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♪ Bob and Brad ♪
♪ The two most famous ♪
♪ Physical therapists ♪
♪ On the internet ♪
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- Hi 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, Brad, we're gonna talk about how to stand correctly
and pain-free with a herniated disc, comma sciatica,
comma and back pain.
- They're all related.
- They're all related, yes.
So let's jump right into it, Brad.
So these are some quick adjustments for you to try.
The big thing we don't want you doing,
if you wanna hold on to that Brad,
is we don't want you to just basically just settle in.
And that's what happens.
You're trying to hang on your ligaments to some extent.
And you start rounding out your upper back.
Your lower back kinda slides forward 'cause you're hanging
on to the ligaments of your hips.
And your knees get locked.
So you're kinda like this.
Yep.
And this, I used to stand this way, believe it or not.
(laughs)
So one, you wanna bring your hips back
and your shoulders forward.
So one way to do that is
to make sure you're not locking your knees.
So you wanna bend your knees a little bit.
And putting one foot right in front of the other.
That helps, it makes it harder to lean back.
I mean, it makes you more of an active position, more
of like an athletic position.
So the other thing, I got an exercise here to try, Brad.
You can actually do the butterfly exercise.
So you take your hands and put 'em behind your neck
and you raise your elbows up
and then you open the wings of the butterfly,
tuck your chin in.
While we say tuck your chin in, we mean not going back
like this, not going down like this, just tucking back.
And then lower the arms.
And that's right where your shoulders and neck
and ears all should be aligned here.
- So it's a way to get you
in proper alignment without looking in a mirror.
- Yeah, it's a good check, a check-up
that you can, you know, every so often just see
where you're at
and pull things back.
Another thing that you can do is you can go ahead
and take your arms and, 'cause everybody tends
to want to again round out after a while.
You can actually stand with your arms behind you like this
and one hand grabbing the other wrist
and that's gonna just keep you somewhat straight.
Keep the shoulders back over a long period of time.
So you can, one foot in front of the other, knees unlocked,
put the arms back like this
and you're gonna find yourself standing fairly straight.
- Sure.
And I think one thing that I have people do
to include myself is work with your abdominals.
If you tighten up your abdominal muscles slightly
that can change the position of your pelvis
which can change your back position
which can, and you'll find out just by doing that,
that may change your back pain
from oh it hurts a little bit, tighten it up,
oh the pain's better.
- Yeah, very good point Brad.
You wanna mess around with that.
See what the comfortable position is for your pelvis.
- That's probably one of the hardest things
for me to teach patients.
- It is hard to understand.
- 'Cause a lot of people don't have real good body awareness
if they don't have a history of being in athletics
or dance or something like that.
But that is one thing that you can work on.
- Sometimes we often start that on the bed.
You know, working on your pelvis and then work to that.
Now you can also use like a walking stick
or the Booyah Stik, especially if you're gonna stand
for a while.
You're gonna find that it just, you know a cane tends
to lean over, a walker you tend to lean over on.
But with a walking stick like this you grab up
and it actually is easier for you to stay
in an upright position.
- Right, typically these are five foot long
so anything that is that long,
which walking sticks typically are much higher than a cane.
And again, it gives you something.
And then you can kind of shift your weight
which can be very helpful for back pain, too.
Are we gonna talk about using, puttin' one foot up.
- You could, sure.
You want a stool?
I'll grab a stool. - Yeah
This is one of those things we'll talk about a lot of times
with people if standing still,
and even if you're doing some of these things
that it still bothers your back like doing dishes,
if you open up the cupboard door
and you shift your weight from one foot to the other,
that can relieve the pain.
And you'll be this way for, you know, a few minutes.
Five minutes,
and then you shift again this way.
Or this position.
It gives you three positions
which varies that static stress on your back.
- Yeah I found out that that was really true
when I used to stand at track meets.
And just get my foot up for a while
and kind like just even stretch a little bit like this
and it seemed like it made a big difference.
So give these things a try, see what works for you.
But it's important, it's one more point of the day
where we're trying to decrease your pain levels.
- Right.
And again, listen to your body.
When your back is not hurting, chances are you're
in the right position.
- Thanks for watching!
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