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
Today Brad we're gonna talk about ankylosing spondylitis
We're gonna show you an exercise program a stretch program that you can do both seated
and then we're gonna show you another one that you can do laying down on the floor or in your bed,
We're not going to spend a lot of time on what
Ankylosing spondylitis is, we assume that the fact is that you came to this channel
Or to this video, you know what it is. It's an inflammatory process of the spine
Ligaments and after a while everything can kind of fuse
And a lot of times what do we see what position they end up in yeah
and
It's like the spine almost becomes bamboo looking
We want to
Get it mobile and keep it mobile for as long as you can, what you'll notice is the common theme on all these
Exercises is to try to get to everything straight the spine straight the neck over the shoulders everything
Trying to keep it good alignment as long as possible
There's no cure for it
But you can stop it from you know fusing into a bad position right, so you want to manage it as best
You can right, so we're going to show you that but wait Bob if you are new to our Channel
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It's Facebook, but we still want you to like us nonetheless. Wow did you practice that last night?
No, I didn't, I got the words really rolling here, all right number one,
This is the seated position now you can do this a couple times a day
And it should only take you about three minutes once you start getting it down, number one the Hallelujah stretch
You're just gonna go ahead and stretch back over the chair a couple times 1 2 3 again
you're expanding the chest, getting the
Back stretched all right then you can also stretch the chest muscle itself just by grabbing behind like this Brad and pulling back
Yeah
Like this, you can sit forward in the chair a little bit, or you know do it one other way
Alright moving on we're gonna. This go ahead and
Take a triangle. You know I want you to stand up for this one Brad right in front of the chair, okay
And you can just make a triangle with your hand and you're gonna push up like this
And then you're gonna push up towards the ceiling
Just really extends the back extends the chest
Opens the chest up
Make sure you're thinking about your breathing. You're not having shallow breathing. You're relaxing your breath and get some deep breaths in and exhale
It's gonna help that chest do its thing. Yeah, because the ribs tend to get tight in this condition too it can
affect the ribs all right then we're gonna go ahead and we're gonna work the neck we're gonna side bend to one direction and
Then side bend in the other direction
Yeah, we can do each of these like three times
All right
Then you're gonna go ahead and lift the one arm up because a lot of times the shoulders get tight Brad, and you want to
Bring that up as far as you can and then rotate towards that side at the same time
So we get that neck rotation and the arm flexion at the same time and you can do the other side
flex rotate to that side
Flex rotate to that side now with very good posture
I want you to go ahead and you can put your hands up here like this or you can put the fists like this
And you can just rotate and work on rotation
And this works better if you're on a solid base than a rotating chair, it gets a little more rotation
And then the spine,
That's a very good point Brad because a lot of times, just chair's rotating along with you all right next one Brad
You're just gonna work on again
It can affect the hips too Brad, so we're gonna go ahead and work on hip external rotation
So you just cross your legs and you're gonna gently push down on the knee here
Now we can do this a number of times. Just to get a good stretch here
Every chance Brad gets he tries to show off some skin there. Notice that?
You know why I did that Bob, right now people all over America are vomiting
Well you know one way or another it's got to come out, all right now a hip flexor stretch another one
This is a muscle that tends to get tight on you, and it pulls you over
So an easy one to do is just put your foot up on the chair like this
That works out good
You can do it on the front of the chair Brad like this, does this make sense?
And then you can just kind of lean forward like this and you're stretching out that hip into extension
I'd like to show them on this leg
Get the back of the chair out of the way, so we're going like this
Hand here stretch and get that hip to go back and stretch the back, be careful on a rolling chair
we don't want anybody to get hurt here and the final one Brad is just a
hamstring stretch on the chair
You can even just go lean forward like this and kind of lean to keep your body straight
You can stand up and put it up on a chair like this and stretch like this
There's just a lot of ways to do it, but again we want to stretch out the hamstring too
Again, you can do this a number of times a day
You know with a little practice you'll get it down to about three minutes right you'll have it memorized in a matter of you know
10 or 15 reps or less all right now
These are some of the exercises you can do in bed or on the floor and some of these you can do for a longer
Period of time, a good one to do
This is almost universally I saw Brad mentioned in pretty much all the programs I saw
is a prone prop
so you're gonna lay down like this and again because
Your back is starting to tighten into flexion you just want to get up on your elbow like this
Get that reverse
This is a good one too at the end of the day to go ahead and watch some TV
10 to 15 minutes you can stay in this position
This is probably one of your biggest deterrents against deflection
Right if you want to put a pillow under your chest because it's more comfortable that may be an option sure
all right next one Brad
Then you can go right up into cat camel again trying to keep mobility in the spine as long as we can here
So I'm going into flexion
And you can even go down with your head
I'm sure I'm blasting on the mike right now
Okay, next one Brad supine rotations, so we're gonna go ahead
supine
I'm laying flat on my back, on your back supine. Yes, you can wake up in the mornings and do this one
You're just gonna rotate back and forth here
These are going back and forth keeping the shoulders down look at the hip, the hip comes up here
And then on the other side as well
That's getting that slower spine and that thoracic spine to rotate and get a little stretch, very beneficial all right
Then we're gonna go right from that because we're in this position just doing some bridging
Getting a little strengthening and also getting a little straightening of the spine again
If you can get up like Bob's got it straight
So everything is in line you can see how that is in line, some people have a hard time with that
Initially, but that's where you want to work towards
That's the goal you want to work for is right. Alright Brad I need another pillow. Yes you do
All right, so we got two pillows here now underneath you
And now we're gonna do a little bit of strengthening
So we're gonna go ahead and you can actually have a roll towel here. Do we have a roll towel? Just relax
I'll get you one
All right something to keep your head in so that
And the size of this towel is gonna depend on your neck flexibility
Some people if they're more advanced you're gonna have to adjust it so you're comfortable again
This one is more for strengthening the back Brad
It's a good strengthening program. You can just start with one arm if you can't do much, you can go to two arms
You know hold it for a count of five 1 2 3 4 5
1 2 3 4 5 and then go opposite arm opposite leg 1 2 3 4 5
1 2 3 4 5
1 2 3 4 5 just a good one to do for some strengthening
I saw one guy Brad that actually just kind of worked on swimming here in this position
You're really getting some mobility in the shoulder blades and the scapula area as well as strengthening, all right next one
You want to show this one Brad? The foam roller supine. Yes, I do
This was another one that
Almost every program I saw recommended this one. It's just you know you get a foam roller
We have them down listed in our preferred product section down in our description if you want to look at it
Yeah, or a low-density one that's more comfortable
It makes a big difference particularly when you're going right down the middle of the spine
Yeah this one's not quite as hard basically
A little difficult to get on to it
And the point Brad made, you just said you had a patient that his head was up it would never come down like this
He was already advanced
And there was no way he could get his head like that without it being painful. You could put a towel or something down there
OPTP. They have these arches too that you can buy and they can put on there
But they highly recommended this is another one that you just because look how it's expanding the chest and
Straightening the spine all at the same time, and you just lay on here at the end of the day
Yeah, just a good one to
You know if you want to do a passive way
of approaching this I would just do the prone prop the one that we were showing first and
Then then do this one I mean if you just did these two
You're gonna go a long way towards keeping yourself out of trouble
I like this, you know gravity is doing the work for you here. You can just just relax
and think about how the day went or what you're gonna
Do the next day and just let gravity work with your spine, do your meditation you can
Yeah, Brad, let's pull this out, and then can you just do some diaphragmatic breathing? Oh sure
So again because it can affect your ribs and your breathing
They also recommend working on diaphragmatic breathing, so whenever you breathe in you're actually expanding the diaphragm
Which means your belly is coming out so
when he breathes in the belly comes out the chest doesn't expand the belly comes out and then when he breathes out
A lot of times we have people act like they're blowing out a candle
That's when the belly goes down so it's something that takes a little work on but it's good one to finish up with
Again, give you a little mobility in the ribs
and also doing the diaphragmatic breathing, well Brad for once
I don't think we went way over our time limit, and there was quite a few numbers there
We did good. It was good time management
So make sure again, since we gave you one extra second now go and subscribe to us if you haven't already
Thanks a lot, good luck with the stretches
You