- Hi, I'm Bob Schrupp, physical therapist.
- Brad Heineck, physical therapist.
- Together, we are the most famous
physical therapists on the internet.
- Only in our opinion, of course, Bob.
- Okay. Today we're gonna talk about, Brad,
is how to get your knee straight
after you've had a total knee replacement.
- Sure.
- Now it's always, usually, one of two issues:
is trying to get it bent, which we did a video on already.
- Yep. - And how to get it straight.
So, we're gonna jump right in and do this,
but first of all, congratulations on having your knee done.
Most people are very happy with it after the,
it's all said and done aren't they?
- Right. The first week or two, and then
they're thinking about it.
- Yeah. All right. This is the knee involved.
The first one, and this is a very common one.
You're just gonna find another chair or a stool.
A chair might be too high.
You might wanna start off with a stool
and obviously you're gonna start off,
And generally it's, it, is at this bent angle here
Isn't it? - Yes. Yep.
- And I wanna make sure that you know that
you shouldn't be in a recliner.
In a recliner, you lean back like this
and there's not as much stress on the hamstring.
So you know how, when people do a stretch, Brad, they,
they lean forward like this and stretch the hamstring.
You're gonna want the same thing. So in,
in other words,
be in a straight back chair.
Don't be in a recliner.
put it up here and you're gonna let gravity do its thing.
I like to have, tell people,
to see if they could do this for five minutes,
three times a day. - Yeah.
- And I tell 'em, if it starts to hurt too much,
go ahead and give yourself a break.
- Sure. - Just bend it up
a little bit. - Yeah.
- Now, after a while, this gets to be too easy,
you can actually add some weight to it.
- Sure.
- And what we use, Brad and I, is called, and this is
something you can do at home, is the weighted pillow.
Brad, do you wanna show?
- You take a pillow.
And what we were tossing around before was just some cans.
I guess Bob likes his pear halves.
And, you don't have to have pear halves though.
You can use a can of anything,
pork and beans,
shrimp,
apple sauce,
- corn - corn.
And this happens to be Green Giant corn
but if you put a couple of 'em in there on each side.
It's gonna be like a saddle.
- And that's a lot.
You might wanna start with just two, you know,
one on each side.
- But you'll see
- You just put it right across
and that's adding a good four pounds of weight, I'm sure.
At least four pounds cuz there's two on each. Right?
- Well it depends how big the cans are. 12 pounds, 16.
- Sure. But, plus the pillow, but
- sure. - This puts
some stress on there. - Right.
- So, and again, with the, if this gets to be too much.
Just give yourself a break.
And go right back into it.
Now the goal for, here, for us, if your right knee,
or, your opposite knee, is in good shape and normal,
that should be all the way straight.
So you can see how far you are from your goal.
- Right.
- So you want to get this all the way down like that.
So that's where you're starting is where you want to end.
Alright. That's exercise number one.
Number two.
- Just put your leg back up there.
One thing I like to do with, with people is,
if their knee's getting real sore
and you're stretching it hard
and you want to give it a break,
just push it like that.
And, and that can really take a lot of
stress off its more comfortable.
- That's another one that they could,
you could maybe finish up that way.
- Right. Put your cold pack on.
- Yep.
- That's where you're comfortable.
- And Brad was saying that, by the way, earlier
when we were talking is that
even the cold pack will add weight to it too.
And it's a good time to do that. So.
Alright, Brad,
do you wanna do the one where you lay, uh, supine
and put your foot up on here?
- Supine.
- Ah, laying on his back.
- Okay.
- Or sitting. If you can sit long, sit too in that position.
- I'm gonna, I'm gonna lay down.
I think I get some of these cold, these vegetables on here.
Those are cold, Bob, you must have had 'em in the car.
- I did.
We're in Minnesota and it is cold today.
It's cold November.
[Bob] It's cold-vember.
- Alright, here we go. So,
laying down or sitting,
here's the knee that was done.
Well, I'm actually gonna do this knee.
If you had your right knee done,
you're gonna go up,
and this is what you don't want to do.
It's gonna feel comfortable,
but it's not gonna do anything to take the, the,
the bend outta your knee and get it straight.
You're gonna have to slide that towel roll down.
- Remember, all we did here is take, you can take a
a beach towel, or a couple beach towels and roll them up
and actually they can be bigger than this, if you want.
- Yeah.
Oh. I even feel a stretch on there now
and we're gonna stretch there
and I can feel my hamstring stretch a little bit there.
If you would lay down,
then the hamstring stretch will not be there,
but you will still get stretch on the knee joint itself.
- [Bob] And I, I would say the same thing on this.
You could shoot for five minutes, Brad?
- Yep.
- And the same thing on this,
you could put some weight on it.
- You better
- It's just another way of going at it.
If you're, if you're kind of stuck with one way
and it's not helping anymore,
you're gonna wanna try one of these other ones.
- Sure.
- That's what we do in the therapy clinic is
- Yep. - We just keep
For some reason, some work with, you know,
with some people, and others with others, so
- Okay. Yeah.
So yeah, just leave it on there. Five minutes.
Just take what you can.
Sometimes, you can vary it, go back to here,
give it a break for a minute.
Then go back to here for a few minutes and stretch it.
- All right with you in that position, Brad,
why don't you go ahead and flip over
and we'll go ahead and show the last one. The prone hang.
- Oh.
- [Bob] laying on your stomach
[Bob] and you're going put your feet off
[Bob] the edge of the bed.
- This one's pretty aggressive.
If you, if you're, uh, usually a younger person,
the I'll do this.
I won't do it on someone too old,
unless they're really active and uh,
pretty, pretty healthy in other respects.
But you're gonna lay like this.
- [Bob] So I actually even have them sometimes
lay with the knee on.
- Do you? - to start off with yeah
- I guess it all depends on how comfortable it is.
- Yeah. If you're, that's really aggressive to have it off.
I mean, but yeah,
this is you gonna let gravity now pull it down.
And, of course, this is another one where you can actually
put some weights on there and, and make it go further.
- That's yeah, but be careful.
That's pretty, you know, if it hurts a lot
don't put any more weight on it.
It can be aggressive.
I had one person I did this with and it got 'em real sore.
So we never went back to it
- [Bob] Yeah I've had, I've had people that it worked with
and I've had people that it was too aggressive.
Here's a ankle weight.
This is just two pounds, but it,
I'm gonna put that on there
and you're gonna keep the leg straight.
Somebody else can grab it.
- Yeah. - [Bob] Okay.
And you're gonna let it stretch out.
- So you know, if it starts up here and,
and again on this,
five minutes is gonna seem like a pretty long time.
- Yeah, it might be too long.
You can give yourself a break on this one by bringing it up.
Can't you Brad? or bringing the other one over
- Over and give it a break.
I'll give it a break and then go back down.
And again like this one,
the other one you could compare
this foot, the good leg here to this one.
You want to get so they're even right.
How are you gonna get there?
You may not.
You may get pretty close and this might be adequate.
- [Bob] And that may be good enough. Yeah.
Alright. That's it, Brad.
- Yeah. Fixing knees.
700,000 total knees done in the United States
last year was it? We looked that up once
- 745,332 (Brad chuckles)
- Quite a few of them.
- Alright.
- Take care. - Take care.