♪ Bob and Brad ♪
♪ The two most famous ♪
♪ Physical therapists on the internet ♪
- Hi folks, I'm Bob Schrupp, physical therapist.
- Brad Heineck, physical therapists.
- Together we are the most famous physical therapists
on the internet.
- In our opinion, of course Bob.
- Today we wanna show you how to use a TENS unit
with quadricep strain or tendonitis.
We're also gonna show you
basically correct pad placement.
At the end of the video,
we're also gonna show you a quick treatment--
- Wow. - That you can do
along with the TENS--
- At home. - Not while the TENS is on.
But after the TENS has been on,
a lot of times, there's a afterglow,
could you say of using TENS,
that you get the effect stays on longer?
- Yep, it residual.
It continues to maintain-- - Keep the pain down.
- Exactly.
- So we are not actually gonna show you
how to use a TENS unit per se.
Brad and I have seen or experienced dozens
of TENS units and all the ones on the market
seem to be pretty good to be honest with you.
- Right. - Pretty surprising.
They're strong enough and they're compact.
Some of them, the instructions aren't that great.
And so what we decided, we did decide,
We're gonna endorse one brand.
We're gonna endorse the iReliev brand.
Because they are FDA approved.
They're compact.
They're powerful.
They're well-priced we thought.
They got a price range
and they have really good instructions.
- Right - So good website,
good customer service.
- Yeah.
- So what we did is we actually did step by step
instructions of three of their models, the 1313,
which is their lower end model,
all the way up to their 5050,
which is their high end model.
And there's also the 8080,
which is a nice mid-range of model that we kinda like.
- Right.
- So what you wanna do is just go to bobandbrad.com,
our website, go to the program section
and under the program section, find the TENS section.
- T-E-N-S - We to got whole bunch
of videos on TENS.
And under those TENS you'll find instructions
for the 1313, the 5050, and the 8080.
- So there's all these videos,
you find the one you want click on it, read it
or watch it and then we give you,
and you don't have to give your email or anything--
- Right. - You can print that PDF out
with a summary of the whole video
so that you can use it for reference later on.
That way you don't have to keep going back and forth
to your computer.
It's a gem of a deal. - Yeah, it's a gem of a deal
because it's all free, like Brad said so.
So, what we're gonna show you today
is where to place the pads for a quadricep problem.
Now, this is always an experiment
'cause, you know, you're gonna try different pad placement,
we're gonna give you some guidelines,
but whatever, you gotta find out what works for you.
- Right, it's not hard though.
- It's not hard, no-- - Actually it works well.
- And we're going a little backwards today
because today we're gonna start off with four pads
and Brad's gonna show you some variations of that.
- Right.
So with your pads, there's gonna be a plastic sheet
like this, and the pads will be stuck on there.
As you can see, I've got them on my leg right now.
They're yellow and green,
but that's not how they'll come.
That is just for this video.
We put that on there.
- We put tape on there.
- They'll come either all black or all white,
but the yellow ones, you can see,
well maybe you can't see on there,
but that's channel one.
So that's one wire and on the unit,
it'll say channel one.
That's the controls for that.
And then channel two are the green ones.
And the red mark on my leg is not a problem
with my skin (laughs). - It Looks like a
disease or something.
- (laughs) I know, that just represents,
et's say I tore my quadriceps and that's where I tore it.
That's where that pain is.
If I push on there, it's really tender.
I put arrows on here because this is not just tender here,
but it's radiating out.
It's like, man, my whole quadricep's painful.
So if you use four pads,
you're gonna get a larger area of pain management
and control and make it feel better.
Now how you put it on is the important part,
and that's the big part of this video.
You'll see I have, this is the center of the pain,
but It radiates out here.
I'm putting channel one,
I'm gonna disconnect these wires,
just cause it's a little easier to show you.
But of course, obviously you're not gonna run it
without the wires connected.
So channel one, I put here and here,
Channel two here and here.
Now keep in mind with TENS,
it's a small amount of electrical current
that passes through channel one.
It goes from one pad to the other.
So there's current running through here
and then there's current running through here.
So it makes a crisscross.
And it's gonna give you pain relief.
I just had this on about five minutes ago.
- Sure. - It really works well.
I could feel the whole-- - Covering the whole area.
- Yeah, it was just giving a nice sensation.
So you can put it on this way.
If that doesn't seem well,
one more point, really important,
particularly you can see with me, I got this hair.
- Sure. - If you happen
to have a lot of hair on your legs,
you're gonna wanna shave it
because it's uncomfortable to tear it off.
The hair sticks to the pads
and then they don't stick as well,
and they don't conduct the current as well,
so it's not as effective. - And in addition to that,
you may wanna use soap and water prior to--
- Exactly. - Using the electrodes.
Because again, it gets the oil of your skin off.
- Yeah, it say, wash that quad good with soap and water.
- And again, the oil of your skin can interfere
with the stickiness of the pads.
They'll last longer if you get rid of that.
- Exactly.
So we hook it up after you clean your skin,
you know, shaved, clean your skin,
hook it up, just like this, turn it on.
Or you'll turn channel one on
then channel two and ramp it up till it feels good.
If for some reason it doesn't feel right.
It's like, I don't know,
it's helping, but it's not right.
Then use the other options.
You can rotate.
I'm just gonna take everything and rotate 90 degrees.
I'm gonna put,
we're gonna go here--
- Right there, yeah.
- Actually, is it 90 degrees or am I going 45?
- I think that's 45. - Actually that's 45.
- Oh, this feels good!
Ah, toughen up on it.
There we go.
That's the hair coming out of my skin.
- You sure you won't have to shave?
- That's right, yeah, just do this enough.
There we go.
- There you go, so now it forms a cross instead of an X.
- Yeah. - So basically the same thing
just turned a little bit.
- Yeah, if you got a mechanical
or engineering kind of mind,
you can say it's a difference.
You just rotated 45 degrees.
- Right. - Which it is.
But this may feel different than before.
And it's gonna give you a better response.
- And the muscles might not contract
contract as much-- - Right.
- One way or the other,
and it might feel a little more comfortable.
So that's not necessarily the case that it's not helpful.
Let's talk about a smaller area Brad.
- Sure. - Let's say,
like an area right here.
Let's say you have tendonitis.
That's where my quad hurt
when I was having problems like right above the knee cap.
- Right, Where the muscle goes to the tendon--
- Yeah. - That interface, right there
is very common.
So let's say this is not the painful spot.
- So you have a small area. So we're gonna use two pads.
- Ohh, there is my painful spot,
right above the knee cap!
Ooh, I'm gonna go right on top of it.
- Sure, and that's one option.
- And we're only gonna use,
and this is a real specific spot.
- Sure. - We're just gonna use two,
one channel or two pads, channel one in this case.
One thing for sure, as Bob says,
it's gonna experiment on where the pad placement
with the exception of you never want the pads
touching or too close.
You want to have the distance--
- A pad's width.
- Of a pad's width apart.
I mean, you can vary a little bit,
but that's the general rule.
And I could go here.
I could move this over here.
I could put it over here.
And you know, you could actually go below the kneecap.
- Sure. - But depend, you know,
you may have pain radiating that way and it might be--
- I probably wouldn't go on the bone itself--
- Right-- - Probably below the bone.
- Right there on that tendon.
And you know, you could go anywhere you would like.
You can also gap or bridge I should say, the point of pain.
In other words, one on this side
and one on this side.
Now you'll find that this is over my VMO muscle.
It's gonna make that muscle wanna contract.
And if that's bothering you,
you may wanna switch that and move it here or here,
bridging that painful area.
And that's what Bob was referring to.
It's an experiment.
- Yep. - If you're gonna put it here,
it might be a problem if you're active,
because that skin is gonna move with the motion,
which can interfere with
conductivity of that pad and that kinda
can give some problems sometimes.
- Yeah, the nice thing about TENS is, you know,
you can hook it up and if you put under, your pants over it,
nobody even knows you have it on.
- Right. - And you can have it on
for an hour or so.
- Yap. - And you can get relief
for that entire time.
- Right.
- And these always enhance blood flow too.
- Sure. - It help some healing.
- Yap.
There's that one therapist you had mentioned.
I have never read anything on him,
but he's out East I believe in he treats a vast majority
of patients with TENS unit.
- Yeah.
- And I mean, so-- - It's interesting.
- that's not typical.
But you know, it's a--
- I think he's retired now.
Was it Kuhn or something (mumbles)?
I don't know his name, sorry.
All right, so we're at the end of this video,
we recommended that we're gonna,
we said that we're gonna show you a recommended treatment.
One of the treatments for a quadricep problem like this
is cross fiber massage.
Now you can do it yourself with your own fingers and hands,
or maybe even take your knuckles
and going across the fibers in the muscles.
The muscles run this way and you can work it this way.
But to be honest with you, it's very difficult.
And I would recommend probably using some type of machine.
We would really like the massage guns.
Theragun makes a nice massage gun.
They got quite a variety of them.
- Yap. - This is one
that's actually adjustable.
The head is adjustable on there.
But it's got great power and it's got great
we you like to call it translation Brad, where it really--
- Travel!
- Travel.
It really percusses well.
So I'm gonna go ahead turn it on here.
It's got four levels.
It really gets in there.
So this is so much easier.
You wanna have the quad nice and relaxed
and you can work across the fibers this way.
- When you have a large mass muscle group,
like the quadriceps
that's when it's gonna work a little better.
I mean, Bob says you can do with your hands
and go ahead, and that'll work,
but your hands are gonna get tired--
- Yeah fatigue very rapidly.
- Right, and that's fine.
I mean, I've done it like that many times.
- Yeah. - And then I've used this
and it's like, well, this is really nice.
- Right. - And if you are
a active person, you can use this all over your body,
not all over but your quads, your hamstrings,
your calf muscles, our shoulders, pecs.
- Especially the heavier muscles, and it comes with,
actually a lot of different attachments.
And you know what, I haven't opened this today.
I'll bet you I'm gonna open it up,
the attachments won't be in there.
- I suppose you're gonna blame it on your wife, aren't you?
- Yeah (laughs).
- But here you can see that the translation--
- Well there's a couple in here anyway.
This one's more for a point.
- Yeah.
- Getting, another ball.
And here's one that can actually work
along the spine and stuff like that.
So it's work in different areas, right?
- Yeah, that's what they say about it
but I don't think.
(mumbling)
This, if you are down by the kneecap,
you're not gonna want to go on your knee cap with this,
but you can go horizontally and get a really nice cross
friction massage just above the knee cap.
- No, I'm gonna disagree with you a little bit, Brad here.
I had this problem.
- Yeah. - Qadricep tendonitis.
I used the ball-- - Yeah.
- And I went along the edge of the knee cap
and that baby just felt so good.
- Sure. - It took away my problem.
I had quadricep tendonitis.
It took it down to 90% away.
- But you're on the edge not on the kneecap.
- On the edge, just on the edge.
But that was uprising-- - That was absolutely good.
- It kinda felt so good, hurt so good.
- Well, that's the thing when you're using this,
it shouldn't create pain and make it worse.
It should feel like either hurts so good
and when you're done, it feels really good.
Like you did the right thing,
so don't get too aggressive with it right away.
- All right, thanks for watching.
(bright upbeat music)