♪ 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.
- Today, we're going to show you
how to get flexible hamstrings without stretching.
Do this, it's very simple.
- Okay, Bob, I'm curious to see
what kinda trick you got up your sleeve.
- It's like my brain, very simple.
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- That's right, Bob. - We'll give away a couple.
- It's a beaut, and we're gonna show how to use it
in this video, right?
- A little bit. - Little bit, yeah.
- 'Cause we're not doing stretching in this video.
- Right.
- We're gonna use them for testing.
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- [Both] And the podcasts...
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- All right, let's go to work Brad.
- Okay.
- Okay, so muscles are attached to bones by tendons.
And muscles contract by moving the bones,
and pulling on them.
And then the muscles contract, and they shorten up.
Now muscles can't push, they only pull.
- Where are you going
with this, Bob? - I don't know.
Let me get to, I'll make a point here.
So.
You have to, when one muscle is working,
the muscle on the opposite side is relaxing.
- So that's, the opposite muscle would be the antagonist.
- Right, we have agonist and the antagonist.
And the way to remember this, is the muscle that's working.
- Yes. - Is in agony.
- Oh, that's what I needed to know!
'Cause I always, and then the other one, aunt.
So, it's like your aunt is, you maybe have a aunt.
- Aunt is relaxing?
I don't know.
- Aunt Jemima, or aunt...
Some kind of, if you have an aunt out there.
- Sure.
- So this is the, so the quadricep would be the-
- I think the biceps are a good way to show this, Brad.
So if you, I'm gonna use this bicep.
It shortens up the muscle, shortens up.
Lifts up the arm. - Yep.
- Meanwhile, the tricep, the opposite muscle, has to relax.
'Cause if it doesn't relax, I can't pull up.
- They're fighting each other.
- They're fighting each other, right.
So if we can get the muscles on this side
to work,
and the other muscle, the hamstring,
is then gonna fully relax.
And you could get more motion out of it.
- And that happens to be an automatic response
to the nervous system. - Yes.
- You know, unless you happen to have a health problem
with your nervous system.
So if you're healthy, which you know,
we're gonna assume you are with this.
- Sometimes like, when you're in pain, you have spasms.
That's muscles working, both working at the same time.
- Against each other.
- Against each other, right. - That's a problem.
- So in our case, again.
You know, where you wanna strengthen the quads.
And also strengthen, maybe, the hip flexors,
and that'll relax the hip extensors and the hamstrings.
- So, when they're relaxed,
they're gonna elongate much easier
without you having to think about it.
- So the first thing we like to do,
is we like to see if you're making any gains.
So, we're going to test it.
- Sure, let's-
- So, I'm gonna lie down.
And I'm gonna do the 90-90 test.
Now there's two ways, Brad, you can do this.
One, you can flatten your back like this.
- Sure.
- And then bring the leg up to 90 degrees.
- So, the hip is at 90 degrees?
- Yep. - Yep.
- You can even hold this. - Yep.
- And then you see how straight your leg goes.
- So if the knee goes completely straight,
that's pretty darn good.
You probably won't- - What am I lacking?
- You probably don't need to stretch your hamstrings,
if you can straighten your knee out at a 90 degree-
- What am I lacking, Brad?
Maybe? - What are you lacking?
You mean a- - 10, 20 degrees?
- Yeah, I would say 22 and a half degrees.
It's about 20.
- Now you could bring both legs up, Brad, and go like this.
This stabilizes the back automatically, then.
- Oh, so you get the back down?
- Yeah, it makes the back go down.
You can't bring it up.
- I think the big thing is,
is that you do it consistently when you test.
And then the next time after you do the stretch,
to see if it's got better.
- Some of you will have trouble with this.
So that's where you can use a roll towel,
or roll sheet, or the stretch out strap.
And these are nice, because they've got loops in there,
and I can put my hands in there,
and I can hold it in place.
And now, I'm gonna flatten my back.
My back is flattened. - Yep.
- I'm pushing the arch down to the bed.
- If I put my hand under there, you'd be squeezing it.
- So now, I can test it that way too.
- So now, this leg is flat.
We want to get that pelvis- - The back is flat.
- So you know, if I was in the clinic,
I'd have my goniometer,
I could measure that accurately.
- Well, you could see.
You can kinda see what you're doing.
So I'm going to start by doing these,
and you're gonna actually gonna work it like this,
without any weight.
So now, I'm working the quad.
I'm kinda working the hip flexor, too.
And I'm
making the hamstring relax fully,
because I'm working the quad.
- Right.
- Does that make sense to you, Brad?
- Yeah. - Okay.
Now, let's say we wanna take it to the next level.
- Matter of fact,
I learned this whole concept in school 25 years ago.
And I still remember it.
- I'm surprised.
I thought it was longer than 25 years, but-
- It might be.
- For me it was 35. - Could be 30.
- 36 years.
- No, I graduated when my daughter was born.
So that was 24, 25.
- Okay.
Yeah, Brad went back to school later in life.
Very impressive, by the way.
- Yeah, and I had a child later in life, too.
Compared to a lot of people. - That's true.
Okay, so again, I'm working on my quads.
And now I have an ankle weight on here,
making it even a little bit more,
like, get my a little more agony to the agonist.
- Yup, and then the antagonist is gonna relax even more.
- Right.
So, you're not thinking about stretching this.
You're thinking about straightening the knee.
- Right, exactly.
Straighten the knee as much as possible,
make the quadricep work.
- And inherently, the hamstring is stretching without you
even have to think about it. - Well, let's find out.
Let's see if this little bit helped, Brad.
And I'm doing this totally spontaneous.
I have no idea if it helped it or not, it maybe did.
But take a look, Brad.
What do you think? - Oh yeah.
- Oh yeah! - Yes!
- You went from a 22 and a half, to a 22!
- I'm almost straight, right?
- No, it is better.
But- - Yeah.
- You're not pulling harder?
- No! - No!
- No, it's just a lot easier.
So, another option.
We're gonna show this,
because we just received this from Ben Patrick.
He's the "Knees Over Toe" guy. - Sure.
- Really nice of him to send us one of these.
This is the ankle foot, or what is it called?
Oh, monkey foot.
- Yeah, yeah.
It's a device. - Ankle foot.
Monkey foot.
- [Brad] It's a device.
- [Bob] And you can,
for those of you who are a lot stronger than we are,
you can actually put a heavy dumbbell on there.
- [Brad] Right.
- We have a light dumbbell on there, right now.
- Well I could, I could put a heavier one on there,
but we don't have one that fits.
I could get a 50 pounder- - All right.
So Brad's going to show how well this works,
and it kind of binds like a...
Like you said a ski boot, right?
- Yeah.
It's a nice, you know, it's a well-built device.
It's got a nice ratchet mechanism to tighten it on,
and it holds the weight on very well.
You know, it takes a little practice to get that on and off,
but once you do it a few times,
you should be able to do a quickly.
- [Bob] This is just one use for it.
It actually has a lot of different uses.
You can work at the hip flexors.
You can...
- So you know, we could flatten my back, tighten...
You get some core work out of this, too.
- [Bob] Sure.
- So here, I'm working the quads and the hip flexors,
and we're gonna stretch.
The nice thing I like about this,
is when you get up to here,
the weight, when you get past this point.
- [Bob] It helps you.
- Yep, you even get some stretch without thinking about it.
- [Bob] Get some assistance.
- Or if I do it like Bob was doing it,
and I flatten here and work just the quadriceps.
Well, the hip flexors are still inherently...
You know, stabilizing and working.
- [Bob] Oh, Bran has more flexibility than I do,
on your hamstrings.
Comes from your kicking days, right Brad?
- Yeah, when I did Karate,
I stretched hamstrings for 17 years, pretty aggressively.
But you know, I've tightened up a little since then.
- But Brad- - Yeah, a little better.
Oh yeah, that feels good.
- [Bob] You could kick the hell off
of somebody before, right?
- Well Bob, we don't want to talk about those days. (laughs)
No, we did.
That was a kind of a goal,
to kick someone head level without touching them.
- Sure. - Naturally.
But yeah, it is a nice way to stretch the hamstring.
- Well it's not really a stretch, it's a strengthen.
But it works-
- Oh, that's right, we gotta be-
- It's a great way.
Brad, I did that a few times.
It was so easy, and yet I gained like 15 degrees.
- It's a sneaky way to stretch the hamstrings.
- Yes, it is. - You know.
- By the way,
Brad and I can fix just about anything.
- Except for- - A broken heart.
- But we're working on that, aren't we bob?
You know, Bob, I do wanna say something.
We had comments on your T-shirt,
and I don't think everyone gets it.
You know, it starts out with a ape and the poor posture,
then the evolution man started being upright.
But then when the computer came along-
- It went back down again.
- The computer caused everyone,
and their cellphone causes everything,
that posture to round over- - So, read the words.
- "Something, somewhere, went terribly wrong".
So, the computer. - Yeah.
It started off, we started off good.
We went to upright, and then also we went back down to-
- Slouched over. - Slouched over.
- To hunchback.
Yeah, all these things.
So yeah, and we continue to work on that as well.
- Yeah and you know,
if you don't believe that we came from apes,
which that's fine.
We may not have, I don't know.
But we probably did come from people that were bent over.
- Yeah. - You know.
- We don't want to get into any...
Philosophical- - Evolutionary.
(Brad laughing)
- It's just funny to me, that's all.
- It's a physical therapy thing sometimes, I think.
And other people look at it as, whatever, I don't know.
- Yeah.
- Anyways, enjoy the day.
- Take care.