♪ Bob and Brad ♪
♪ The two most famous physical therapists ♪
♪ On the internet ♪
- Howdy folks, I'm Bob Schrupp, physical therapist,
- Brad Heineck, physical therapist.
- And together we are
the most famous physical therapists on the internet.
- In our opinion, of course, Bob.
- Today we're gonna show how to do
upper neck stretches and exercises.
So, how does the upper neck become tight?
Well, here's your head, here's your neck.
And quite often people lean forward like this
when they're lookin' at their cellphone
or lookin' at their laptop
or lookin' at their computer.
So look at this, if I'm forward,
I'm gonna go into Brad's orientation.
- There you go
- So, if my head's forward like this,
this part gets stretched out
but this part is actually, the muscles are gonna shorten.
- They're right underneath the skull there.
- And after a while
that actually can make it difficult
to even straighten back up again.
- Right, so you end up permanently like this.
I mean, it could happen,
but if you, you know, you do these stretches,
it's gonna get you back up where you need to be.
- Right.
And every inch forward
puts 10 more pounds of stress on your neck,
they say. - Yeah, because that,
that weight is pulling down, you know?
And it depends on how heavy your head is.
- Right.
- But whatever, it's a lot more,
it's just plain matter of physics,
physics and leverage.
- Right, so you want to stretch these neck muscles out
and they can also put stress on a nerve there
and send pain and headaches into your head.
So in fact, they call it the ram's horn.
If you look at a ram's horn, it goes like, curls,
and that's where the pain is often felt,
in this area right here.
- Yeah, my brother-in-law had it
and he referred to it, after a car accident, actually,
if it was a full wrap,
that meant it came up, around, all the way to the eyes,
and he'd say, I got a full wrap headache now.
- Not good. - Yeah.
- All right, let's show you
some of the exercises you can do.
We're going to start off with the chin tuck,
which, well, why don't we show it seated first?
- Sure, sure.
- So, basically it's a good, not only a stretch,
but a good reminder where your head should be.
- Right.
- So you're gonna take your chin-
- And actually, before that, Bob,
make sure like, if you're sitting like this,
get your bottom back,
get your trunk and shoulders in proper alignment first.
- Good posture, yep, and then you're going to go ahead
and just back up the head basically,
you're not gonna tilt up, and you're not gonna tilt down,
you're gonna just go straight back.
For some of you there may not be much motion there,
that's the problem.
So get what you can get,
but you could do these throughout the day.
Certainly we would want you to do three sets of 10,
to start off with, maybe, - Sure.
- But throughout the day, maybe do a set of 10.
- Are we going to show any overpressure or?
- Yes. - Okay.
- Do you want to do that already
or do you want to show,
maybe we'll show this if you're having trouble.
- Okay, sure.
- So, yeah, why don't we show overpressure?
You can actually, what Brad is referring to,
you can actually take a couple fingers like this
and push on your chin.
Or you can take the crux of your thumb
and push it back like this.
Now there's a couple ways you can do this,
you can just start pressure on, pressure off,
pressure on, pressure off,
or you can actually hold it for like a minute.
- Sure.
- Especially if you're having a headache,
quite often that feels a lot better.
- If you do this and you do get some unusual pain
or the pain gets worse into the head for whatever reason,
then you would stop. - Right.
- You only do this if it feels like a good stretch,
maybe some pain like that "hurts so good pain."
- Feels good pain.
- Yeah, and don't get real aggressive on this right away,
this is a gentle push.
- Now, Brad, if you are having trouble doing this,
and a lot of people do-
- What do you want me to do with this?
- I don't know, get it out of the way.
So you can take a rolled towel
and you can lie on it,
and you probably want to be on a fairly firm surface.
I suppose, if you have a big enough towel,
a bed would work, even.
So it's gonna make it easier to chin tuck,
when you're in this position
with the rolled towel underneath the back of your head.
- And sometimes if you just lie there and relax
you're gonna get a certain degree of stretch because of it.
- Good point.
Or you could also do the overpressure here.
But it can start getting you on your way
to stretching that upper neck.
- I've always told my patients,
and it seemed to work good for a verbal cue,
I'd say, see if you can touch the back of your neck
to the bed, or the floor, wherever you're on,
and then people would get the proper motion.
- That would probably be a smaller roll.
- Yeah, or even if you don't use the roll,
'cause eventually you get without the rolls.
- Exactly, you can start doing like this.
- Yep.
- All right, the final thing we want to do
is those tissues, those muscles can get scarred down,
they can get adhesed down.
And what Brad's gonna demonstrate now
is how he can do some self massage to the area.
- Right, so I'm gonna take my mic off,
so if I talk people will be glad to know they can't hear me.
You go - So I'm gonna talk now.
The first thing he's gonna do is circular motion
and it's right where the skull meets the neck,
so right along the skull line,
you'll be able to feel it.
And you can do a little bit lower than that,
that's usually where the muscles are tight.
But Brad's doing a good job of doing circular massage.
He said it just cracked.
And then you can also do a splain massage
where you bring your fingers together and splay 'em out,
take 'em out to the side of your head.
Do this along with the chin tucks.
And again, you can do this throughout the day.
If you start feeling a headache come on
hit it right away with this and that will help.
There's more that you can do,
but we're gonna keep this simple and start with,
simple is easier and simple is often better
so we'll stick with that.
Check out the rest of our program,
it's called "Bob and Brad's Stretch and More" program.
- [Brad] Stretch more?
- [Bob] Stretch and More.
- Oh, Stretch and More, yeah.
Does that mean, more what?
- Exercise as well, we wanted to include everything.
- That's right.
- Thanks for watching.
(bright music)