♪ Bob and Brad ♪
♪ The two most famous physical therapists on the internet ♪
- Hi folks. I'm Bob Schrupp, physical therapist.
Brad Heineck, physical therapist.
- We are the most famous physical therapists
on the internet.
- In our opinion. of course.
- He agrees with us. Okay today we're gonna talk about
upper trap release for instant neck pain and relief.
We first probably should talk about,
what do we mean by release?
- Release, Bob, you know, it's a common term
with therapists and massage therapists.
It's when a muscle gets all tight
and the fibers are all locked up
and it doesn't allow blood flow in there,
becomes acidic and pain.
And when you get that muscle to release and relax,
blood flow goes in there. It's very a relaxed state.
- So we're kind of maybe trying to get rid of
the trigger points to some extent.
- So to speak, right. We're gonna just let things relax
and get the pain out.
- Get the pain out,
and that pain can refer to a lot of different areas.
- Oh, right, right.
- So which we'll talk about, but before we do...
- There you go.
- If you are new to our channel
please take a second to subscribe to us.
We provide videos on how to stay healthy, fit, pain free
and we upload every day.
Also go to the Facebook and like us, if you can
if you do, Bob and Brad, we're gonna give you well,
either cool vibes or good vibes.
We're not sure yet one of the two,
You have to let us know what you like better,
cool vibes or good vibes.
- If you don't get that,
you won't get your upper traps to release.
- Yeah, there we go.
- So Bob, upper traps, what are the upper traps?
- Trapezius.
- Trapezius? - Yeah.
- We're gonna use Sam and show you,
Sam unfortunately has no muscles.
But we could show at least where the muscles originate.
- Would be anyway.
- Right? So the upper traps,
there's upper, middle and lower,
and they cover this whole area where my hands are
but we're gonna focus on the upper traps.
And they're the muscles that are right here
when you squeeze your muscle and it feels good
or someone comes up behind you and, and rubs your shoulders.
Very commonly they tighten up from tension.
It's a big thing.
- Posture, - Posture.
- Posture will make it worse, without a doubt.
Now, they connect up,
they actually go all the way up and connect to
the lower part of the skull.
And that's where you have some nerves
that run up into the head.
And when they tighten up
you can get these headaches that start to
wrap up around your head when they're tight in here,
and you get a lack of blood flow
because the muscles are so tight,
blood cannot infiltrate through 'em.
Then you get pain as a result of it,
lactic acid builds up, pain.
So we need to get those muscles to relax.
- Release. - Release!
- Yes. - Release.
- Please release me!
- So Sam, you are done, we appreciate your help,
we'll get you out of here.
- We appreciate your service.
- There you go.
- All right.
So what's the first thing we're gonna try Brad?
Well, when you've got these tight muscles
and a real common thing is heat.
We need a heat source to get in there
and just get 'em pliable and relax.
So there's a couple different ways you can do this.
- You could just take a heating pad if you want.
- Right, your standard hot pack that you plug into the wall
and they call it convection heat. It's contact surface.
- Or they have those that you
put in the microwave and just put on there.
- Right. But the thing about those, you know, they're okay
they're gonna work, but they don't go real deep.
If you really wanna get deep in the muscle
there's only one option that we know of.
- And that's the infrared.
- That happens to be what I'm wearing on my back.
- Yeah.
If you're wondering why he's wearing this goofy thing,
it's not a goofy thing, but you look a little goofy with it.
- I have a goofy look.
- And I do it all the time
because I actually was getting pain up in this area
that aforementioned pain that we were talking about,
and this was my go-to device because I'd slip it on
and it served two purposes.
One, it gave me the deep heat, which is quite deep
'cause normal heat is just a couple millimeters.
- Right your typical hot pack that just goes
past the skin at the most.
- Where regular, the infrared goes 50 or 60 millimeters
or 2.36 inches. - 2.36 inches.
- So that's deep. - Right.
And the other thing that they've done
that they've added to this now, they've added these straps.
If you order the platinum model,
they they've added these straps.
And actually what does it do?
- It pulls your posture back. And you know,
that's one of the reasons why
these muscles are getting tight,
because of poor posture there.
And that's a whole 'nother video
and we're gonna do it in a few weeks here,
but those muscles get tight from poor posture.
This is a reminder and it helps pull those muscles back.
So you're getting better posture, which is gonna help.
And we got that deep heat just saturating those muscles.
- This this without a doubt always took em away, my pain.
- Sure. - It just did.
And it's got a nice long cord.
We do have a link below for it. If you do use that link,
we've made sure that you get some money off.
They are very expensive.
I mean, they're spendy, right?
- They are.
- But they're an investment I guess, is what you'd look at.
- Right. And, and they're built to last for many years.
This is not something that's gonna fall apart.
- Sure. Cheap to run couple pennies a day.
- Right. The old infrared is incredible.
You can look it up online. Okay. Next thing.
- Are you gonna take that off now?
- All right all right.
The next thing is the old fashioned "just work the muscle".
- Yeah fatigue it.
You're gonna fatigue that muscle, work it so hard
that it doesn't even want to have a knot in it.
- Right. So, so you know,
it's not as easy, but it can work.
- Right.
- And one thing you can do is isometrics.
And you're gonna think about
pulling your shoulders up towards your ears.
And then you're gonna tighten everything up up here
and then do an isometric for six seconds.
- Once you pull it back too or not?
- Right, we can go up and back up.
We wanna tighten everything.
Cause you really can't just isolate the upper traps.
- No, you're getting into a lot of things
that you're moving at that time.
This may not be the best way, but it's one thing you can do
if you don't have anything just up and squeeze,
relax six seconds and then relax
and do that at least three times
you'll feel the muscles relaxed.
- What's nice about that, you can do it at your desk,
you can do it every half hour if you want,
you can do it more than that even.
Really get it fatigued out.
- Right, now the other thing that works nice,
if you use some exercise tubing like this,
If you're sitting at your desk, you can do it standing,
but you probably get a better angle sitting
and we're gonna pull up like this,
and these upper traps have to fire to get this motion.
And so you can do this,
but you're gonna need a strong enough band
so that you're working it.
So that by the time you get to 10 repetitions
those muscles are fatigued.
And they're starting to burn a little bit from that.
- Couldn't you do it though, Brad,
also where you pull it up and hold it.
- Sure you could do that too. Good point, Bob.
There!
- So that'll fatigue faster that way,
once you got resistance against it.
If you do it standing, you can do it,
but we find that you get a better angle.
The other option is you can connect it to a wall like this
the best way to use this,
we have wall anchors that really work well
if you happen to have 'em,
they've been out for,
what do we have these out for Bob about six months now?
- Start of the year we had it.
So since January Brad and I invented these,
we got the link below works well for a lot of exercises.
But even for this one too.
- Oh, it works great for this
because you've got the right angle for the upper traps
and this is an exercise I do three times a week
along with a whole routine on the wall anchors
and you could do the pull and hold and down
or you can just do good controlled repetitions here.
And that's working that upper trap.
And while you're at it
you might as well have an anchor here.
And then we can work that middle trap
which is also gonna help that upper trap.
If you do use the higher wall anchor
that is not gonna work the upper trap very much.
- [Bob] That's working more the lower.
- And lats. Yep that's fine.
So, sets of 10 and by the 10th one,
whether you're doing the hold one or repetition
the muscle should feel fatigue
and then it will relax when you're done.
And finally, but not lastly is...
- You start talking I'm gonna grab something Brad.
- Oh, bye. - Bye.
- I'm all by myself.
Anyways, you can use the Thera Cane or the Backnobber
and we're gonna do some what we call
"soft tissue mobilization", in other words, massage.
We're gonna take this and we're gonna
find those trigger points in your upper trap
and you'll find it 'cause when you hit it-
- Did you miss me?
- Oh no.
- I was just gonna say in case people do have a hook cane,
they could try this.
Cause it does fit and hit the same spot.
- It works the upper trap nicely.
Then you don't have to purchase one of these.
- Yeah we're trying to avoid to help you
buy things if we can.
- Right. But these are kind of cool looking
if you're into that. Good gift, you know?
You don't wanna give someone a hook cane for a gift.
- Probably not.
- What you do is give them one of these.
So we're gonna get on that upper trap.
Find the tender spot, that trigger point,
that tight muscle, and you put pressure right on it.
And you're gonna hold it there for up to 30 seconds.
It's gonna be a little painful
but it's gonna feel like pain that hurts so good.
And you'll feel it release. This is where you get
right now I can already feel,
I've got a little tight spot there.
It's it's getting better.
You can tell by the tone of my voice
I'm starting to become happy.
- Yeah you sound a little yeah.
- You definitely gotta do both sides.
- So this is the Thera Cane, and this is the Backnobber,
this one actually comes apart too
I guess you can put it in your carry bag.
- Right yeah. You could do a lot of things with it.
- Immerse?
- Yeah. The nice thing about these is if you wanna
work other muscles.
You can get to the rhomboids or the middle trap
the way you cannot with the hook cane
but we're talking upper traps on this.
- Yeah, that's right.
And then finally you've got the PUREWAVE massager,
If you happen to have one of these.
And this is pretty aggressive. It percusses instead of
going in the horizontal.
- Yeah it doesn't just vibrate,
it actually is like a jackhammer.
- Right, now one thing about the upper trap,
because the muscle does go out by the neck,
if you do have one of these, you're not gonna do it
up by your head on that part of the muscle.
It's too aggressive and it makes your head shake.
- Even with this one?
Yeah. It's just, yeah.
But it does work really well
on the lower part of the upper trap.
- Yeah. What's nice about the PUREWAVE is
they've invented this air filled attachment.
And so it can go over bone and everything
and be fairly comfortable.
- Right. Then you're gonna work this for you know,
a couple minutes.
- The only uncomfortable part
is if you start getting up into the head.
- And what you can do with that
is a really nice, simple thing,
all you need is your fingers,
and we can work that and do that splaying stretch.
- Sure. So he's taking his fingers
and he's pulling 'em apart.
- Right. And we're gonna get that upper trap muscle here.
And then I like to do some circular...
Yep. And get in on that muscle and really work it,
feel that muscle release.
I'm feeling so much better from
the beginning of the video Bob.
- So it's like the muscle's been released from prison.
- Actually yeah.
Well I mean, if you haven't watched this, you know
we do throw a little dry humor in,
I guess that was our dry humor.
- I don't think people would even consider that humor.
(laughs)
All right we wanna thank everybody for watching.
Take care.