♪ Bob and Brad ♪
♪ The two most famous ♪
♪ Physical therapists on the internet ♪
- Hi, I'm Bob Schrupp, physical therapist.
- Brad Heineck, physical therapist.
- Together we are the most famous physical therapists
on the internet.
- Opinion, of course. - Posture is so big to us.
Isn't it, Brad? - Right.
- We're always talking about,
we're always trying to improve it.
So we thought we'd show you some general exercises
and stretches that you should do
to make your posture perfect.
- Get the muscles tightened up so it promotes that
so you don't have to think about it so much.
- I'm gonna show you one, Brad, that first,
I don't think you've seen before.
This is one.
When you're working on your posture,
one thing you're trying to do
is you're trying to line up your ears with your shoulders.
And you want your neck muscles strong enough here
that they can line you up here.
- Sure, let's take a look at that.
We'll even use a straight, there we go.
Look at that.
- But my ears line up with my shoulders,
and my back's straight here too.
So if we're gonna work on it, just an exercise to do that,
what we do, and you've done a video, Brad,
where you actually showed the test
where you could line up like this, right?
- Right, and how close can you get your head to the wall?
- Right, how close can you get?
You can measure, even, how close
you can get your neck to the wall.
I'll put a link on that up here.
But to work on, if you're really poor on that,
let's say you're like this, and you're quite far away
from the wall, one exercise you can actually do
is you bring your legs forward like this.
Don't fall.
And you're gonna lean forward like this.
Don't know if you're gonna be able to see this or not, Brad.
- I'll help.
Go ahead and get started there.
He actually has a gap
between here. - So I'm going like this,
and I'm kind of tucking my chin at the same time.
So I'm lifting my body up with my neck,
using my head as the fulcrum, right?
- Right.
Now we don't have it, but you may wanna have
some padding here, a little towel roller
or something against there.
- So I'm going like that.
That's odd to show, isn't it?
- This is a, I would say-- - That show okay, Lonnie?
- [Lonnie] Yeah.
- This is a pretty aggressive one.
It's not gonna be for everyone.
You're gonna have to be relatively fit or young.
An elderly person was probably not going to do that.
- It would probably be hard on the neck to do it.
And we're gonna do a neck strengthening one,
by the way, and in the future.
And that's gonna be one of the more advanced ones
when we do it.
The other exercises that are really good
are we call Blackburns exercise, as a physical therapist.
Really great for strengthening the muscles
that are really important in posture.
And you can do these on the floor,
and you can do these, first off,
you can start without any weight.
And then eventually you could take some soup cans.
It doesn't take very much weight.
It's a little bit shocking.
Eventually you can work up to something heavier,
but it doesn't take much at all.
Do you want us to just start with these small ones, Brad,
or you wanna start without anything at all?
- I'll try the one pounders and
we'll see if I can get through it,
because I know this is difficult.
- Should we roll a towel for your head?
- [Brad] Sure, yep.
- You mind putting it on that side, Brad?
That way I can.
- Oh yeah, that's better.
And these should,
on the floor or the bed you're saying, Bob?
- You can do this on the floor, actually.
Believe it or not.
It's better if you have a narrow bench.
- Right, if you got a weight room or something like that,
but that doesn't happen very often.
- The floor actually works out fine.
So the first one,
you're doing your arms down like this.
I'm showing them, Brad.
And so you're gonna grab on.
Palms are down,
and you're gonna lift up like this.
- [Brad] And I go as high as I can?
- Yep.
- [Brad] So not like this? - Nope, palms down.
- But like this?
And this towel will really make the difference,
because you can relax your head,
your nose doesn't get squished, and you're in line.
- So we're doing a set of 10.
- This works the triceps pretty good too, Bob.
- But you're squeezing the shoulder blades together
while he's doing this.
- Can we go to the next one, Bob?
I'm getting tired.
- Next one, he's going straight out like a T.
So he's like this.
He's gonna run into the wall there a little bit.
- [Brad] I'll shorten my arm up.
- [Bob] Hold on a minute.
- [Brad] There you go, Bob.
- There we go.
- Squeeze those shoulder blades together.
I think my mic is working there, there we go.
- Now this time, he's doing the same one,
but his thumbs are up now.
It'll work different muscles.
- [Brad] Oh, that makes a difference.
- Are these hard, Brad, or not?
- [Brad] Yep, they're hard.
Can we go to the next one?
- Yep.
Isn't that amazing how hard those are?
Now he's gonna make actually a Y like this.
And the Y, he's gonna have thumbs up.
- [Brad] Kinda like YMCA.
Thumbs up?
- Well, we're gonna do both.
Palms down.
Wanna do palms down first?
Palms down.
- [Brad] I gotta put the weights down, Bob.
- Again, look at it.
Here's a big strong guy.
- I am strong like bull.
- And these are little one pounders,
and it's fatiguing too much, isn't it?
- [Brad] Oh yeah, this is work.
- Now thumbs up.
We're doing 10 times each one.
- [Brad] Yeah, but I don't wanna do 10, Bob.
We gotta get through the video.
- The next one, he's gonna make like this.
Like this.
And I believe that's palms down.
- [Brad] Palms down.
- Nope, I'm wrong.
Thumbs up.
- [Brad] Thumbs up. - Thumbs up.
Ready?
Thumbs up.
(Brad grunting)
- [Brad] This is fun, Bob.
I can see why this is effective for your posture.
- He just went, and he effectively
worked out through his whole back there.
That's a very difficult series to do, but very good to do.
I don't care who you are.
I don't care if you're the big weight lifter
that can lift, bench press 300 pounds.
You can do these, and you're probably gonna only require
some small amount of weights to do so.
You're not gonna be able to do five pounds with this.
Okay Brad. - Some of them, I'm sure.
- Now along with the strengthening,
it's really important to do the stretching too, Brad.
The first one that we like is you do
the stretch in the doorway.
So you gotta picture a doorway here,
and you're gonna put your hands on both sides
of the doorway like this.
- One door frame would be there.
- And one door frame here.
And you're gonna lean into the door frame like this.
And you're going to stretch those peck muscles,
because they're the ones that tend to
curl you up here like this.
Tend to turn the arm in.
Remember that one sign, Brad, that we'd look at?
Is if you just stand here and if your thumbs are turning in,
that means your shoulders are internally rotating.
It means your pecks are pulling you in.
So you really wanna be standing to the point where
your thumbs are pointing straight forward.
That's the position you want to be in.
That's why you wanna do this stretch.
You can stretch at different ways too.
You can stretch up like this.
Like this,
like this into the doorway.
- [Brad] And I even-- - Do the corner.
I was just gonna say, Brad.
The corner works out great. - Right into here.
Now, I guess I would mention
if I'm doing this or have a patient do this,
I'd probably have 'em do the stretch
before the strengthening exercise.
Not necessary, but--
- It warms it up a little bit.
- Gets you, so you get that motion.
- Exactly.
I agree, Brad.
It'd probably be a better scenario to follow it that way.
Another just quick stretch is you can,
you always have trouble with this one.
Putting your hands together and going up like this,
and that stretches the muscles too, the posture muscles.
- I've got tight shoulders,
and I can hardly even reach my hands when I do this.
- It's not, I don't think, so much the chest on you
is it's the tight shoulders, isn't it?
- I know, my chest.
Actually I use a cane or a stick.
That works best for me if I do that.
- Do you wanna show the stretch on a bolster, Brad?
- Sure.
- You can make your own bolster.
You could roll up, what we've done here
is to roll up a sheet here.
Or you can buy.
- A six inch foam roller.
- Foam roller.
And you actually like the really long ones, don't you?
- Right, for this particular exercise,
the three foot one is my preferred one.
- [Bob] Well, could you do this?
Could this be part of it?
- We could.
- You know what I'm saying? - We could see
how it goes, yeah.
- If this was a three footer.
- We have some other videos.
We're gonna make a couple videos with some new rolls.
Actually this is working out pretty good, Bob.
I'm surprised.
There we go, this gets right on your sternum.
Not your sternum.
- Your sacrum. - Sacrum.
Get my anatomy straight.
And it's important for comfort that your head
can rest right on that, otherwise
it's really straining right here.
- There's a little accessory we're gonna be showing
in a future video that helps with that.
- That's gonna help us with that.
And I can just feel, if you relax and take a deep breath
and everything, relax, my shoulders
are going this direction.
- This extra size could actually be called
the lazy man's way to good posture, isn't it Brad?
Because you could just lay here.
- I like it.
- And you're letting it just stretch everything out.
It's straightening you out.
This is a great exercise to do.
- It's relaxing.
You can teeter back and forth a little bit.
- Why don't you sit up, Brad?
We're gonna talk about the things.
Those are the exercises that you can do once a day
or once every other day if you're busy.
But the ones that you're gonna do throughout the day,
that's the ones that are important.
And one of 'em is, and we've done these
11,000,000 times, Brad.
Chin tucks.
Because you're at the computer, you're working,
your head's gonna start going forward.
So you're gonna start doing chin tucks,
where you're bringing your chin back and then tucking in.
You're not going down like this.
You're not going up like this.
You're just going straight back.
Do five of them, 10 of those.
And then you stop, and then you're in the right position.
- It's a reminder, it's a stretch.
It's wonderful.
It's one of those things that I don't know how many times
you worked with someone with pain in their neck
or back here in their shoulder blade.
This is typically one of the exercises
that they're gonna do.
- The other one you're gonna do is shoulder squeezes.
So if I stand up, Brad, and I'm gonna just,
throughout the day, I'm gonna squeeze
my shoulder blades together.
- [Brad] You're going in.
There you go.
- Put me in good posture.
And the last thing we want you to be aware of
is that you wanna make sure that you're just
being aware of your posture.
Like a cell phone, a lot of people,
they tell you to do the Tyrannosaurus Rex.
You're supposed to have the short arms like this.
And you put your phone up like this
and look at it like this, instead of being down like this.
Get up in this position.
You want to, on your desk, you wanna make sure
your screen is up high enough
so that you're not down looking low at it like this.
If you put it up high, that'll pull your posture up high.
- Lot of posture tricks.
Those Blackburn exercises, give 'em a try.
They're tough.
You're gonna be a little bit shocked, I think.
- You bet.
Enjoy and have a good day,
- Thanks for watching.
- Think tall.