- [Brad] Greetings, greetings viewers.
Today we're gonna talk about the combination
of shoulder,
and arm pain.
- [Bob] Right.
- Now, this can be fixed relatively easy, many times.
However, there's one common mistake that people make
including therapists and doctors that will take you -
- [ Bob] I can't wait - [Brad] forever.
Yeah. - I can't wait to hear it.
- Yeah. It's not hard to determine what the mistake is.
We'll show you in just a minute and then, you know
- You'll be on your way.
- Yep. We'll see what happens
♪ Bob and Brad, the two most famous physical therapists, ♪
on the internet. ♪
- Okay Bob, if you got that shoulder pain
maybe a little neck pain
and it radiates down the arm, there's two likely causes.
Number one, you got a shoulder problem.
- Right.
- Number two.
Did I say two? (laughs)
You got a neck problem. - Right.
- That's referring down the arm, shoulder
into the arm and I've had patients come in
with a diagnosis
of shoulder pain - as, so I
- Treat their neck.
The problem goes away - - Right?
- very quickly.
So, we're gonna get into that
and show you how you can do this at home.
A little quick screening tool.
- Very good.
- Okay then.
Okay, here is a great test to help determine
if it's in the neck and not the shoulder.
Have a seat in a chair with a armrest, take a pillow.
If the right side is involved, put a nice cushy pillow
there. Allow that arm to relax and rest.
Get as comfortable as you can with good posture.
And what we're gonna do is assess range of motion
with the neck and see how the pain changes,
gets better, worse - - [Bob] If it does
- [Brad] Or no change.
- [Bob] Right. - [Brad] Yep, exactly.
So, here I am.
First thing you do is just do a chin tuck.
You don't have to push in
you can just tuck that chin in.
- [Bob] Neck retraction.
- [Brad] Yep, okay.
You can rotate to the right, rotate to the left.
And as you're doing this,
you're monitoring that shoulder and arm pain
and see what happens.
Better, worse or no change.
So I'm doing this, and I'm doing this.
No problem.
Let's just, I'm just kind of making this up
a lot of the times I see this in the clinic,
and then they do this and oh -
- [Bob] Ah,
- [Brad] Right there.
Oh, it kind of hurts over here or down the arm.
If that happens, the pain is exacerbated by neck movement.
You are almost guaranteed,
you don't have a shoulder problem.
- [Bob] You have a neck problem.
- [Brad] You've got a neck problem.
- [Bob] and you can work on the shoulder all day
and won't get better.
- Exactly. Right.
It's possible.
You have both, but usually not.
- You could also do neck flushing.
- Yep. Let's say this is fine,
and you know, make sure you go this direction.
So, chin tuck.
- Oh, Brad is right.
It's usually going back.
- Yeah. That's mostly what, what we see.
- I'll say 90%.
- Yep. In our experience of 472 years.
Okay.
So, if it is from your neck and you're having problems,
one of the most common things that we've found
had good success with, again,
firm upright chair, butt back, good posture.
And you could start with chin tucks and see how it responds.
We're looking for the pain to centralize.
In other words, come up the arm to the shoulder
and eventually hurt back in the neck.
If that happens, you know you're doing the right exercise.
Now, I've had the chin tuck sometimes works sometimes not.
If it doesn't, then I'll go to a towel roll.
First, I'll see if they can do this.
And if they go, "oh, that hurts.
It's getting tender".
Take a towel roll,
low on the neck support.
There's two ways you can do this.
And often times the support
of the towel roll will allow more range of motion.
And typically the further you go back -
- And right away it feels better
- Yeah.
And sometimes the first couple times it's irritated.
But, then as you do more, oh, it's starting to loosen up,
boy, I can go back farther.
And if that's what you're experiencing and both Bob
and I have had this with patients, you're doing
the right thing.
You can go up like this.
Now, if this arm is sore, you take one hand and pull
so you get a little traction
and work with that.
You don't wanna do this forever.
If you do it five or ten times, that's all you need.
Even if you're having success, you should give a
little break and then come back to it later.
Okay. Now, if you do the range of motion with your neck
and it seems like that's not doing anything right.
- You know the problem's in the shoulder
we'll get to that next.
- Now, we do have videos on how to treat the neck
in detail.
- Oh yes, that's right!
- Right.
- Do we have programs?
- Yeah we have a program.
- Oh, go Bobandbrad.com.
We have a program section, a library of videos specifically
for neck treatment.
So you don't have to search all over and they have PDF
printouts.
- Right, absolutely.
- And they're absolutely free.
- Right.
- Bobandbrad.com.
I've heard of those guys
- (Laughs) Unfortunately.
- Okay, the neck has been cleared.
We know we got our shoulder problem.
Now, depending on the level of pain you're experiencing
if it's very uncomfortable,
and you can't even get it up this far, it's just painful.
You need to give it some rest.
Now, a pillow again
can be a wonderful thing to let that shoulder calm down
place it again on an armrest.
And so you get some elevation
and we've been finding out some good things from -
- Right.
- A therapist.
- Called Rick Holderman
- Yeah, and he is just a guru of a therapist
and so that supports.
And while you're in this position, you get it comfortable
you know, that's a good time to put a cold pack on it.
You know, if you respond well to ibuprofen
or NSAIDs, you can do that
per your liking and let it
Calm. - Let it calm down, right?
The next exercise,
and you can kind of do this one.
It's a very common exercise.
It's been been around for 300,000 years.
Is the Codman's or the pendulum exercise.
This is my sore shoulder.
Don't let it stiffen up.
A way to get it moving is let gravity do the work.
Bend over, body weight in this left arm.
And I'm just gonna let -
- Should be pain free.
- Yep. Just let that arm dangle
like a elephant's trunk, that's relaxed.
You can do some circles with it.
If you can do this and it's completely pain free,
then it's time to go on to the next exercise,
which I would probably go, maybe start some strengthening.
- Right?
- Particularly, if you can even with the other hand
- If it's pain free -
- lift it up here without pain
or maybe go like this
without very much pain, a little sore, but not bad.
Start to strengthen the rotator cuff.
We really like, you know, using Therabands.
You can use weights.
And the primary exercise
is
go to exercises, external rotation
Like this.
- Keeps the elbow in.
- Yep, right there.
Don't let this happen,
don't let this happen.
If you hold your finger on that elbow,
it should stay stationary.
- (Bob laughs) There we go.
- The next one that we like to do is scapular retraction.
Now, there's a whole series
of exercises to get your shoulder rehab.
We're not gonna show you all of them on this video.
- Cause it would take about 42 minutes.
- Right.
- So what I'm gonna do is refer you
to our
website, bobandbrad.com.
- Once again.
- Go to program section again and go to shoulder.
And there's gonna be a whole series of exercise
or videos specific for shoulder rehab.
- Along with a PDF.
- Yep, on each one
- Printout on each video.
- And you simply look through the titles
pick out the one that pertains to you and your goals,
and look at it 15 minutes.
You do have to look at us again.
- But you know, you do the printout
and then they don't have to look at us again.
Just read it off and set it
on your counter.
- (Bob murmurs)
- Yeah, it's a good deal.
It is absolutely free. - Right
- We won't even ask - - Zero bucks.
- an email.
There you go.
So, good luck with that shoulder or neck problem.
Get it taken care of and get back into life.
Full speed.
Oh yeah.
(Calming music)