♪ Bob and Brad ♪
♪ the two most famous ♪
♪ physical therapists ♪
♪ on the internet ♪
- Hi, I'm Bob Schrupp, physical therapist,
- Brad Heineck, physical therapist.
- And together, we are the most famous physical therapists
on the internet.
- In our opinion, of course, Bob.
- Brad, you're taking the reins today.
- Well, yeah, we wanna go over three,
top three medically proven exercises
to help a herniated disc and/or pinched nerve.
'Cause sometimes that nerve can be pinched,
that pain going on down the leg can be from that disc,
or it can be from -
- Further down. - piriform.
- From piriform. - Yes, piriformis muscle.
So these are gonna cover all three of 'em.
So you're gonna try all three of 'em
and you're gonna do the one that gives the best results.
That sounds good because I think a lot of times
people do have,
a piriformis is a muscle in your butt basically.
And it goes over the nerve.
- Right.
- And sometimes people think it's coming
from their herniated disc,
they might even have a herniated disc,
but it's actually
coming from the butt. - Right.
All right, let's get to
the exercises, Bob. - All right.
- Bob, can you hold this? - Sure.
You want me to do the exercise or no?
- No, I've already had it in my mind,
- Okay. - I pictured myself doing 'em.
I wanna do the figure four first, which is pretty simple.
You just take your right ankle, put it on your left knee.
It's gonna look like this from this angle.
And you can do this on bed.
- So you're making the four here?
- Right. Yep.
And if you wanna stretch your hip
a little bit here, you can.
But the primary part of the stretch
is you're gonna bring this knee up, okay?
And you feel that stretch right down in there, okay?
Now the nice thing about this exercise,
you can do it in two different ways.
I would start here, see what the results are.
And you're gonna feel these results pretty quick,
it should feel good while you're doing it.
- Yeah, if it makes it worse or it spreads the pain out?
- Yeah.
- It's done. - It's done.
- Check it off. It's not for you.
You can also do it in a seated position.
Make sure you have good posture here and you push here.
This is gonna vary.
I would start there,
you can try it this way and see how it results, okay?
Again, you should feel the symptom relief
while you're doing it and very quickly,
and it should feel good after you're done.
You get up, you walk around,
you should have positive results, feeling better.
If not, check it off.
- Just as verification here, Brad.
So, if the pain's going down the right leg
that's the one you cross over?
- Right.
- So you wanna lay down one real quick?
- Sure.
- So, if it's right leg, you're gonna go like that.
- Right.
- If it's left leg, you're gonna go like that.
- Good point, Bob. - And then you're gonna
pull up.
Then you're pulling up
like that, yeah? - Yes.
- Okay. - Yep.
Excellent point, Bob.
- All right. - This is why he's along,
'cause otherwise I miss - - once in a while -
- major points like this. - I come in handy.
The next one is just on your stomach.
Now you can't do this one on the bed,
you really should do it on a carpeted floor
so it's comfortable.
Hands here and a simple press up like this,
and down. - Now what he's doing here
is he's keeping his pelvis down.
He's not lifting this up like a board, right?
He's trying to make an arch in the back here.
That's really key.
And again, if it starts to hurt when you go way up,
just go into the pain-free zone.
- Yep.
- Stay down in the lower end here.
- Now on this one, if you're having pain down your leg,
but the first one, it might be uncomfortable,
you do a few more,
and if it starts to improve with each repetition,
you keep going.
10 is usually the max you do at one time.
You can maybe go up to 15
if you're getting really positive results
or feeling really good.
- And by positive, what he means is that quite often
if the pain's going all the way down the leg,
it might start coming up the leg a little bit.
It won't go as far.
- Right.
- With all these issues, the further the pain spreads out
the worse it's getting.
- Right.
- If your pain is right up in here in the back,
if you can get it back up into the back and staying there,
even if it's a little worse,
that's better than leg pain going down.
- Right.
- Or numbness or tingling going down.
- If you're starting this
and you have no symptoms or pain down your leg,
then you're gonna look at the back pain
and the back pain should feel better or feel like it's going
into a smaller spot. - Shrinking up, yeah.
- Okay. And number three and final one.
Can I see that? - Yeah.
Bob's ball. - Bob's not hanging onto this
just for the fun of it,
he's put to useful work
managing the tennis ball so we didn't lose it.
This one, you're gonna lay down, legs flat.
Again, the figure four, but in a flat position.
- [Bob] Sure. - Just like that.
Then begin.
Right leg is gonna be the one with the
symptoms of pain. - [Bob] Okay.
- And you can do a little hip stretch here
and see how that goes.
But the primary part is you get a tennis ball
and you're gonna put it,
now where you put it, you're gonna have to figure out.
I mean, I know where the piriformis muscle is
and I can get to it pretty quickly.
But if you're not familiar with the anatomy that well,
you're gonna have to find.
Usually, on this it's gonna hurt a little bit.
- [Bob] Right. Little bit of a tender spot.
- Right.
But you're just gonna leave it on there for about,
after 30 seconds or so the pain should decrease notably
and you say, oh, I feel quite a bit better.
And then if that symptom's gone away,
go along with it and they go away.
You know, your goal,
you wanna keep looking at. - This is actually
an interesting technique, Brad.
I never seen this one before.
I actually will have to try this with some of my patients.
- Sure. Yeah.
- I can see how it would work.
- Yeah.
And you can move that tennis ball from site to site.
You might try it four or five different locations
and just monitor it.
Again, 30 seconds or so roughly,
and you should start to feel positive results.
And when you get done and you get up and walk around again,
if you're pain's outta five
or down to your knee or your ankle,
if it's up to your buttock area
and it's abolished that leg pain,
you know your goal,
to continue to do that - - Right.
- At least three times a day.
- At least. You could do it even more.
- Yep.
- I mean, and again, we emphasize again,
this should make things better.
- You're right. - If it makes things worse,
you stop immediately. - Yep. Yep.
- This is not... - You just scratch it off.
- And remember Brad, we can fix just about anything.
- Exactly. What can't we fix?
- A broken heart. - Oh, that's right.
The broken heart.
Well, we don't
have it in here. We don't have a heart.
He doesn't even have a heart anymore.
- Well, we're working on that
'cause I'm gonna do some self study
and then I'm gonna read some books
and then talk to my wife about it a little bit
and we'll get it figured out.
- You probably have his heart in your lab don't you?
- Yeah. Oh yeah. - In your workshop.
All right. Thanks for watching.