♪Bob and Brad ♪
♪ The two most famous ♪
♪ physical therapists ♪
♪ on the internet ♪
- Breaker breaker.
- Hi folks. I'm Bob Schrupp, physical therapist.
- Brad Heineck, physical therapist.
- Together we are the most famous physical therapists
on the internet.
- Well, in our opinion, of course, Bob.
- This is part of our,
kind of doing a series of videos on this Brad.
Way better than stretching.
And this is for mid back pain or problems.
- Kind of between the shoulder blades?
- Yeah, there we go.
- Look at that. We lost a ball.
- Yeah. By the way, if you're new to our channel,
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I though you were getting the Booyah stick.
- The Booyah stick! - Yeah.
- Well you keep going, I'll grab it.
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Who is the, uh?
- Sarah Meeks.
- Sarah Meeks is on.
- Oh no. - Kelly Starrett?
- Yeah, Kelly Starrett, we'll talk about him today.
- And the back pain gentlemen?
- Right. Right.
- What's his name? - McGill.
- McGill! Dr. Stuart McGill. Booyah stick!
That's what the giveaway is, only one but, you know,
you could get two if you wanted.
Anyways, let's carry on.
- All right, what's nice about this
is you can pretty much do these without spending money.
- Yeah.
- You just have to steal balls from people.
- (chuckles) If you just go to the park, a lot of times
you can get, you know, ones that kids forgot.
- Sure, sure. (chuckles)
Anyway, so we had Kelly Starrett on,
he's the author of the bestseller, "The Supple Leopard."
And there's a lot about mobilization in there.
And that's what we're talking about here
is that stretching is fine, but mobilization is better.
Mobilization is better.
- Mobilizing what?
- Mobilizing the tissues that we want to mobilize.
- So not joints? We're talking muscle, soft tissue.
- Yeah, a little bit in the joints.
- Okay.
- Like for example, today, we're concerned
about this area here, that the rib cage is attached to.
So from here all the way down to here.
- Lemme get this nerve out of the way.
- And because the rib cage is there,
it makes this very stiff and difficult to stretch.
- Mm, 'cause there is joints here,
quite a few joints at each level with the ribs.
- So we apply pressure directly to these areas
through focus pressure, like through a ball.
And that helps loosen those areas up.
- Sure.
- And it does a lot better job than just regular stretching.
- Right.
- So I don't know if this pertains to this as much, Brad,
but Kelly gives the example of
when you're stretching a rubber band,
you want to think of a rubber band being thick on one end
and thin on the other end, okay?
Now, when I stretch that,
see where all the stretching is occurring?
It's occurring on the thin part of the band.
- So I think you're saying,
so this represents like a muscle.
- Well, this whole thing is a muscle.
- So this is the thick part of the muscle?
- Thick part of the muscle or the part of the muscle
that might be adhesed down.
- Okay.
- It might be, might be scar tissue, trigger points,
whatever, the muscle stretch is not occurring equally
along the entire muscle.
- Right. So we want to get at the tight spot.
- Right, the tight spot. So in order to get
at this tight spot, we're actually gonna put pressure
right on this.
So, and again, when you're dealing with joints here
that are being stabilized by ribs,
it's really difficult to move them.
So what we do is mobilization,
and what you're going to need is like, we got tennis balls,
and we actually have two in here.
- That's a sock.
- Yeah. Two in a sock.
- Yeah. (chuckles)
- And Brad, if you don't mind turning around,
so, we can actually go right down the spine
in the mid thoracic area here, in the mid back.
And we keep one ball on each side of the spine,
so that, if I go back to-
- Sam I am.
- Sam I am, you can see the spine there
and then the balls are right on each side of the spine.
- Yup.
- And it's gives a nice little mobilization to that area.
- Yeah, works out good.
- Now there's two kinds of methods for mobilizing.
There's what Kelly calls smash,
and basically it's just what it sounds like,
you're putting pressure right on an area.
And you're just sitting there
and letting that pressure take hold.
So static pressure?
- Static pressure. - Not moving,
just right on there. And you know, I've actually felt
this myself where the muscle actually releases
- Kind of releases that. - on that tight spot.
and its like, oh, hurts for a little bit
but after about 20 seconds or so it releases.
- So you're looking at for the tight portions of muscle,
the ones that are tender, if it's not,
you probably don't need to do this.
- Sure.
- I mean, it's probably not necessary.
The other thing he calls it is the pressure wave.
And that's where you take like a ball like this
and you maybe roll on it a little bit,
like a pressure wave, you know, the wave. (chuckles)
- Like a wave pool?
- Well sure, like wave pool.
- Comes and goes there.
- Sure, now this one isn't real focused pressure
but it's still pressure nonetheless.
And we do this one in a chair, and this is where
you got to steal a kickball from your neighborhood.
- Yeah. These are fun. You can play that dodge ball.
- Yeah dodge ball, yep. - Those kinds of things.
- But this is a great one for the mid back
that you can do throughout the day.
And you can move it up and down to different spots.
- This is, you know, if you're sitting at a computer
for long periods of time, you should have one of these
balls here and just stretch back, breathe.
- I liked this one, Brad, for starting,
if you know what I mean. It's not very aggressive.
Almost everybody can do it, just about.
- Yeah, you don't have to go on the floor.
- Right.
- Like you do, you know,
you can't use these smaller balls on a bed.
- Oh no.
- That's not going to be practical.
- Now these can be pretty aggressive, I mean,
so you have to be warned, you know,
you might start off by putting a towel over it
just to blunt it a little bit but,
you're getting a towel, Brad?
- [Brad] Yeah! So I just wanted to demonstrate.
- Anyway, you could start on one side
and, you know, find a spot and just lie on there.
Or you can roll along on there and work it out.
Now, if that is too aggressive to you,
you can use the towel or Brad, you can show it on the wall.
- Sure.
- And that's why the sock is nice. It helps put it in place.
- And this is nice on the wall.
You cannot get as aggressive as lying on the floor.
However, you don't have to get on the floor this way.
And you can, I'm going to, you know,
you may just want to have one ball in there
when you're doing it.
- Right, that way.
- Like this vertical, but it's okay to go to
and I'm on the right side of my spine right now.
And I'm, man, I'm going to drop down, right?
Usually I got one right in there.
Yep. If I had one ball, I'd be able to roll a little easier.
- Again, this is not full pressure,
so it's a little bit easier for the beginner.
- Yes. You could put a lacrosse ball, I suppose, in a sock.
That would be a little more aggressive.
Oh, wait, Bob, I got one right there.
- You can use a baseball and if you're really aggressive,
you could use the soft ball.
- (laughs) Yeah.
Get a big stretchy sock.
There, it's done. It released.
- Okay. - All right.
- So anyway, those are some hints, pretty short video today.
We want to show,
- Oh, we're done already?
- Yeah, real simple. - Wow.
- Give it a try. We always like to hear your comments,
especially if they're positive.
(both laugh)
- Yeah, be nice.
- Yeah. Be kind.
- Did we mention that, you know, this is soft,
so we wouldn't.
- No no, you can't do it in bed.
- We got a couple of minutes.
This is the way I always roll up.
When I started doing this,
I take a towel like this, four layers, and then,
- Oh, on top of the ball. - Yep.
- And then put it there and it makes a big difference
to get started. And then after awhile,
this actually feels pretty good
once you get used to it. - Right.
- Right. It's amazing how your body adapts,
stretches it out eventually.
So, alright. Check it out.
- That's it? - That's it.
- Okay, goodbye. - Bye.