♪ Bob and Brad ♪
♪ The two most famous ♪
♪ Physical therapists ♪
♪ On the internet. ♪
- Howdy there folks,
I'm Bob Schrupp, physical therapist.
- Brad Heineck physical therapist.
- Yeah, we are the most famous
physical therapists on the internet.
- In our opinion, of course Bob.
- Not speech language pathologists, apparently.
Today we're talking about how to sit
pain-free watching TV
when you have neck pain or a pinched nerve in the neck.
- Boy, I can attest to having a problem with this.
- Yeah you did have a -
- I did it wrong,
I had a sore neck for a week.
- Right? And we'll talk about what he was doing wrong.
The first thing you want to do
if you have pain radiating down your arm,
what I want you to do
is actually take a pillow and support it.
And this is actually true throughout the day.
If you're, if you're having pain, that's going down
the arm, support that arm, that alone
you'd be surprised how it knocks the pain down,
calms it down, calms inflammation down.
So you,
follow this.
- Right, it may, you know
you might even have to put two pillows just to
- Sure.
- get the right thickness depending on the pillow.
It all depends on if you've got an arm rest
if you don't, where your, what the situation is.
- Yup. Second thing,
make sure, this seems like a small thing,
but it is not:
make sure the screen is directly
in front of you.
My wife is a little bit famous on this one.
She always puts the furniture
where she thinks it should be.
And then you're like,
the TV's over there, like that.
You know what I mean?
And if your neck is in a bad position,
like that, turned
for a long period of time.
- So then what do you do?
Tell her to change it?
- I just, I don't say anything I just turn it.
- Oh, I think she probably does it just to get an ....
- She probably does.
So, just make sure that screen's
in front of you, that, and it's the same
that's true in a computer.
- Oh right, right.
- I mean computer screen.
So when you're sitting in a soft chair, like a couch
what's going to happen quite often is you're going to sink
into that rounded out position, that C position.
And if my back is rounded out
so is my neck going to be forward.
- Right, it's just all part of the natural ergonomics,
to geometry,
- That's right.
So, geometry?
- Well, yeah, (indistinct) you know, there's? I think I
could say that.
- All right, today is a good day to have a good day.
What you want to do is take a throw pillow,
and put it behind you.
- Yeah.
- We've got them on our couches,
we got them on our chairs.
I don't ever sit down without these things.
- Yep.
- So even in a chair with actually fairly good, you know,
cushioning.
- Right, soft, cushy chair, typically you're gonna
need a throw pillow for sure.
If you got a firm one, maybe
not so much.
- You might get away with it, so.
All right, the other thing is
with, it's always the case here, whether you're working
at a computer or watching TV,
you gotta take frequent breaks from sitting.
You know, go up and, I know a lot of you don't watch
commercials anymore, don't even know what I'm talking
about but I wanna talk about a commercial, but it's a
great time just to go, short walk around the house,
- Sure.
- and come back again, so.
- But there's usually a pause button that works.
- Yeah, that's right.
- Yep, just you know if you gotta get up to go to the
bathroom, you might as well walk downstairs
and up the stairs.
- Yeah if you're binge watching something, you know,
make sure you set a timer for 20 minutes
or something like that.
- Well, if you're binge watching Bob and Brad, just -
- Just let it go.
Keep it running, so.
All right, also I'm gonna apologize, Brad, here,
I don't have one here today.
- What? Oh.
- If you're on the couch and you're watching,
what I don't want, do you mind showing Brad,
just real quick?
- What I did?
- What you did.
- Well, yeah and I was gonna watch a good movie.
- And you know better too.
- And I know, but I thought, I didn't have a wedge
but I thought my pillows were okay,
but evidently you can't
see yourself,
- Yeah.
- and I was like this and evidently my neck was too far
forward, but I thought I had my body adjusted right.
And it felt okay until the next day.
- Sure.
- Oh, but evidently my head was like this and,
- It was bad.
- It was.
- You were, it was bad for, I'd say, what three, four days?
- Well, that's where it was really bad, but well.
- It lasted a while.
- It was about a week before I got back to normal.
- And that was with what you know what you're doing.
- Yeah, and I was doing my exercises, change my posture
but boy it was.
- Yeah once it gets fired up.
So if you use what is called
a bed wedge, it's a triangle,
we're gonna show a picture of it
where it shows somebody hopefully,
hopefully using it.
- Bob took ours home for his wife.
- Yeah.
- That's okay, it's for his wife.
- Yeah, she had surgery.
- That fits into the okay. Everything is fine.
- She's fine, she loves using it,
so anyway, use that
instead of pillows like that,
it puts you in good posture
and supports your back.
- They're firm, you know, it's not like cushy pillows
and arm rests and things like that.
- Also it, you wanna keep that neck moving,
so every hour
I'm gonna have you, you know throw in some of these
exercises, you of course do the chin tucks,
Brad's gonna show from the side view,
where you actually get in really
good posture, it's a good reminder of where your neck
is supposed to be.
You want those ears right over the shoulders.
Yep, and then you can do some Y-Ws, your W up to a Y.
- Oh, the Y,
- W up to a Y.
- squeeze the scapulars back.
- Squeeze the shoulder blades together.
- And if you're older like us,
you can think of the YMCA signs.
- There you go. Now also finally,
if you want to do some neck extensions,
Brad likes to take his hands and go back there,
that makes it a lot more comfortable.
- Yeah, keep it low.
- Yeah, and do some extensions, and do some rotations.
And you might want to do a chin tuck and then a rotation.
- If you do have neck pain, you might find that rotation
one way is painful and the other way is not,
so work the pain free side, gently work the painful side.
- Right, and if it's just not working
to the painful side, keep working the other side
until it calms down, so.
Jeez Brad, we did this video fast.
- Well Bob, it's been practiced,
we've got ten years behind us.
- So this video's a part of a series of videos on neck pain,
go to bobandbrad.com, go to the programs section,
look for the one on neck pain,
you'll find a whole series of videos on neck pain.
- That's right, so just go down the list,
look at the titles, if the title fits you,
if you got pain down the arm
it'll mention something of that nature in the title,
that would be the one you watch.
You don't have to watch all of them,
they're about ten minutes long or so,
this one's shorter.
- Yeah.
- And of the beauty of it is, once you've watched it
and there's some exercises, click on the PDF printout,
print it out on your printer
and you have a review preview of the whole video
and the exercises, there's a list of those
so that you can, you don't have to come back
and look at our faces every time.
- And the best thing of all, this thing is completely free,
we ask nothing of you, not even an email.
- Yeah.
- This is our gift to you,
our gift to us would be you get better.
- That's right, take care and be pain free.
(outro music)