- This is my favorite hat.
- That is nice.
- It's warm.
- Yeah.
My wife says it looks stupid on me,
(Laughter)
but I wear it anyway.
- We could concur.
Are you ready?
- Yeah.
- I'm Bob Schrupp, physical therapist,
- Brad Heineck, physical therapist.
- And together we are the most famous
physical therapists on internet.
- Well, in our opinion, of course, Bob.
- Do you mean that his wife thinks that looks stupid on him?
- This is my family.
- Isn't it?
- It's been cold Bob.
We're up here in Minnesota, Wisconsin and last
- minus 30, some below with the windshield today.
- And the last 20 days, like 19 of them been below 0
- not the same for living here saying,
- But this hat is really good
this baby keeps me
- Get on topic here.
We had somebody that mentioned
to us on Google plus that they,
they went to somewhere and everybody there
had, they had stroke.
- Yeah. A group for people that had strokes.
- And she noticed her, he noticed?
- He did.
- He noticed that a lot of them were in
in that bent arm position.
- Right.
- And what we could do about that
while we just did a video on the
inflatable air splint and we thought
we just do a very quick one on how to
you could handle someone who has the bent arm
after the stroke.
- Right.
- And basically one thing that you're having trouble
with is what we call increased tone.
The muscle is bending it up on its own.
So one way to help
combat that and also to help stretch the arm
is to use an air splint.
But first off, what you do, Brad is right.
You'd stretch the arm out.
Right, so if you have
- Like this
- Yeah.
Now the surface we call
either contractual or tone, high tone.
And what's going on is the muscle.
In this case, the bicep is working without the brain,
tired what to do, it's working all on it's own.
The nervous part of the nervous system
it gets kind of complicated.
So I don't want to get into that.
But if you think that that person, like
if I start stretching this elbow
and the tone is holding it
so Bob go ahead and hold it like it'd be,
and it's like, quit doing that.
- Right.
- And really the person is not able to control whatsoever.
So just be patient, if you're a family member
or friend trying to help this person out
but you're gonna pull it one thing,
- On top of that, it's actually, a lot of times
is to start like this and to bend the arm like that.
- So the problem is down
- The hand is bent like this
open the hand and then bring that open.
- Good. Bob's done more stroke.
So I'm gonna go on like this.
And so the palm up is gonna help you.
- Yeah. Release the tone.
- Do you ever do that trick where
where you rub the muscle and your thumb?
Sometimes if you, if you rub that muscle bicep
and down by the tendon, it'll help release it.
There's a lot of little tricks you can try
and it'll usually open up slow like this.
And once you get it straight
you may not get it totally straight.
But you know, once you get keep the pressure
- on the whole time.
But we said in the last video, it's like a class knife.
You know like the class knife is really hard
on also just releases.
And that's quite often what we find
- After stroke.
Okay. So once we get it straight
then what we're gonna do Bob
- Slide this on.
- Okay. So don't, we're gonna hold it out there.
And it typically it won't spring, spring, back.
Once you get it out
- it usually stay to some extent
- you may have to work with it a little bit.
Everyone's a little different
- Just typing inflatable air splint on Google.
And these run I saw, you know, about up to 15 bucks.
Some are cheaper.
My biceps gotten too big.
- Yeah. You've been pumping some late pop.
Wow. But I'm ruining your shirt.
- My shirt.
- Oh, well that's just a shirt Bob.
what's a big deal once you get it on
- And it would blow up
which is actually already partly blown up. So,
- So the, the pressure, it just helps it a split.
- Yeah. It gives an even pressure
over the muscle and actually helps calm the muscle down.
You can leave this on for a good hour.
- Right
- You can actually do exercise with it.
You can actually put weight through it
which is good for the arm.
And we showed on last video
you can even do some walking along the bench
like this to, to work on, on getting some strength.
- If you put force through that joint,
the muscles will co contract.
They cause.
And they all work automatically.
As long as there's no pain with it,
it should be pain free.
If your joint is really flashed, be careful though.
Cause if the shoulder joint is flashed
but it probably won't be, if you have this much tone.
- Right.
- But just, you know, there should be no pain
and everything should look, you know, feel pretty normal.
- Right. Just one more.
Last thing about tone.
If you sit there and stand.
What I used to explain to people
about tone is if you just let your hand relax
you see how it bends naturally.
That's, that's a little bit of tone going on there.
If there was no tone at all, your hand would be like this.
- Sure.
- So there's a, a little natural tone already pulling
up. And, and when the brain is not there to
tell it not to do that, then it actually curls up even more.
- Sure.
- So. Alright.
Little tip for you to try.
Good luck.
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