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- Welcome my friends to the Bob and Brad Podcast produced
by Bob and Brad,
the two most famous physical therapists on the internet.
I am Bob, exactly one half of the Bob and Brad team.
And today my partner in crime is actually...
- Mike Keynetes, PT assistant.
- Right. Yeah, no Brad, but we're gonna talk about today.
We're gonna talk about with Ross Clifford.
He is the author of the book, Mike,
wanna say it?
- "Build Your Own Bulletproof Body."
All body weight exercises or stretches
and foam rolling as well.
- You're gonna find this really interesting.
Here we go.
Welcome to the program Ross Clifford.
So big fan of the book, "Build Your Own Bulletproof Body."
We'll have a link below.
All right, the final section we're gonna talk about
how to bulletproof your spine.
So one of the common spine problems
that these exercises might help.
- Well, I guess the main one
is a postural type of dysfunction.
- Sure.
- So often in clinical practice a lot of patients
will say to me, "Look, I got back pain.
What's wrong with my back?"
And often the answer is, "Well,
there's nothing wrong with your back.
It's just not evolved to sit at a desk for 10 hours a day."
So you're placing strain on the back
that really, it shouldn't be there
for a prolonged period of time.
It should be there in short bursts
but it shouldn't be there for many hours.
- 10 hours.
- So the main thing is we see a lot of postural dysfunction.
Now, one of the things that can then lead to
is an overloading at the...
You'll hear a lot of people talk about discs,
disc prolapse, disc bulge, that sort of thing.
So we're talking about the sort of the cushion
that sits in between the vertebrae
or the bones in the spine.
And what can happen is if you've got excessive loading
on the front of those bones,
the front of those vertebrae,
you'll load the front of the disc by compressing it,
but then you'll stretch the posterior back part of the disc.
And going back to what we discussed in a previous episode
was this idea of a rubber band being kept
on prolonged stretch.
If you permanently deform the elastic fibers
and the collagenous fibers in the part of the disc
at the back, you may then be prone to repetitive disc bulges
and disc prolapses.
And that is something that unfortunately I do see commonly
in clinical practice.
- Yeah. Disc creep, right?
- Creep. Thank you.
Yes.
- So what are the goals
of body weight exercises prescribed for the spine?
- Alignment, I think is the key,
and then how do you maintain that alignment.
So a lot of the exercises will be trying
to take you into movements like extension
to try and smooth out that prolonged bending of the spine.
And then once you're in that position
how do we reengage the muscles in the abdomen,
in the glutes, in the front of the hip,
at the back of the spine,
how do we reengage all those muscles
to make underactive muscles more active and shorter
and how do we stretch short, overactive muscles
and take some of the tension out of them.
- Now our talk about the spine,
we're talking about all the way up to...
So let's go with first exercise, neck retraction.
- Yeah, so in the UK we pronounce that the cervical spine,
is that how you guys would say that?
- No, we're cervical.
- Cervical.
So we differentiate that from cervical problems
that maybe pertain only to women (Bob laughs).
So if I use the word cervical, I mean, cervical.
- Gotcha.
- So basically yes, the neck.
The idea is here that you use a retraction
because most people will sit in a degree of protraction
which involves some extension at the...
No, sorry.
Yeah, extension of the upper neck,
the upper cervical spine
and the idea is you're really trying to stretch that out.
And also by doing that as well you'll offload
the middle spine, the thoracic spine as well.
So retraction of the neck, it can be done actively.
So just by using your own muscles, it can used passively.
You can do it laid supine on your back
in a nice, comfortable position.
The trick is always, I explained to my patients,
is try and maintain an eye level
and fix your eyes on something
because otherwise what will happen
is you just end up looking down
which is not actually then a retraction.
So fix your eyes on something and then just try
and tuck that chin backwards.
- Good advice. Good advice.
- And feel the stretch.
And also try and increase the distance between your ears
and your shoulders to get that stretch as well.
- Do you wanna talk about foam rolling for the upper spine?
So thoracic area.
- Yes. Sure.
So this is very similar to what we discussed
in the previous episode on the shoulders.
- The shoulders, right.
- Which was around loading enough of the spine
onto the foam roller that you feel comfortable.
And if you're able to take most of your weight,
then the idea is you perhaps just cross your arms
over your chest.
You've got the foam roller going across the length
of the spine and then using your legs,
you just bring yourself backwards and forwards
over that foam roller,
just ironing out all those knotted areas in the muscles.
Again, just bringing yourself
into that little bit of thoracic extension
and getting that little bit of a pop and a click
as the spine cavitates as you offload it
against gravity and iron out those knotted areas.
- Very good.
How about the standing side stretch?
- So standing side stretch is quite an easy one.
Again, we would put that as a level one exercise accessible
for everybody.
And the idea here is that you are trying to open up
on one side of your trunk whilst if you want to,
you can add in the shoulder as well
and that creates more of a stretch for latissimus dorsi.
If you have shoulder issues,
you can just put your arms by your side,
and then you can just reach down one leg.
So left leg with left arm, and then vice versa,
right arm down right leg.
And the idea is you're opening up the facet joints
of the spine, you're stretching the rib cage on that side.
And then there's also a muscle
that tends to get quite tight called quadratus lumborum
that sits between the top of the pelvis and the lower ribs.
And often that's a very tight knotted area,
and just stretching that out on each side as well.
- Do you wanna talk about the benefits of the cat stretch?
- Yeah.
So the cat stretch is probably one that people
are familiar with if they've done yoga
or Pilates type exercises.
So again, it's nothing new, and again,
it would be a one of those entry level exercises
that's good for everybody.
And the idea is you're just trying to get
that nice rounded posture, which sounds counterintuitive
because we probably spend much of our day in that position.
But the beauty is you're forcing perhaps the bits
that wouldn't normally go into that to that rounded stretch
and making sure that they get an adequate stretch as well.
But the particular beauty and benefit of the cat stretch
is that again, you're loading through the shoulders.
So you've got that loaded exercise there as well.
And you're also creating some degree of knee flexion
and some plantar flexion
at the ankle as well to stretch out.
- Sure.
With the whole body.
- Those body parts as well.
- The next one I like it a lot.
It is a new one to me. Rear support.
- Yeah, so the rear support is a nice one
for toning up the hamstrings as well.
Not the hamstrings, the triceps.
There you go. Testing myself now (Bob laughs).
So yeah.
So the idea is with the rear support,
and this is one of Ashley's exercises.
It's a foundation level exercise for anybody who's wanting
to really develop their calisthenics ability.
So I like it for multiple reasons.
It tones up the triceps.
It brings the shoulder joint into a degree of extension,
which we very rarely do on a day-to-day basis.
But to be able to hold the position,
you need to be able to elongate the spine,
you need to be able to activate the core,
and you need to be able to activate the glutes
and a lot of muscles in the leg
to be able to hold the position.
And I challenge anybody to hold that position
for more than 60 seconds.
- I agree.
- It's a real tough one.
And you'll know if you've got tight shoulders
if you try that one you'll know instantly.
- Yeah, this looks very interesting.
I've never heard of this.
For those listening, it looks like a pushup,
but you're facing the ceiling.
- Yeah, that's a good description. Yeah.
- It's really on a level two?
I mean, is that a level three?
- Yeah, that would be probably a level two, level three,
depending on your ability,
but you certainly want to aspire to.
And that's the purpose of the book.
We don't want anybody to come in and feel
that they have a glass ceiling of level one, level two.
The idea is they can be progressive.
So if you come into using the book
and you're not used to or confident
with body weight exercises,
once you then develop that confidence
and that physical ability, you can then start to progress.
But all of the exercises that are in this book
are comparatively with what are available
in most calisthenics books.
These are all relatively basic apart from perhaps
the handful that we've put to try and engage
the more athletic reader.
- So do you have any other thoughts
on bulletproofing your spine?
- Ooh.
- Frog stretch?
- (laughs) Now I'm gonna move away from that broken record.
- Oh, sure.
- I like prone extensions.
So either passive or active.
So you lay on your front,
and you can either pop your hands here
and then use your spinal extensions to bring yourself up
and often sometimes referred to as the Superman.
So you bring yourself in this Superman position
but if you do that,
you're increasing the leverage with your arms.
So if you find that difficult,
bring the arms down by the side
and then try and actively lift the chest off the floor.
The other way to do it to get more of a stretch
of the lower spine, and the thoracic spine
is to bring yourself into what would look like
a lay down push up and then push up through your arms.
- Gotcha.
- Keep your pelvis and your legs on the floor or the bed.
- Yeah, a personal favorite.
- It's one of your favorites?
- Yep.
So we wanna be respectful of your time.
So we're gonna thank you for taking the time
to demonstrate, I mean, discuss all these exercises.
And again, we wanna mention the book.
Mike wanna?
- Do you have a website or anything
where people can reach you at? Or social media?
- I wanna say yes, but I don't know what it is (laughs).
Ashley would know, but...
- We'll put it in the description box below
if you just want to email it to us.
- Yeah, we'll send you something to post production.
- There we go.
- That sounds good.
- All right, any final thoughts you want to give, Ross?
- I just wanna say thank you both for your time.
- Oh, thank you.
- It's been a pleasure to talk to you both.
- Thank you.
- And I really, really appreciate this platform
and this conversation that we've had today.
So thank you very much.
- It's a terrific book.
So I suggest everybody get one.
- Oh, thank you. Very kind.
- Yep. Okay.
- You've got one already.
What more could you ask for?
- That's right.
- We need two.
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