy, folks, I'm Bob Schrupp, Physical Therapist.
- Brad Heineck, Physical Therapist.
- And we are the most famous Physical Therapists
on the internet.
- In our opinion, of course, Bob.
- Today, we're gonna cover whether or not
your neck, shoulder, or chest muscles are tight.
Quite often, if they are tight,
that does correlate with pain.
So like, if you don't have pain yet
you may be developing pain.
Or if you already have pain,
it may be because the muscles have tightened up on you.
So let's start off with the neck, brad.
- Sure. - So the neck.
First off you want to actually check,
this one's not tight on most people,
but chin to chest. - Sure.
- So you're gonna go all the way down like this.
And you're going to find some people
that can only go a little ways and they're tight,
and that's often tightness in the upper neck.
- Sure.
Again, good posture before you start this.
- Yes, good posture.
Next one is a neck extension.
How far do you go back?
Now, the vast majority of people I see
are tight in this area and they don't even know it.
They go, well, how far is it supposed to go?
You're supposed to be able to get way, way, way, way back.
I went to a course and I was shocked
how far did they got my neck to go back.
- Without pain. - Yeah, without pain.
Rotation.
So I'm going to go ahead and rotate to the right,
rotate to the left.
Now you may need to film this,
or you may need a partner to look at you and say, yeah,
quite often though, you can tell.
- Yeah, just make sure that your shoulder and trunk
stay stationary and you're not doing this.
- Right.
- So just head rotation, isolated.
I always kind of looked down and see my nose, my chin,
where it lines up with my shoulder on one side
relative to the other.
- Like I said, it's a little deceiving sometimes.
It'll feel tight, but it's not as tight as the other side.
Next one is side bending.
And I want you to do a little bit of a chin tuck
before you do this one.
Yeah, cause I don't want you to go like this,
have your head forward and then try to side bend.
Actually tuck your chin back-
- Nice and straight. - And then side bend.
And you can kind of,
you could take your fingers and determine
how far your side bending by measuring,
that's a little difficult.
- If you go into a mirror-
- A mirror right. - Probably is
the best indication one side to the other.
- Alright, let's go to shoulders.
Now, shoulders, we can show you two ways.
Again, you could ask someone to watch you,
you could do it in front of a mirror,
you could film yourself.
And we're going to show you a way that you can do it
against a wall. - Yeah.
- So let's first start off with shoulder flexion.
You're going to actually just
bring the shoulders straight forward so it grazes your ear
and go up as high as you can.
- So we're not doing this. - Right.
This part has to stay stable.
- Start with good posture too.
Don't don't do this cause this makes a big difference.
- This will limit your your shoulder range of motion.
In fact, if you're limited in your posture,
we may have you work on your posture
to help improve your shoulder motion.
- Exactly.
- So that shoulder flexion, you could do both sides
and you should almost be able to see.
We're gonna show you against the wall later,
in case you want to monitor your progress.
- It's a very simple technique.
- Shoulder abduction.
So you're going to go out to the side now.
So same thing,
got my wide wingspan here.
- And watch your palm, keep your palm consistent.
You know, you can go palm down or thumb up.
If you go thumb up on one side,
go thumb up on the other side so you're consistent.
- And ideally you want to get right to that year.
Yeah, your tight on the left, aren't you?
- I can touch there and that's about it there.
- And Brad coincidentally has had trouble
with that left shoulder. - This left shoulder
has been an issue.
- It's a problem child.
So next one, shoulder internal rotation.
So with this one now, what you're doing is
you're gonna see how far up your back can reach.
So you can maybe use your shoulder blade as a guide
or maybe even on your back,
but it's probably your shoulder blade's the best, isn't it?
Like, I'm how many inches from my shoulder blade right now?
- Yeah and you know,
if you've got someone with that wants to be
these behind things,
put your thumb right up the middle of your back.
And then that's where I usually go with my patients
and I go mark it there with a piece of tape
or I'll just hold it.
Oh, look at that, Bob can go-
- Way up high.
- Does it feel like you're tighter on the right?
- No,
I made it up.
I can go up higher on this one.
- Yeah, alright.
- So that's a nice way to get that range of motion.
- Do you want to show fluxion and abduction
against the wall with a piece of tape.
- So, I got a piece of tape here
so you can see it's nice and pink,
but whatever you have at home is fine.
Get up about a foot away from the wall
and you're just going to reach up,
without doing this and compensating,
keep the posture, up as high as you can.
There we go, that's my right hand.
You can put an R on there if you want.
And then you reach up, and maybe I only go this high
with my left, and you may want to put a piece of tape there.
And then you stretch for a week and then you go back,
leave the tape up there.
And I've done this with patients so you can see,
now maybe I can go to here
and my left one, all of a sudden has loosened up
and you get even range of motion.
- Quite often, people don't know they're making gains
and they realize, and same with abduction.
- You know, up this way I can get up to here.
- Again, don't tilt your body or contort your body
to try to get up there, keep your body straight.
- Maybe this one only goes this high now,
but after stretching for a week or two.
- And as Brad said, try to keep your palm the same way.
If you're going thumbs up or thumbs forward
or whatever you're doing.
- That's important.
- Alright, is your chest muscles tight?
Let's talk about,
so we got the pectorals major and we got the pec minor,
which you don't really need to know about,
we'll show you some of the tests.
Also, we've got the upper fibers of the chest
and the lower fibers of the chest.
So let's just show some of these.
- Yeah, the fibers in the names of the muscles is, you know,
if you want to learn it, that's fine.
You don't need to. - One thing,
as you just stand here,
you can stand with good posture
and see what your thumbs are doing.
If your thumbs are pointed straight forward,
that's a good sign.
But if your muscles, your peck, is a bit tight,
your thumbs may actually be turned in like this
or the palm facing backwards.
Very common, and weightlifters, guys who bench a lot,
they're like this.
- And that is one of those things, it could be the shoulder,
it might be some other structures too.
So that's just one of the things you can check and see.
- Alright, Brad, why don't we show the lower fibers first.
If you want to lie down.
- So, this probably works better on like a carpeted floor.
- Right, absolutely would work better on that flat-
- On a bed that doesn't work so good.
- The lower fibers,
we actually just go straight out like this.
And you should be able to get your arm all the way down.
Someone who's tight, maybe they'll only go this far
on one side and the other side's all the way down.
- It is one of those things,
you can always compare one side to the other.
If they're both tight and the hands only go like this,
well you got two tight shoulders.
- You got a problem.
So, for the lower fibers,
you actually want to go about 120 degrees.
What would that be, a Y, Brad?
- Yeah, it's like the YMCA.
- Now, this is a good example here.
Brad is not able to get his arms all the way down,
they're both a problem.
- It's one of my things.
- So, his lower fibers of the pectoralis major are tight.
So you can also put your hands behind your head like this,
and you should be able to get your elbows all the way down.
And the same thing, Brad seems to be worse now on the left.
- That's my problem. - You are a problem child.
- That hurts too, I don't like this.
(laughing)
- So, the pec minor is very simple,
you just lie down on your back
and you should be able to get your shoulder blades flat.
If you're tight, you're going to have
one of these shoulder blades,
one of the shoulders is actually going to be elevated.
Yeah, and that's an exaggeration,
but you're kind of tight on this side, right?
- We really need to be on a firm surface.
Even this soft surface, I sink in too much for an accurate-
- I have found it actually works against the wall sometimes.
- Yeah, I agree.
Lean against the wall
and you should be able to get the shoulders back.
Am I on this, Brad?
- Pretty good, yeah.
- So that's just an indicator
because we are going to show how to do a stretch
for the pec minor.
- And a lot of times it's
you can't just isolate the pec minor.
With the other stretches,
things cross over a little bit.
You'll get them loosened up. - We're gonna try though.
- Yeah, yeah.
- Alright, check out our rest of the videos
where we show you how to stretch these areas.
- [Brad] What areas?
- [Bob] Neck, chest. - [Brad] Oh yeah,
the ones we went over.
What's that piece of tape doing on the wall?
- I don't know.
- Just kidding.