♪ Bob and Brad, ♪
♪ the two most famous physical therapist ♪
♪ ♪ on the internet. ♪
- Hi folks. I'm Bob Schrupp, physical therapist.
- Brad Heineck, physical therapist.
- Together, we are the most famous physicals therapists
on the internet.
- In our own opinion, of course, Bob.
- Today we are going to be talking about spot on exercises
for spondylolisthesis, which I can't say.
- Spondylolisthesis
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Alright, spondylolisthesis, uh,
it's not a uncommon problem, but it's not real common.
They say about, estimated 5% of the population.
- That's a pretty common, Brad.
- Well, 95% don't though, ya know.
(both laugh)
Anyways, uh, it's not a life ending problem.
- Diagnosis.
- I have it myself, mine is...
- [Bob] Yours is pretty severe, actually.
- Well, it could be a lot worse. That's for sure.
But it's typically in the lumbar spine.
You could have it up higher,
but the majority is on the lumbar spine.
This is the pelvis. Just to get oriented here.
The lumbar spine, there's five lumbar vertebra.
It's usually,
it's very common between
the sacrum and L five, the lowest one,
or between L five and L four.
We're going to show you a better model of it.
Right here.
We take off the vertebra up above and here's the pelvis you
might want to zoom in on.
Oh Chris, you are good Tanner.
You can see here's the step.
This vertebra actually will slip forward.
This, uh, anterior direction.
Now you can have a problem with it retro, going backwards.
- [Bob] Right.
- It's not near as common. We have people ask about that.
That's why I mentioned it
But what happens, and usually the disc on this shift
will eventually, uh, disappear.
- [Bob] Disintegrate
- Yeah, the body absorbs it. And mine is gone,
mine's bone on bone.
- [Bob] Yeah, so these are fused, these two bones right now.
- [Bob] So if you can tough it out.
- Yeah, cause it's a little painful, you know,
for, it's not just a weaker tour.
- Yeah.
- It takes awhile. You have to treat it properly
and that's what we're going to talk about.
How I treated mine, and I treated mine through research
and how other people did their's.
So it's not the same for everybody,
- Right.
- But they're the, the general movements you'll find out.
I'm going to give you seven things to work with
and you'll find out.
- Well first off, you want to avoid any extension exercise.
- Right.
- You don't want to be doing any exercises that involve
extending the back and as either prone or supine, I'm sorry.
No, prone and or standing up
- Or activities. Like if you're
washing windows high above your head.
- Reaching above the head.
- Yeah. I can vouch.
- Doing the wave.
- I mean, it's not going to break it.
It's going to get you sore. It'll stay sore for awhile,
as my experience.
This exercise, for me, always is my go to exercise.
This is how I start my exercise program.
Is I grab a ball and it forces my back into the
proper position. It feels good. Every time I do this,
it feels better right now. And you know.
- So his back is supported, but you aren't going into your
- Flexor
- flattening the back.
- Right
- Right.
Flattening it and flexing the hips.
And that's what you want,
where you really have to have strong abdominals,
strong hip flexors.
All the muscles in front have to become very strong
to keep the bones from shifting anymore.
That's why we're doing it.
Okay. Then I'll go from there.
You can do some of these for abdominal.
I put my fingers right here. So I feel my stomach tighten.
And then I roll up
and tighten.
And I think about getting my whole core tight.
- And you're tightening your glutes too, right?
- Oh yeah, absolutely. Get those butt muscles going.
So here, here, everything in his whole core,
a complete core exercise.
- Butt muscles, the gluteus Maximus does
attach into the fascia of the back.
- Right.
- The fascia is that tough material that covers the back and
- I call it tissue, not material.
- Oh wow.
- It works a long with the fascia that comes off the
latissimus and the abdominal muscles and the glutes.
And they all work together to protect the back.
- Can I go on Bob?
- Yeah.
So everything he said is absolutely true.
Then I do this core exercise. I'll do I do 50 of them.
Start out with 10 or 20.
- But they git the back, it's nice. You're on the floor
supported the whole time. You're not doing full curls,
you're just doing partial curls.
- Then I'll do those again. Now, this is a double crunch.
So you bring them these up and the shoulders up
at the same time.
- Probably can't start with this one.
- You'll work into these,
but the ball really helps a lot with this.
I don't recommend people on buying equipment if it's not
necessary, but for this diagnosis, I can't,
I wouldn't be able to do these without a ball near as well.
And then the last one, this one's is a nice thing to do.
And I really like this one,
because it makes me back move a little bit but not too much.
- Again, the back is completely supported in all this.
- Yeah.
- Because I would not like to have him curl up and do these.
I mean.
- Right, my back is not curled.
- Yeah.
- A little bit in my neck so I don't want to do
this too much.
- Yeah.
- Also, I keep my hand right there.
- So yeah, he doesn't want to be behind his neck here.
- Yeah, not this, it's here.
Okay, then your stomach feels like you've been doing some
work. All right, now that that's done, I take the ball
and you're not supposed to extend much with spondy
but I want to extend some so I don't loose that motion.
And so, I'm on the ball it supports my midline.
- [Bob] It's very minimal, you're not extending much.
Brad, if you'd see yourself, you,
you'd see it's very minimal.
- Well, what I do is I go up until it starts to feel
uncomfortable, which is about right there.
So it's pain free range.
I'll kick up like this also, so I get some extension
from the hips into the back
and then I'll go back and I'll do a rotation.
And the only reason I'm not doing this to get really strong,
I'm doing this to save my range of motion.
- Right.
- So I don't become flexed over.
- You're making a really good point.
Is that even though you're not supposed
to do full extension,
you want to maintain some of the motion
or are you going to
be ended up walking in a flexed manner and you're going to
develop other pains because of it.
- Yeah. If you've ever seen people in their seventies
or eighties, I don't want to look like that.
- Walk like this.
- And they can't straighten up because things are fixed.
I want to avoid that at all costs.
Okay. Now
planks,
this is my advice to anybody who has spondy with planks.
And maybe this is my personal opinions,
but, just forget them. Don't do it.
- Well it's because they hurt you.
You'll know if they hurt you, you shouldn't do it.
- When I've done them, especially these sideways planks,
oh my, they give me a backache for a day,
the regular plank.
- Do they hurt while you're doing it, or is it just after.
- It's been so long since I did them.
It's usually afterwards.
- Sure.
- I personally, and I think this is going to come with
research in the future, but, planks is a good exercise.
It does, it's strengthens the muscle,
but it's horizontal isometric
thing that doesn't relate to function.
- Right.
- Too much compared to what I'm going to show you.
- Right.
- But it's just, I'm just projecting. I don't,
I'm not a PhD, I don't know a thing.
- I think if you do them and they don't hurt
and it don't hurt afterwards. Yeah, absolutely. I do them.
- Yeah, I agree. You do planks?
- Yep.
- Yeah, I do side planks.
- But I, I, these have been working for me.
I'm going to do these.
Let's do it here.
I'm going to work. This works my obliques in my transverse.
- So you got exercise tubing here with really good handles.
I got to put it in plug for the handles.
We were really proud of these. These are some good ones.
- I'm going to double the resistance very easily by doing
this and now I can really.
- So he is strengthening his core now in a standing fashion
like you might be used in the back.
- Right.
- And you learned to tighten up that core
while you're doing the exercise.
- While you're up right.
- Let's say you're working a lawnmower, you're shoveling.
- Well, I was, I had a storm come through on
throwing some branches around that blew off the tree
and they were kind of heavy.
And I can do that now, without problems.
- You tighten your core and you protect your back.
- Right.
- You know? And then the other one, this is at the old stir,
the pot, which works, you know, we're doing this,
I'm tightening everything up and I'm really
thinking about that core getting strong.
And of course, I'll go this way.
You can do it 30 seconds each way.
It's a lot harder than it looks. It's a great core,
really going to protect that spine area.
- I wish people could feel hard, hard it is.
- Well, they can do it.
Yeah, I agree, it does not look that hard.
- You're gonna talk about hanging bread.
- Ah, yes. And I just started doing this
within the last year and a half for this is
hanging. I started doing it for my shoulders,
but I realized how much it makes my
- [In Unison] back feel good.
- And I do it as a break type activity because it,
it extends my spine decompress my spine and it always
cracks.
- It's good for posture too.
- Yeah, it's good for posture.
- So you can use a pull-up bar, that works fine.
We use hanging handles, it does, in my opinion,
Bob, I think agrees when you go up against a wall.
- [Bob] It feels better.
- It works well.
- [Bob] You don't put your whole arm against the wall.
- Right, you're kind of hanging in there.
- [Bob] You're away from the wall.
- So I'm going to gently go down.
- [Bob] This way, the wall is supporting you.
- I feel so, my shoulders feel good, my back feels good.
Now with spondy, I have a feeling, or stenosis,
you might find that if you put a stool in front and you put
one foot here.
- [Bob] That might feel better.
- It feels better, for me when I go up to here.
Bob, and the last thing I want to talk about is
back support.
- Sure.
- This, this, you know, oh, that's right.
We were talking about lumbar support
- Right.
- and that does not work because it extends the back
it's too much.
- Yeah. You spread the forces along the entire back.
- Right.
- Not just the focused area, the lumbar area.
- So I don't know how many backs sports I tried,
but this one, it's a memory foam. It's a key bottle.
And I think they still make them.
I was looking it up this morning,
but there's a lot of options
- And I like this, if it's shaped like this and it looks
like this
- And it's memory foam.
- And you have spondy.
- You're probably going to be fine. Stenosis too, probably.
- Yeah.
- But when I used to ride in my car, I would get out
and I feel stiff in the back.
And it would take me about three minutes before I felt
normal. And I was really getting depressed.
Cause I thought this is the way it's going to be for the
rest of my life.
And then I start using this and it's all the world you want
- You got one for your bike.
- Oh yeah, no kidding.
I literally have one on my lawnmower, I have it on my car,
and then I have to change if I drive my wife's car.
If I forget it I'm I, I'm not happy person.
- How about you clown car?
- Clown car? I'll give you a clown car.
But I got to admit Bob, I don't need as much as I used to.
I thought so. I think my back has,
is getting better is actually becoming more stable over
time.
- Backs are amazing, how they heal themselves.
- Yeah. That was a good news.
Like Stuart McKell was saying that as you age,
typically back.
- Gristle.
- Gristle? I like that.
- They're like that fuses by naturally.
- I'm doing some short ribs tonight on the grill,
it's got a gristle on them. It reminds me.
- Oh, all right. See ya folks.