♪ Bob and Brad, ♪
♪ the two most famous ♪
♪ physical therapists ♪
♪ on the internet. ♪
- Hi folks. I'm Bob Schrupp, physical therapist.
- Brad Heineck, physical therapist.
- Together we are the most famous
physical therapists on the internet.
- In our opinion of course, Bob.
- Brad's getting buttoned up.
Okay today we're gonna talk about
how to decompress your shoulder, fix pain.
So this was based upon years ago,
we first came across this book.
I think it was a patient or a subscriber told us, right.
- Yeah, he said the comment, he said,
"This book, do you know about it?"
- And you told me and I ordered it.
- Yeah. So we both read it
a number of years ago and
then become believers.
- It's called shoulder pain.
It's by John M Kirsch MD.
He's a orthopedist,
- Yep.
- or was, an orthopedist.
- He's retired now.
And we were skeptical.
- Oh yeah, of course.
- He uses it for, after shoulder,
well, with shoulder impingement.
- Right.
- And if you're headed towards maybe,
surgery for a rotator cuff repair,
- Do this prior to surgery and a number
of his patients didn't need surgery after doing this.
- Amazing testimony testimonials in this book.
- There is.
- I mean, some of the most amazing
ones I've seen.
So basically he says,
and this is part of the decompressing your shoulder,
you're basically putting some traction on it.
So you can do that with any really hanging device.
- You can use a pull up bar.
- A branch, a rafter.
(laughing)
- Yeah, he does have some real unique ways
of developing your own pull-up system.
If you don't have something in your house.
- And Brad's doing this now
because you're having trouble with the shoulder.
Which we think might be a labrum.
- Yeah, I swim, I've been swimming for 20 years.
So, who the heck knows what happens
with your shoulder after you do that?
But anyways, I do it.
I like to do it against the wall
and that's why we developed
our hanging handles.
I think it, it works good enough or better.
It just feels better.
Plus it works your posture.
- It works your back too.
Puts decompression on your back.
But, we're going to show you some options here.
So Brad, you're just doing basic
hanging right now. Right?
- Yes.
- You're doing, you're grabbing on.
- Yep, just like that.
- And you, you've slowly worked your way into it.
I mean, you put full weight on it to start, correct?
- No, no.
And I still, I slide down slow,
cause I do it in the morning
after I get out of bed for 15, 20 minutes.
I'll slide down and you know,
it takes me five or 10 seconds
before I put my full weight
on it because it's, it's pulling my back.
It's giving traction to my back
- Sure.
- And it's just nice not to,
at this age, to jar.
- Yeah.
So, you do pick your feet up at one point?
- Yep.
- And how long you hang then?
- I mean, 20 to 30 seconds.
- Right.
- Now, it's when my grip gets tired.
- Yeah, you gotta develop,
your grip's got to develop over time
or you won't be able to do this.
- Right.
- But, the nice thing about the hanging handles
here's some other options.
One, you could just hang with one arm.
- Right.
- So you could just hang like this
and again, put pressure on it.
- And this is where you want to gradually go.
Cause you put in a lot more stress,
obviously twice as much weight through it.
So you're going to do it slowly. And if he creates pain,
then you're going to have to.
- Right.
- You want to use good judgment.
- You really want to do it one day and
then check it out the next day and
see how it did.
So it may have tolerated it fine
while you're doing it.
- Right.
- But the next day you go,
what was I thinking, you know?
Some of the other options you could
try is you could actually,
and that's nice about these handles,
they twist like this.
- That is an advantage because it gives you
options in that rotation component.
- I'm gonna actually switch shoulders here.
Slowly, this one got, got better.
So you can actually just hang back like this too.
It's just a different option.
You might not be able to get your arm all the way up.
- Right.
- Like what you could do with
regular hanging.
- And then you can really control
the amount of traction through the joint
and the shoulder.
- You could try twisting like this too.
Now, just know a lot of this
occurs at the forearm,
but there's some twisting that occurs
at the upper arm too.
- Right.
So, that rotational component,
you want to make sure that,
your not going to go into any rotation that
creates any sharp pain.
If you do, you stay away from it.
- If I were to take a guess, Brad,
the one that's going to feel better
is to turn it out.
External rotation.
- Like your thumb would be going up.
- Because that's how you move the,
the tendon out of the way.
You know, when we test tendons
to see when that impingement is a problem,
we turned it in and then check.
- Sure.
- Turning it out, kind of clears it.
- Yep.
- So stretching it that way may feel better.
You can also actually grab the shoulder
when it's in a relaxed position,
push it down a little bit, and then go back.
Now, this can also be done at two levels.
If you get the hanging handles,
you do get two of these,
but most people want to side by side.
So I don't know if this is going to be,
this might be the kind where
you have to get the entire set for the,
for the wall anchor.
- Right.
Or, whatever, if you want to put eyeballs
in the wall then do it.
I've done that before, too, you know,
that would work as well.
- Right.
- So you just need a different level.
Or if you're using those straps,
what what'd I do with that strap for the door?
It goes in the door.
You could do this on the door.
- Yeah, it's right there, Brad.
- Yeah. I'm sorry.
And this comes, you know,
you could slide this in the door,
that's what it's made for.
And then hookup,
hook your handle on that.
- This comes only with the,
- The bands.
- Yeah.
- These, stretch bands.
- Do you want to show some of these at this level, Brad?
- I mean, sure.
- You could, you can lean back like this.
- Yep, and you know,
it works really nice for the chair with rollers,
which a lot of people don't have at home.
But, you may have a Ottoman that does that.
And then you can stretch and
pull and maybe go out to the side.
I would do this a little more cautiously.
Let me do it this way so
I can talk to the camera instead of
- Yeah, good point Brad abduction
might be another way to work on it.
Especially I would say after,
maybe it's gotten a lot better
going straight forward,
then try going out to abduction.
- Right.
So, what we're looking for,
you're kind of experimenting
for motions that feel good and
stretch that shoulder without sharp pain.
And you know, of course, then we got the McKenzie
stretch like this.
- Ah, good point Brad.
- Yeah, this works really well for getting that.
And then I can just squat down a little bit.
- That's a really good point, Brad,
you're actually getting some
traction on it while you're
trying to increase that.
- And the handle makes it easy to hold on to.
I can actually put my hand in there
and just relax the hands, which is,
could be important as opposed to squeezing it.
You get more relaxed musculature
up in the shoulder joint with that.
- So let's go through the options, Brad.
One, you can put it up higher
and you can hang with both of them.
- Right.
- You could hang singly.
- With caution.
- You can face the wall
and you can hang this way,
lean back.
You can turn your arms to see if one's better.
You can push down on the shoulder.
Sometimes that feels better.
You can do all of the same ones at this level,
except you can also add extension.
- Right.
- Which is, which is a good one.
- So again, we're looking for things that
increase range of motion while
decreasing the pain.
Again, the first day of do it,
don't overdo it.
- Yeah, just do a couple.
- Wait until the next day,
see how it responds the next day.
If you got better range of motion, less pain,
then you can go a little more aggressive.
- Do a little more of that.
- Right.
- Again, don't go crazy.
- Uh-huh.
- You know, hold off a little bit.
- Right.
But also we, should mention our giveaway,
which is not today.
- Oh!
- Today is Saturday which is the one day
in which we switched from one giveaway
to another.
But, if you go onto our website tomorrow
and go to the giveaway section,
we'll announce all we're giving away
- Bob and Brad dot com.
'Giveaway', click on it, it'll show up.
Or Facebook.
- Facebook, yes.
- Pinned to the top of the page.
It's a wonderful gift.
- And we should mention our podcast.
- We really should.
- We're really proud of it.
- What is it?
- Well,
- Bob and Brad?
- Yeah.
- Oh good. Well, sometimes I forget the name.
- I'm sure we'll have links somewhere for it,
but we're really organized.
- Yeah.
Well, good luck with it.
We're thinking about therapy now.
- Yeah, as always.
- Good luck and be careful.
(short piano outro)