♪ Bob and Brad ♪
♪ The two most famous physical therapists ♪
♪ On the internet ♪
(cheerful tone)
- 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.
- The question is the topic is
will simple hanging help your shoulder pain?
Hanging.
- Hanging. - Yes.
- Or brachiating.
- Brachiating, yes.
So this is shoulder pain.
We're talking about rotator cuff injury, impingement,
tendonitis, bursitis, maybe even a frozen shoulder
if it's in its last stage in the thawing phase.
We became aware of this several years ago.
We were skeptical.
Wouldn't you say, Brad?
- As a matter of fact,
I think I found it on a comment
from a viewer.
I sent it to you, and then you ordered the book.
And it's like what kind of
hocus pocus is this? - Yeah, crazy thing is this.
- And now we're-
- I was intrigued, but I did not believe it.
The book is written by Dr. John M. Kirsch.
I've actually had some email exchanges with him.
Right now, he's a retired board certified
orthopedic surgeon.
His book is called "Shoulder Pain?
"The Solution & Prevention,"
and it outlines why a hanging is beneficial.
He also did a study,
or there was a study done on it.
It's a little vague.
He talks about it in the book at fairly good length,
but I have not been able to find this study.
Take it for what it's worth.
It was done in Kauai,
so that's one of the islands of Hawaii.
There was 92 participants,
and they had had shoulder pain for years.
Most of them had been advised to have surgery.
So, of this, two of them dropped out,
because they quit for personal reasons,
but 72 had impingement syndrome.
- Very common.
- Yep, 16 had rotator cuff tears,
and this was verified by MRI.
And four had a frozen shoulder.
All 90, after they were doing the hanging,
they returned to a comfortable, what we call ADLs,
which means they...
- Yeah, go ahead. - Activities of daily living.
They could function as they would
for all the activities you have to do to live,
clean your house.
- Drive your car.
I mean, whatever daily living involves. (laughs)
And three of them canceled shoulder replacement surgery.
In other words, this is pretty good results,
if you ask me.
- It is.
- I haven't found any other
studies on this.
So, that makes me worry a little bit,
but anecdotally it's been really helping the patients
I've used it on, and it's certainly helped me.
- And the testimonials, we'll get into.
- Yeah, we're gonna give some testimonials too.
There's some testimonials his book,
and he also sent me,
I mean, there must be what are there here, Brad.
I mean, there must be 30, 40 testimonials.
- Of people successful hanging,
and we both love it.
We've had numerous people comment back
on our YouTube channel, thanking us for the videos
and the the success they're having.
- Yeah, and you may say, "Well, that's not very scientific,"
but some of these people are so-
- Thankful. - Yeah, so thankful.
- The gratitude is-
- Yeah, is is unbelievable,
'cause they went from
possibly gonna have surgery,
or just really living a miserable lifestyle
to having freedom and no pain.
So, you're gonna avoid hanging
if you have an unstable or dislocating shoulders
and also if you have severe osteoporosis.
- Right, unstable bones.
- Also, he said if you have poor health,
you should see your doctor first before you do this.
You may wanna see your doctor either way on this
before you go ahead.
- Obviously you have to have a fairly good grip strength.
- There are variations to that,
and we'll talk about that,
but what we're trying to do through hanging,
there's what we call the subacromial space and I-
- Should we give a brief description about hanging
just in case someone
haven't heard this? - Sure, go ahead.
Simply, like a pull-up bar is a good place to hang.
You just simply grab the bar and let your body weight hang
through your arms and relax your shoulders.
And you'll hang there to start out with maybe 10 seconds,
but you'll build it up and that's simply all you-
- Yeah, that's it. - That's it.
You do that a few times a day.
It depends on how you tolerate it initially.
- Find a tree branch. (laughs)
- Yeah, actually he says some people
have actually done that.
- It says so.
What we're trying to do, we're trying to stretch out
what we call the coracoacromial ligament.
Did I say it right?
Coraco- - Coracoacromial.
Well, that's a potato potato thing.
- Yeah, okay. (laughs)
And we can also change sometimes reshape the acromion.
Think about it.
Just like people like the orthodontists can straighten
or shift your teeth,
the same thing for the bones up there.
If you put enough stress on them, you can reshape them,
and possibly create a larger opening
for the tendons to go through.
There's less stress than on the tendons.
I'm getting technical.
I didn't want to get too technical, because I-
- It's not that important
for progress. - It's not that important.
You're gonna see if your symptoms allow you to do this
and give it a try.
So right now, we're gonna go ahead
and read some of the testimonials,
- Oh, yes.
- because I think they carry some weight.
And Mike's gonna switch the boards then, right?
So, Brad, do you wanna read the first one?
- Yeah, this first one I like.
This guy was a 25 year old snowboarder,
had an accident injured shoulder.
They're talking about surgery,
and here it goes,
"It wasn't until two days before the surgery
"that I found this book and decided to cancel
"or postpone the surgery for the one last shot."
And then he found out,
he goes through a couple of paragraphs,
but the bottom line is it works.
He said he's just is in love with this book.
It changed his whole life
from not having surgery scheduled two days before
and having a complete heal,
complete rotator cuff rehab.
- So I love this one, "Very quickly got me back
"to the kind of life I thought I had lost forever."
This was a one-year update then,
"Still a freaking miracle."
(Brad laughs) And I like this,
"And this old lady will arm wrestle all naysayers.
"If you aren't already hanging,
"but are taking the time to read this review,
"just buy the book."
And she goes on and on, but I mean...
- Right.
And this is not an expensive book
- Oh no. - $10 or $15 or something.
I got another one.
This is a 73 year old gentleman.
He said he found the book to be engaging, practical,
and clinically scientific.
He had a CT scan,
found problems with his rotator cuff.
I'm not getting into all the details,
but he started hanging, and after five months,
he found consistent and steady progress.
And he's much more and back to normal activity
without near the shoulder pain he was.
He highly had advocates this.
- All right, I'll give another one,
"Total miracle for a non-believer.
"This book looks hokey, but just buy it.
"Knowing how well it works, this was worth a fortune to me."
It was other reviewers here and on YouTube
that convinced him to try it after 10 months of pain
and life limitations from a torn rotator cuff
and severely frozen shoulder.
So, I mean, like I said,
all of these people just couldn't say enough about it.
- They're just doing this,
because they wanna help other people.
- They wanna help other people.
Here's one from a therapist, actually,
"Thank you so much for your amazing book
"and research on shoulder pain.
"I began using your hanging technique
"with great success in my physical therapy practice."
So, you got anything more, Brad, that you wanna add?
- Well, I didn't know if he wanted to keep on-
- Yeah, there's a lot.
- Yes.
I mean, we got one from a CrossFit coach,
weightlifter, trainer, lifetime athlete.
He
corrected his.
The book has,
I don't know, how many testimonials in itself too.
It not a really big book.
I mean, it's a relatively quick read,
and he has it written for the lay-person.
- Yeah, and lot of it is repetitive, but he also goes
into some strengthening exercises that you can add in too.
So we're gonna go ahead and show you.
Well, let's talk about what he recommends first, Brad,
and then we'll show you on our hanging handles
how we do it. - Sure, you bet.
- But, basically, he recommends you start off,
he said t's really not specifically
a right way and wrong way.
You're gonna experiment how long
and how often you're gonna experiment.
I saw one guy, he had good success.
He hung on his twice a day for 35 seconds.
That's all he did.
So he had great success.
It seems like sometimes the beefier guys
have to hang longer, 'cause their bones are thicker.
You know what I mean?
- And those ligaments takes more time,
and the muscles probably take time to relax
and stretch, et cetera.
- But he recommends 10 seconds to start
with a 60 second rest.
Your palms are forward.
And then you can have partial weight or full weight.
You don't have to hang completely.
You can still have your feet on the ground.
He said remove jewelry.
You can use gloves.
I use a golfing glove to do my pull-ups
on both hands.
- To protect your wrists?
- It's just easier.
You grip so much better.
There are what we call lifting hooks.
I didn't like them.
Mike, did you like them?
No, Mike didn't like them either.
- They go around your wrist, Velcro around your wrist,
and then you actually don't even have to use your hand
to grip at all there.
- If you have really bad arthritic fingers,
it's possible you may wanna try.
You have to order weightlifting hooks, they're called.
But again, I didn't like them.
Let's see.
My experience, again, initial pain and discomfort.
He said his experience is that most experience
a little bit of pain and discomfort right away,
but it tends to diminish after a few moments.
- Or maybe the second or third day,
I've seen some people report that,
but, boy, I just had a comment this morning or last night.
Reading the comments and someone who was just so thankful.
And they said they started it,
and within the first day they noticed changes,
positive changes, and they're continuing on it.
- Dr. Kirsch says it will not damage your shoulder
or further damage a rotator cuff tear.
I have to agree what he says,
because I have not seen it so far
that it causes any problems.
- And if you're a therapist and you wanna know the details
of the mechanics of it, he does go through that in the book,
and he talks about it.
'Cause when I thought that,
"Well that's just gonna chew up the supraspinatus tendon."
And then he explained why it doesn't do it.
It makes sense. - It clears.
- It really does.
- So eventually, you wanna get up
to maybe 10 to 30 second hangs.
You can do it as long as over a 10, 15 minute period.
I don't think people gotta go that long, Brad, do you?
- Well, I go 20 seconds, maybe 30,
but my shoulders are tight,
but I don't have any particular problems.
The one guy in the book, I remember-
- Yeah, one guy had trouble.
- Well, no, I'm talking about there's a gentleman
he talked about.
It wasn't the most recent edition.
And he had the hooks.
And he reported he'd hang up the five minutes,
which is an extreme.
- Yeah, that's an extreme.
- But it felt good.
I mean, he wasn't experiencing pain.
His grip was not strong enough,
so the hooks around the wrist were good,
and it works great for him.
- Yeah, I just know he mentioned also
a weightlifter, former weightlifter, that was huge,
and his bones were so big and thick
and the ligaments were so thick
that he had to hang a lot longer too, because of that.
So we're gonna show you an alternative here for hanging.
We got hanging handles that Brad and I actually invented.
We think it's great for posture.
We think it's good for your back.
- Decompression and traction. - Decompress your back.
But these are great if you don't have a lot of room,
you don't have room for a pull-up bar
if you have a couple of studs you can put these into.
- Yeah, they're behind the drywall.
- Yeah, so we'll end the podcast now.
Glad to see you.
Glad to have you follow us.
And for those of you on video,
we'll show you the hanging handles.
- There you go.
All right, walk this way.
With our kit we have,
you get a wall anchor.
We've got one down here.
This is for banding.
You'll mount them up here.
You have to have a wall that has wooden studs.
two by fours, two by sixes, whatever it may be,
and that's the way it's designed.
You have to have that.
You need to find the stud.
And we have a video as well instructions with the kit
on how to properly put them in.
We're not gonna go through that.
So we have them installed here, two of them here.
We have a third one over here.
I would probably move this over here
if I was hanging here a lot.
Bob likes his closer together,
because it feels better on his shoulders.
Again, palms away from the wall and you simply grab it.
And we mentioned that you may not start hanging
with 100% of your weight off of your feet.
You can see I'm sliding down, and I've got maybe 50%.
And you may start there the first day you do it,
15 to 20, 30 seconds, or even start at 10.
It really depends on how your shoulders feel.
If it's like 10 seconds, and it's starting to hurt,
then give it a little break,
and then give it 30 seconds or a minute,
and then go back and hang for another 10 seconds.
Like I said, I go for about 20 seconds.
I keep my feet here.
I'm not 100% weight bearing.
Mine's a maintenance program.
And I just hang.
And I'll do this when I'm doing my exercises.
- Brad, I'm gonna show another variation of that.
You can actually have your body facing the wall like this.
Actually, you go like this.
It's just a little bit different.
Like if you can't get your shoulders all the way up there,
you can start like this.
And I think that's one of the advantages
of using our system on the wall.
You have the wall.
When I was doing it, offers posture, decompression.
This doesn't do the posture benefits,
but it does change the stress on the shoulder
and the back too.
- And you can even do one arm hanging like this,
or even go like this,
just get a little more stress on the arm there.
- Again, you're gonna experiment
with these different variations, and you'll know,
'cause your shoulders will clearly feel better
one way or another,
or you might wanna just break it up from week to week.
- And make sure, whatever happens, either way,
let us know, 'cause we like to hear negatives too,
because that's how we get feedback and that's how we learn.
- Yep, and we can improve our products as such.
- So, thanks a lot for watching.