♪ Bob and Brad ♪
♪ The two most famous ♪
♪ Physical therapists on the internet ♪
- Hi folks. I'm Bob Schrupp, Physical Therapist.
- Brad Heineck, Physical Therapist.
- We are the most famous physical therapists
on the internet.
- In our opinion, of course, Bob.
- Today, we're talking about seven rotator cuff exercises
for pain relief.
These are nonsurgical,
nonsurgical options I was going to say,
not surgery rehab.
- Right, if you yeah.
- Same thing.
- Well let's go on.
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go to the giveaway section.
Always giving something away.
This week we're giving away the Booyah Stik.
- [Brad] Booyah!
But don't do that with them,
that wouldn't be safe. - You'll find out why,
- Why it really becomes handy later on in this video.
Also go to Facebook and it'll be
pinned to the top of the page, the contest, that is.
- Yes.
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if you want a 60 second version of our program
where we don't ramble, Brad.
- That's right.
And you can always fast forward on these,
if you don't like our rambling
and get you to the exercises.
But, are we going to carry on?
- No, we got a podcast too.
- Oh, that's right, our podcasts are out there
and they're very good.
We've got a lot of really highly intelligent authors, PhDs.
- As opposed to us.
- Yeah, exactly. It's a good contrast.
(both chuckle)
Anyways, shall we carry on? - Yeah.
There's seven exercises that we're going to show.
Three of them are stretching exercises,
specifically for the shoulder and rotator cuff.
Four of them are strengthening exercises.
What I'd like, if you want to go through this
and do it properly,
you're going to go through all seven of them
and only do the ones that
clearly make your shoulder feel better
and or increase your range of motion in a pain free range.
- Yeah we don't think you're going to need to do all seven.
- No, no. You'll probably pick two or three.
- Right.
- It may be one, but I would think probably two or three.
- It's better for you to do
one or two every day consistently,
than to go all seven and go "Oh, I can't do this".
- And it's very possible one or two of them may irritate.
And then for sure you don't want to do those.
So, first before we get started on this,
your shoulder hurts, I want you to find out
which motion makes it hurt, specifically.
- So is it flexion?
- A lot of people, it will be here.
And oftentimes when you get up to here, ow.
- A painful arc.
- Or coming down is oftentimes one.
My shoulder issue did not have that
but I had problems doing one of the exercises,
doing this particular exercise,
which is a little unusual.
You don't see that very often in the clinic,
but it happens.
So, find out which motion hurts.
It may be out to the side, here, this,
reaching behind or like this.
And then you're gonna go through each one of these
and if it is up and coming down after the first exercise,
test that range of motion again and see if it feels better
as a result of the exercise or worse.
- Basically, you're trying to establish a baseline.
- Yup.
- You want to know what, where your pain is
and what do you feel when you feel it?
- Exactly.
So, we'll go onto the stretching first.
Okay.
The extension, as a matter of fact, this is the one.
- You are now called a paddler.
- The paddler, yeah.
There's a different way to do it,
but it's just doing this.
And this exercise specifically,
I could do 10 of those in a row.
And then I could do these again afterwards.
I had better range of motion
and less pain. - You couldn't do this before.
Without pain, yup.
It hurt right in here.
I would-
- And once you did these.
- Are you going to interrupt me again, Bob?
What's the deal?
Anyways, maybe I should keep my mouth shut.
I don't know. But yeah.
I would do 10 of these paddlers
and then this was easier, it wasn't fixed,
but I could go farther with less pain.
So I started doing the paddler.
Now you can talk. - This by the way,
- This by the way is the McKenzie exercise.
- It is.
- Let's give credit where credit is due.
Robin McKenzie developed these exercises,
this one in particular.
- Right. And just do 10 of them,
would be a good option.
- And you could do them throughout the day.
- Right, not just,
once you establish they're a good exercise
that always makes me feel good.
I could do that 5 to 10 times a day.
- Yeah the first time,
the first day I only do it once.
- Right.
- One set.
- Yep. And that goes with all of these.
You want to show number two? Cause I think you're the...
- Sure.
- I don't know if you invented it,
but as far as we know you did.
- The chicken wing, now you can actually just start
by pulling up your back a little bit, Brad.
So you're actually,
I'm going to put this as my painful shoulder.
And my palm on the upper hand is facing to the wall, away.
- Yep.
- [Bob] Palm on my lower hand is facing out towards you.
So what I'm going to do is
I'm going to just work on bringing it up like this.
I'm already hitting a ceiling, aren't I?
- There you go.
- [Bob] There you go.
- It happens to me at home too.
So again painful shoulder here
and a lot of times a painful shoulder,
you have a hard time reaching up like this too,
for dressing and whatnot.
And this is a good stretch for that.
- [Bob] Right. And that's where this Booyah Stik
works out great for everybody
because it's nice and smooth.
- [Brad] Yeah cause it slips on your clothing
and if it doesn't slip,
it's very difficult to do that.
- [Bob] So, then to add a little twist to it,
you actually can push it out like this.
- Why don't you go profile, and they can see
that this range right here, the stretch.
- And I'm not going like this.
I'm bringing it down so it doesn't hit my head.
And I'm repeating.
- Right. Typically 5 to 10 reps.
- Sure. I wouldn't do this
if you are prone to dislocations
or you have rheumatoid arthritis.
- If that, yeah.
- You're really kind of loose ligamented.
- And again, if it creates pain,
you stop doing it and go to the next one.
- Right.
- Which is the statue of liberty. Yeah.
Depending on how high you can lift your shoulder,
if you can get up to here and you need to get up to here,
you probably do it seated like this.
With the stick on the chair,
you'll reach up and then grab the stick with
securely and lean forward.
Now the stick has to really grip tight
to what it's sitting on so it doesn't slip out.
- That's why we have the rubber tips on it.
- [Brad] Yeah. And they work very well.
And you lean forward and stretch.
- Plus this material is kind of grippy.
Notice that?
- [Brad] Yeah. Yeah.
- More than PVC piping, it's...
- Your hand doesn't slip on it.
It works extremely well.
- 'Cause you don't want to do...
You want to show that Brad?
- Yeah, I did have a patient.
I didn't explain it properly the first time,
he was doing this, he says, "It's not working very good."
And I said, "Sorry, I'll have to clarify it."
But if you only can go this high,
you may start here and do the same thing.
- What's nice about this,
you can actually use your hand to crawl up.
- Yep. Finger walk.
- Yep. Go like this and then try it again.
And just work your way up.
People with arthritis love this
because they can see the progress,
it's easy to do
and they come back and they're really proud.
"I was only lifting this up and now I'm up here."
- Yep. So now let's go to strengthening exercises,
which you may pick probably in theory,
you'd want to be able to get one stretching exercise
that makes it feel better and work better.
And then one strengthening exercise.
The old go to that most therapists would probably agree,
is this external rotation.
Right, Bob?
- That's why, I was a little bit surprised Brad,
that this one bothered you.
- I was too, to be honest with you.
'Cause I thought what's going on?
But it's,
but I've got a different problem than the average person.
I'm just not average. I'm weird.
- Yeah Brad, is a little bit of a baby.
- Oddball.
So anyways, the elbow needs to be by the ribs.
Not this.
- You don't want them flying out.
- And not this.
This is a common error.
You want this motion to strengthen
the posterior aspect of the rotator cuff,
whatever, the back of the shoulder.
And 10 of these.
- Some people do put a towel there.
- Yeah.
I do that a lot with my patients on the first day.
And once they figure it out, that you don't need it.
But you put that there.
And I say, now,
if that towel falls out,
it means your elbow was too far away from your body.
- So then we cut the elbow off.
Right?
I do.
- That reminds me of that Saturday Night Live flick.
Anyways, make sure you do that.
You don't have to do it on both sides.
You can just do it on the sore shoulder.
- You're doing outties not innies.
- Right. Right.
So next one, scapular retraction.
It's the same thing.
As you need some resistance, hook it up.
The bands always come with one of these that go in a door
so you don't have to have a wall anchor.
Wall anchors just happen to work well
and we use them a lot 'cause it's so convenient.
- The point with the shoulder here, Brad,
is that the scapula or the shoulder blades
are a big part of the shoulder and how it works.
And that's what he's working out right now.
He's working on basically the base of the shoulder.
The foundation of it.
- There you go.
Yep. Exactly.
If the foundation isn't in the right place,
the rest of the joint has problems.
- It doesn't work.
You want me to do the next one, Brad?
- Yeah, absolutely.
- So you can actually do this with a stick
or you can do it with a table.
And we used to teach it always with a table
to start off with.
- Right.
- So you lean down like this
and you're actually going to step back
and push down into the mat
or into the table at the same time.
And then walk your way back up again.
But start by pushing down, pushing down,
pushing down, pushing down and leaning like this.
Now you can also do it with the stick.
- So the idea is the shoulder is going up
while you're pushing down.
It relocates and properly positions the humeral head.
So I'm pushing down and that muscle is
pull the humeral head into position.
And then I go down like this.
And if I come up,
I've changed my range of motion from here to here.
- Sure.
- And this one I've found it either works good
or people don't have good luck with it.
- It doesn't help at all.
- Yeah so...
- It was developed by Brian Mulligan.
- Yep.
- Both Brad and I took a course from him.
Quite a character.
- Yeah.
He's a physical therapist from-
- From New Zealand.
- He's a New Zealander too. - Yes he is.
- A lot great therapists from New Zealand, Brad.
- Yep. Exactly.
The next one,
and this is a strengthening one of a different variety.
- I like this one too.
- Take a ball,
a squishy one six, eight inches in diameter.
Put it up against the wall
and you're gonna put weight through it.
So we're getting some weight bearing
co-contraction of the muscles,
which is really important for function.
And I'm going to go up and down like this
and you can time it for 30 seconds.
You'll be amazed.
This gets you more tired.
- Right. How much your shoulder is working with this.
- Yeah.
And then you go right to left.
Circles this way for 30 seconds and 30 seconds this way.
Now I found a lot of people rehabbing will
up and down maybe going of these directions.
Oftentimes it seemed like a circle.
They say, "Oh, that hurts."
So I say, "Stop doing it."
Give it some time but keep working the directions
that don't hurt.
- They were better in the other direction?
They hurt one direction and better the other direction.
- Yeah. Yeah. And it would vary.
I mean,
I can't specifically say clockwise or counterclockwise.
- Sure.
- But the rule is the same.
Only do the directions that do not irritate it.
In time things will get better and you can do all of them.
- My apologies, by the way,
to the kids that Brad stole this ball from.
- They said I could have it.
- No they did not. - They did too!
You were running away.
- Yeah, I told them I was Brad from Bob and Brad
and they said, "Who?"
- Threw it and hit him in the head and he ran away with it.
- Yeah, whatever. There they're all good kids.
- He's that grumpy old guy that
I'm trying to throw a ball in his yard and he keeps it.
- Yeah, like the movie "Sandlot".
- Yeah "Sandlot".
- Got the big dog.
Anyways, be careful
in everything that you do. - Thanks for watching.