♪ Bob and brad ♪
♪ The two most famous physical therapists ♪
♪ On the internet ♪
- Well hi there 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.
- Quarantined, we're gonna show you 19 ways
to reduce your stress everyday.
We're all feeling it Brad.
We're under stress, we're not having the social contact,
so we're missing a lot of things in our lives,
and it's causing stress.
- And they're guaranteed to find at least
a half a dozen of these that will work for you.
- Not that they'll all work for you,
but we're gonna give you some suggestions
and by the way, number 10 worked really well with prisoners,
which we are kind of.
- Well in a sense.
- By the way if you're new to our channel,
please take a second to subscribe to us.
We provide videos how to stay healthy, fit, pain free,
and we upload everyday.
Also join us on our website, bobandbrad.com
'cause we're always giving something away.
Right now we're giving away a mattress from Sleepovation.
- Say no more Bob, look at that.
- Yeah a true mattress along with a couple of their pillows,
which will go to a separate winners.
- Oh really?
- We can also find it on Facebook.
It'll be pinned to the top of the page,
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Now go to Twitter or Instagram or Tik Tok
if you want to see a 60 second version
of our program each day.
Let's get started Brad.
This is, by the way, kind of a shout out to Pat Beckman
who works for us.
She's in occupational therapist.
She also works at the schools
and she was wondering if we'd do this for the teachers
in Wynona Minnesota.
They're doing a great job but it's very difficult
and they're under a lot of stress
so we thought we'd make this for them.
- The other teachers too.
- All the teachers
- All over the world.
- All right number one, this is for teachers particularly.
You gotta adjust your standards.
'Cause I believe a lot of teachers are perfectionists Brad.
You know what I mean?
- Very well could be Bob,
they want to have a certain level reached,
and this is gonna be an extra challenge.
- Yeah so they're trying to teach their students
but a lot of them have children at home,
so they're trying to keep up that standard also.
So I'm just trying to tell you,
give yourself permission to back away from perfection.
- Right, right yeah.
- Bob and Brad absolve you,
we give you permission to back off from perfection.
- If you watched our videos,
you know we don't worry too much about perfection.
- That's right.
- Everything is natural and it is as it is and we're happy.
- We're as far away from perfection as you can be.
Number two, take breaks from watching,
reading or listening to the news stories.
This is probably the number one thing you can do.
They're gonna bring you down.
I realize you want to keep up on the news,
you can do that by
reading a few headlines on a website or something,
but just to dwell on it, it's just gonna bring you down.
- I stopped watching news years ago,
well before the Covid 19,
because they dwell on negativity,
always looking at the bad things.
Once in a while, they'll throw in a couple things
that are positive or make you smile,
but that's a small percentage.
I've been much happier.
- Yeah I get up in the morning
and if I turn the news on right away,
all of a sudden I'm feeling glum within a few minutes.
By the way Brad, this wasn't one of ours,
but I guess we could make it 20 ways,
avoid negative people too.
- Oh right.
- You want to have positive people in your life
and that's gonna be difficult
if you're in the same household as one.
Good luck with that one.
- Some people you give them a hundred dollar bill
and they complain that it wasn't enough.
Those are the kind of people that
maybe you can try to stay clear of right now.
- Number three, absolutely, most people know this,
get outside, especially if you can get into nature.
We saw studies that
if you spend an hour and a half in nature,
it actually psychologically works to help stop ruminating.
Remember if you ruminate the problems
and keep recycling them?
- Which can be a real problem with stress.
- My daughter has a problem, she lives in Seattle,
it's so crowded there that they,
she says even if you go to the parks now,
people are lined up and they're allowing them in,
and even then they're like six feet apart,
it's just like, packed.
I mean we're lucky that we live in a rural,
Podunk? What's the word?
- Yeah it's got it's benefits being in redneck Wisconsin.
- Right, all right number five, oh no number four breathing.
Breathing is a hugely impactful, and hugely important.
People when they become stressful,
their breathing becomes shallow.
So there's a lot of different breathing techniques.
We like the four square one, very simple to do.
So you breath in for four, in through the nose.
Hold it for four,
then breath out through the mouth for four.
Then hold it one more time.
And that basically creates the sides
of the square as four seconds.
You can go three seconds on each side of the square,
five seconds, whatever works for you.
But Navy Seals use this before they go out.
- The four square one?
You read that somewhere?
- Yeah, absolutely.
- All right number five, exercise.
Especially if you can exercise outside
because then you get the two benefits, don't you?
- That sunlight too, if you can get out in sunlight.
Or is that another one down the road?
- That's one on there too but you're right.
- We can emphasize it.
- And if you can go out with a friend
and keep your social distance,
that's like four benefits to being outside.
Getting a little social interaction, you're getting sun,
you're getting exercise, you're getting the outdoors.
It's all right there.
Number six, make it a priority to connect with others.
There's all this video chat ways to do it now.
- Sure.
- Brad and I just talked to some people from China.
- Yeah we did.
- We did for a half hour so you can do it on zoom,
you can do it on Facebook Messenger, Skype.
We're pretty technologically inept,
which is surprising because we're on a YouTube channel,
but we can figure it out, so you can figure it out too.
- You can always text.
- Or at least Mike can.
- Yeah I asked one of my daughters and
one way or another it works.
- One of your daughters.
Oh yeah that's right you have a step daughter too.
Number seven, keep a routine.
This is really easy to start going crazy
and not maintaining a schedule.
But you really want to maintain a schedule for work,
for play, especially for that type of person
that will keep working if they don't have a schedule.
You want to make sure you allocate some time to play.
- Sure, right.
- To give yourself time to wind down.
- And if your play is exercise, that's a double whammy.
- Yep again, a double positive.
Number eight, watch something light hearted.
Brad and I talked about this on another video.
The exact opposite of watching the news
is you want to pick a show that is just light hearted.
And I mentioned this on the other video,
we've been watching Monk, which is kind of funny
because it's about a detective
who's really paranoid about germs.
But the funny thing about it is,
each show starts off with a gruesome murder,
but it's light hearted the way they do it.
And then they start playing light hearted music.
- Oh really?
- And then he solves the crime.
- Oh so it's a happy ending?
- Yeah it's always a happy ending.
Whenever he figures out who it is, he goes "he's the guy".
He's never wrong.
- Kind of like Scooby Doo.
- Yep, like Scooby Doo.
All right number nine, have a consistent bedtime and naps.
This is from the book "How We Sleep" by Matthew Walker.
Their number one tip if you have trouble sleeping
is to stay on a schedule.
Be consistent even if it goes into the weekend.
If you are tempted to stay up a lot later on the weekends,
you should try to adhere to your schedule somewhat.
- I always wondered if that Saturday night,
I was all by myself I could watch my own movie I wanted,
when I was laying down on the pillow,
I figured that was close enough to sleeping
and it was a mellow movie.
- Did you stay awake?
- Yeah actually it was a good movie, it was a fun movie
and I got to bed an hour and a half later.
- Do you want to reveal the name of the movie or not?
You don't remember do you?
- No I don't remember, it was an oddball,
Netflix movie but no one would watch it.
- It's funny, that is something.
When I find myself by myself I'm like
"I get to watch whatever I want, this is so cool."
All right number 10, we mentioned about the prisoners,
right Brad?
- Oh yes.
- So there are three studies that they reviewed
and prisoner anxiety was significantly reduced
in these three studies using progressive muscle relaxation.
So what that is is, basically you're lying down,
you're gonna tighten up a muscle,
we usually start in the feet,
and move all the way up to the face.
So you might tighten your calf muscle up,
and while you're tightening up
you inhale for five to 10 seconds.
Then exhale and as you exhale, you want to picture,
or visualize those stress feelings just flowing out.
You do that in karate, right?
- Well the one that really sticks in my mind
is they say relax, exhale, and envision your muscles
being like butter on a picnic table, on a hot summer day.
- Sure, yeah.
- I'm already relaxed.
- Yeah, right, and that's how you come up with
the right relaxation image for this,
it will work out well too.
Number 11, TM, transcendental meditation.
Any type of meditation really.
I don't know if any of you are fans of Tim Ferris,
he has a really popular podcast,
and he interviews a lot of famous people,
and I would say 80 to 90% of them meditate.
It's surprising how many do.
So I've done it a few times in my life,
and you talk about visualization,
when I'm visualizing meditating,
I picture I'm breathing bubbles in and blowing bubbles out.
It just really works for me for some reason.
I don't feel like I need to do it at this point,
but when I do it, it really works well so check it out.
Number 12, gardening.
Now what is better than that?
Again you're out in nature, you're busy,
you get some activity, you're working with plants.
Not my deal, not my kind of thing.
- We had a garden for four years,
I decided I'm gonna get out there as children,
but four years was enough for me.
When you see your broccoli not come up,
it was not good.
- So no Farmer Brad?
- No we did soil samples and everything.
I guess we needed some more potassium,
and I was like where am I gonna get potassium?
It was a stressful thing
but a lot of people are very good at it.
- Oh my dad was a great gardener,
People would give up their gardens
because it just wasn't working well for them,
and he'd go over to other houses.
He had gardens all around the neighborhood.
Number 13, journal.
This works really well for a lot of people.
I've never done this,
but you just write non stop for 10 minutes.
Don't even put a lot of thought into it,
just write down your worries, your thoughts, your goals,
and for some reason it really seems to help
transmit your problems to the paper and take them from you.
I did use it the other night, I think I mentioned that.
- Oh right, that's right.
- I was having trouble sleeping
and I finally got up
and I wrote down all the things I was worried about.
I laid back down and I fell asleep.
- It worked?
- It worked amazing, I was shocked.
I thought I would take up and not get back to sleep.
- I haven't tried that because writing for me
typically does not come naturally.
In college it was, I gotta write a paper,
it was a major stressor for me.
But maybe with the right mindset,
- Yeah you have to give yourself some leeway
you're just gonna write down without being perfect
on spelling or grammar.
- Number 14, we're moving on here,
you want to watch your caffeine intake.
It definitely can decrease your anxiety and stress.
Are you a caffeine drinker?
- Well I never was until recently in the last year
I've been drinking coffee for a couple reasons.
To stay awake on the roads when I used to drive more,
I don't know why but, Pepsi, I didn't want the sugar,
and I didn't like crossing the middle line,
so I needed something to keep me awake.
And it keeps my hands warm in the winter.
And it tastes okay.
- That's why I'm willing to make the exception too
'cause you gotta stay awake.
If you're not awake then you're dead and it's not gonna help
but I don't drink caffeine anymore.
- I probably will in the future.
- All right, don't forget your hobbies, number 15.
Painting, drawing, knitting, writing, reading,
making music.
- Well, you could go on forever.
- Number 16, eating healthy
This is a great time for people to start
trying to pick up junk food, isn't it?
- That says healthy?
Looks like memory to me.
No, healthy eating is, particularly as you,
I would say maybe over 50 or even less.
I always remember I'd be around my parents and their friends
and they'd be talking about what they're eating.
What's the big deal about what you're eating?
And now it's like, me and my friends we talk about diet.
It's a little depressing, like I'm already to that age
but it is important.
- But food is medicine.
- Oh absolutely it really is.
- Number 17, go through a gratitude list.
As bad as things are,
you have a lot of things to be thankful for.
Especially if you don't have anybody
that's been affected by Covid,
that right there you have a big one on your list.
Everybody's healthy and everybody's alive.
Number 18, do something for others.
Grocery, pick up some prescriptions for people,
you always feel better when you're helping others.
Number 19, get some sunlight, you mentioned that earlier.
And if there's no sunlight, which sometimes there isn't,
you might want to order those lamps
for seasonal affective disorder.
My daughter definitely uses one all the time.
She has smaller ones, she's in Seattle,
- Where it rains 90% of the time?
- It rains during the winter a lot.
- It doesn't rain, it's cloudy?
- Yeah, exactly.
- I was out there for a week once, sunny everyday.
My brother who lived there at the time said
"This never happens."
- We went out there and it rained everyday.
And this is a bonus, get help if you need it.
Don't feel embarrassed.
These are really hard times.
Check with your primary care giver
or mental health professional.
Don't just suffer through it.
- Don't do it alone.
- Yeah, don't do it alone.
All right remember Brad and I can fix just about anything
- Except for
- A broken heart
- We could have had that for number 20
but we don't have it solved yet.
- Get your broken heart fixed.
- We've had enough Bob.
- All right thanks.