♪ Bob and Brad ♪
♪ The two most famous physical therapists ♪
♪ On the internet ♪
- Hi folks, I'm Bob Schrupp, physical therapist.
- Brad Heineck, physical therapist.
- And we are the most famous physical therapists
on the internet.
- On our opinion, of course, Bob.
- Today we're gonna show you seven things to try
if your back pain is not getting better.
This video is for my nephew.
- Dedicated to Dan.
- To Dan, it used to be Daniel, but now I think he's
grown up so he's Dan, he's studying to become
an electrical engineer so he's smart.
- College student.
- Yeah, so anyway, I'm gonna show you some things, Dan,
for you to try.
As we talked about on the phone, it is that you wanna
make sure nothing makes your pain worse.
Especially the pain down your leg,
that's what we're really looking for.
We're hoping whatever you do makes that better,
the leg pain.
All right, let's start off with Brad,
this is something you use quite often
and I'm sending him these two, leg wedge and--
- Wow, good, bonus!
- Yeah, and a ice pack.
So you wanna just show you use it?
- Yeah, so Dan is having pain down the leg past the knee?
- No, it stays to the knee, to the knee.
But he has got a really poor straight leg raise.
- So yeah, we've got some nerve.
- I had him lying on the floor and put his feet up
on the bed, it felt a lot better so it does work.
- These leg wedges, there's something about
the angle of them, the support on the hamstring,
I really think you're gonna find it comfortable
if what you did already was comfortable.
Now this is what I do when I,
I haven't had to use mine for a quite a while,
my back's getting a lot better,
but it's not unusual for me to lay down in bed
just like this, I would take a cold pack,
a gel one hopefully, it works best,
and I would put that at my belt line
and I would just lay there and it just feels so good
and I could fall asleep.
- [Bob] You have some pillows for your head.
- Typically a couple hours later,
I can't sleep like this all night,
but I'd get through that initial phase.
And then I would take this--
- And you leave the ice pack, you fall asleep with it?
- Oh yeah, and then later on, a couple hours later
I just drop it on the floor
of course in the morning and take care of things.
- In the morning you wake up and you trip over it
and you fall and break yourself.
All right, the second thing, Dan,
you're already doing is the walking.
The only thing I was gonna suggest to you sometimes,
actually walking at a faster pace sometimes
feels better on the back than walking at a slower pace.
- Now, he's in Duluth, right?
- He's in Duluth so he's got hills.
- Yeah, so if you're walking outside,
you're gonna have to find flat places to walk.
- I guess his mom, she revealed to me that
you had walked 36,000 steps in one day.
So that's good, that's fine, that's a lot, Brad,
that's a lot.
- But he must be going up and down hills in Duluth.
- Yeah, I don't know if he goes on camp,
I don't know what the campus is like there.
- Well, it's all indoors, you don't even have to go outside
in the winter I guess.
Yeah, Chris' daughter goes there.
- Oh cool.
All right, next thing, I'm gonna have you try this.
I'll show this, Brad.
We'll get a couple pillows here.
Now we tried a little bit of this last night
and it felt okay to him.
I want him just to start lying prone like every hour
I want you to get down,
and you could even study while you're doing this,
or you can get down like this.
I want you not to have pain.
If it increases your pain, stop it right away.
But if you can lie like this, I want you to try to lie
for three to five minutes like this.
And then stop and the next hour you try it again.
Eventually I want you to see if you can start taking
pillows away.
- Go down to one pillow.
- Go down to one pillow and then try three to five minutes
every hour.
Then go down to no pillows.
- [Brad] Was he comfortable just in prone on the floor?
- No.
- [Brad] So that was not, leg pain got worse?
- Everything prone was bad, yep.
- [Brad] Okay, yep, so the pillows are good.
- Yeah, this is a progression and then eventually
what you can do is actually take a fist
and put it underneath your chin like this
if you're down to no pillows.
Then you can go, this is Miguel, remember?
And then you can go two fists like this,
and if that feels fine, then maybe you'd progress to
on your elbows and if that feels fine,
we might start doing these, but you'd talk to me
at that point if--
- Yeah, there'll be further communication.
- Yeah, we'll need further communication.
Sorry Brad, I'm gonna show you one more thing here.
When you get up from the five minutes
or the three five minutes, I'm gonna have you do
cat camels.
So you're gonna have your knees about shoulder width apart
and you're gonna arch your back up like this
and down like this.
So I'm bringing my head down too like this and like this.
And again, this should be pain free; it shouldn't hurt him.
- Yeah, he might find that maybe going one direction so far,
but if you go too far, it hurts.
Well, stay away from the pain.
- I just want you to do like 10 reps of this
to get some movement in the back
and a lot of times that starts to feel better after a while.
Then the other thing is if you wanted to try to give
yourself some relief every so often,
do you wanna show the traction between the two chairs, Brad?
- Oh sure.
There's two options, but we can start at the one
on your knees.
- Yeah, I'll show you the other one after brad
shows you this one.
- So between two chairs that are reasonably solid,
I don't know, how tall is this young man?
- He's pretty tall.
- About as tall as you?
- No, no, he's about six I would say.
- That'll probably fit, an average chair
will probably be fine.
So you're gonna go between the chairs
and if you can focus on my knees here a little bit, Liz,
I'm going to lift up my body weight
and now my knees, it's hard to see,
but my knees are now off the floor.
I'm gonna try to relax my core muscles
so that it puts traction in the lumbar spine.
It's gonna be a gentle pull and that can actually
release the pressure from that nerve
that's giving you the pain down the leg.
Now, if it works, you'll feel it right away
and it'll feel good.
You may have to start out leaning forward
and see if it works, but eventually you do wanna get
straight up and down and you just hang out there
and if it does relieve the leg pain,
you hang out there 15, 30 seconds.
Your arms will get tired and do it a few repetitions
and do that throughout the day if it gives you relief.
- Yeah some relief and it's just a way
to knock that pain down.
Then when you're going for walks,
if you find benches that are solid
and cemented in or whatever.
- Yeah, well it'd be all ice now up there.
- Well, yeah, I suppose.
But you can actually go behind the bench
and lean on it like this and do the same thing.
You can do a little traction, but yeah,
you gotta make sure the benches aren't gonna tip over.
Or you can do it with a countertop too, I suppose.
All right, next one, I'm just gonna show them
that two leg rotation, Brad.
And I know, I've seen little variations of this,
but this is another thing to see if we can
decrease the pain.
So let's see, we rotate to the side,
the leg pain would be on this side, right?
- No, are you going to work this way?
- This way?
- If the pain's on the right leg,
you're gonna go to the right leg.
This is one of my favorites.
- Yeah, you like this one.
So you bring it up like this, right?
Or do you move the hips over first?
- Yeah, first, yep, I'll have the patient,
if the pain is on the right leg--
- And it's his right leg.
- Yep, so shift your hips about two inches
or one or two inches to the left
and then you can set them down and then--
- Then lift up.
Now this could vary how much you bend.
If it doesn't help, you might bend it a little more
or you bend it a little less,
but usually I start off at about 90 degrees.
- You're probably gonna have to use your hands
to help support the weight of the legs.
- Yep, you might have to do that and you wanna,
if you're on a bench you wanna make sure you hold on
or you'll fall right off.
Or you could do it on the floor.
- [Brad] Yeah, the floor's a good place.
- So you're just gonna bring it over like this
and sometimes that boom takes away the pain.
Oh, on the right leg.
- But notice Bob's left shoulder is trying to stay flat
to the floor so there's actually a rotation
in the back, but again, when I work with those patients
with this and I start doing this,
they say pretty quickly, oh my leg's starting
to feel better.
If it makes it worse and it's pinching
and it's just like making your eyes open up with pain,
then it's not the right option.
- Yep, now if that feels good, you can do like
three repetitions of it.
And if the next day it's still good,
then you can do it like six times, several times a day.
- And typically when that starts getting better,
if that one does reduce leg pain,
then you can, the one on your stomach--
- You might be able to do that.
- These kinda work together.
- So we'll grab a throw pillow here, Brad,
and you've got a rolled towel, right?
- Oh yeah, right here.
- Why don't you show them what to do in a car?
- Sure, and this may be at home too in a chair.
- Yeah, might be home in a chair.
- You take a towel, roll it up, get some athletic tape
from the athletic trainer.
- Don't listen to us, but steal a towel--
- Well, it's just borrowing, bring it back, bring it back.
You're gonna put that about at your belt line.
A lot of times it's a little bit below,
but you'll know it's gonna feel,
if you lean into it, it should feel like really good relief.
And actually maybe make the leg pain better.
If that's the case, you're gonna stick with that.
And sit there in your car, in your bedroom.
- [Bob] Especially long drives.
- Yeah, exactly.
- [Bob] You gotta make sure that back is supported.
- I've used these in my recliner
'cause the soft recliner you can go back
and you don't really realize it, but your back
is rounded out which can make it worse.
You wanna keep that arch in that back.
- And that's why in the recliner,
I often use a throw pillow.
And we even talked, I talked to his mom about
if he can't get to sleep, he can maybe try a recliner
if he's got one available and then put a throw pillow
under there in his back to give it support
while he's leaning back.
So that's just a little tip there to try.
- Has he got a girlfriend?
- Yes he does.
- She should do a little back massage for him.
There you go.
- Yep, I'll tell her that she needs to be doing that.
Okay, last one I was gonna show is
the two pillows, Brad, under the leg when you're sleeping.
This works for a lot of people too.
- Unfortunately Dan, we can't give you a recipe
that's guaranteed to work.
This is how we work with patients;
you have to try different options
'cause every back's a little different.
- Now this would be his right leg,
so the right leg would be on top on this one.
So your painful leg is on top
and you're actually gonna take two pillows.
- Take the pillows from your roommates or whatever it is.
- And you put them underneath your feet like that and ankles
and then you lie down like this and you try to sleep.
And a lot of times it takes away the pain.
- Yeah, so you got the option with the leg wedge
that you're getting or this.
And then the other thing, if this doesn't work,
you might just try to--
- Pillow between the legs.
This is what we meant by that.
There's a little less rotation on the back.
It's a lot of times a lot more comfortable.
So give those a try.
Let's be in touch, Dan, after you talk to the doctor
so we can see what he says.
But no matter what it really is,
these should be okay to try.
That's why I wanted to get this video to you.
- Just follow the rules and if they make it worse,
you don't do it.
If they give you relief, particularly in the leg,
keep working with them.
- This will get better, Dan, don't worry.
You've got the body has a tremendous ability to heal,
even if it's a disk problem, it'll heal.
- Yeah, so when you get back in the weight room,
you're gonna have to lay off those 500 pound squats
and things like that.
- Yeah, you gotta back off a little bit.
- So Bob will send you a bill later.
So just tear it up and throw it away.
- Thanks for watching.