♪ Bob and Brad ♪
♪ The two most famous physical therapists ♪
♪ On the internet ♪
- Hi, folks, I'm Bob Schrupp, physical therapist.
- Brad Heineck, physical therapist.
- Yeah, the most famous physical therapist on the internet.
- In our opinion, of course, Bob.
- Today, we're gonna show you how to
unlock your hip flexors.
We've got six longterm fixes.
They're self treatment.
I wanna say right now, Brad, three of them involve
no equipment whatsoever.
And three of them involve equipment.
We're giving you both options.
We're not saying, by any means, that you have to go out
and buy this equipment.
- Absolutely.
But it can be helpful.
Otherwise, we wouldn't say you can use it.
- They're tools I use.
- Those hip flexors, that can lead to weak glutes
as well as hamstring problems--
- And lower cross syndrome
where you get tight on one side,
and then weak on the other side.
- Exactly.
So you get weak glutes,
your hamstrings start to give you problems,
then your low back.
So it's a whole train of what--
- What throws your whole system off.
Even the head of the femur doesn't stay in the socket
like it should when those are not working.
- Little clunky clunky. - I know.
This is the problem I've dealt with.
- Say no more.
- By the way, if you're new to our channel,
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- [Brad] That's right.
- So, there was somebody that was looking for a red one,
I believe.
Don't we sell red ones on our website?
Yeah, Bob and Brad.
That kind, that should be red there.
- I told her that. - Oh really?
- She said she didn't--
- Well, we'll just have to check into it.
- Otherwise you can go to Facebook.
It'll be pinned to the top of the page, the contest.
Go to Twitter, Instagram, or Tik Tok
if you want a 60 second version of our program.
All right, right hip flexors,
that's very common because people sit a lot, Brad.
- So the hip flexors is that muscle group that's...
I always tell people when you put your hand in your pocket
at the high part of the pocket,
they're in there, they're deep.
And that's why they can be hard to stretch
and hard to work with,
but we'll show you some nice ways to do it.
And they're responsible for lifting up
your femur or flexing the hip.
And if they get tight, then you're not allowed
to go backwards, which is really important,
particularly with walking or running
and some other activities.
So you wanna keep your hip flexors flexible.
- Right.
And, again, they tend to tighten up when you sit a lot.
And who doesn't sit a lot nowadays?
I mean, there's a lot of people that
with their job and watching TV, or watching their--
- Sitting in the car.
- Yeah, sitting in the car.
You're flexing all day long.
I mean, for most people, this is stretches you need to do.
- Yep.
Okay, Bob, let's get into it.
- All right, which one do you wanna do first?
- Well, let's follow the instructions. (laughs)
- Okay, off the edge of the bed?
- I think we should start with the one on the knee.
- All right, so I do this one every morning,
did it this morning.
I usually do throw a pad down or something.
It's just a lot more comfortable.
- [Brad] On your knee.
- On my knee, yeah right.
- [Brad] You'll see.
- So I'm gonna stretch this hip flexor here.
- [Brad] Do the left one.
- Yeah, the left one.
And I'm just gonna keep good posture.
I'm gonna move forward like this.
Now some little idiosyncrasies here.
I usually take my hand and I pushed the pelvis forward.
like this just to give some stretching like this.
- [Brad] You can tell you've been stretching,
'cause this is a good extension of the hip.
See how vertical it is from his hip to his shoulder?
Now, the tendency is for some people will naturally wanna
lean forward and do it.
- Like this.
- [Brad] And that does not put as much stretch on,
- Not on the hip flexor anyway.
It might stretch the hip on this side a little bit.
The other thing I do is I actually take my foot
and turn it out a little bit,
just that internal rotation of the hip
gives me a little more stretch too.
- So he moved his foot. - From here.
- Towards you with the camera. - I moved it out that way.
- [Brad] That's one of those little things
you don't have to do, but once you start stretching,
I think you should add it in.
- Right.
So, obviously you wanna do both sides.
- [Brad] So you go pressure on pressure off,
or hold it for 30 seconds?
- I usually do pressure on pressure off,
especially when I put my hand on the pelvis,
that works really well, pressure on pressure off.
It's not unusual for me just to sit there too.
I'll do a mix. - You get a feel for it.
- You can see how your muscles respond.
One that's tighter for me is this side.
And this is the one that gives all the problems,
but it's completely under control.
I've had episodes in the past,
like 20 years ago, where I literally had to stop running
for a month, because it got so bad.
But now I know what I'm doing, smart.
- Hence the title longterm.
- Right.
- Okay, let's go to the next one.
- You want me to do this one too?
- Yeah, this one is laying on your bed you can do this.
- Or lying on your bed.
- [Brad] Ah, my goodness.
The English majors are out there.
- So you're gonna make sure
you don't fall off the bed first.
Always safety first,
but you're gonna bring this like off the edge,
and this one's gonna lock the pelvis.
- [Brad] There you go.
- Now, watch what happens to me.
This just shows you and you know my hip is pretty flexible,
but watch this.
I bring it up and it comes up.
So there's still some tightness there
- [Brad] If it wasn't tight, his knee would not move up
towards the ceiling.
You can see how I locked the pelvis.
The pelvis gets locked back by this.
You grab here.
You grab underneath here.
You can take a towel if you have trouble doing that.
- [Brad] And now the job on this one
is just to completely relax and let gravity pull
this leg down, which is gonna stretch that hip flexor.
- I also bend the knee a little bit, Brad, back.
I'll get the quadricep.
- [Brad] Yeah, that really works that--
- Rectus femoris.
- [Brad] Yeah, that rectus femoris muscle.
That's a biarticular muscle.
It goes from the ASIS as down to that patella.
- Biarticular, wow. - Biarticulate.
Yeah, I did my homework last night,
so I'm to snuff.
- Isn't there an old joke about rectus, rectum?
- [Brad] Bob, it's a family show, let's carry on.
- Rectum damn near killed them, or something like that.
- [Brad] (laughs) Let's carry on.
Ever since you turned 60, the filter's starting to leave.
(Bob laughs)
So you wanna do both legs.
Obviously the tight one you can emphasize,
but maybe they're both tight.
One thing you can do is if you wanna have some tools
to make this a little easier to do it,
maybe a little more effective and maybe a little faster
is if you warm up a muscle.
- You forgot the strain, counter strain, Brad.
- Oh, I did, didn't I?
- Yeah, wanna show that, because this one is not so much
a stretch, is it? - No.
- It's as much as a pain reliever.
And I was surprised, Brad.
This shocked me how this does help.
- Sure.
- So if you're having some discomfort in this area,
you wanna try this.
Brad's gonna show us. - Discomfort or tightness.
- Or tightness.
- So this one is the easiest one of all by far
You're gonna lay down in bed.
If this is the hip that's involved, the right side,
you're gonna take the left.
Did I say lie or lay, or something?
- [Bob] You said lay.
- Yeah. (smacks knee)
Left knee up.
That's not being stretched,
but that's a good place to put it.
Now you're gonna take the right knee.
You're gonna pull it like this.
- [Bob] You're working on the right knee right now.
- Yeah, around the right hip.
Pull it up, and we're looking
for the most comfortable position you can.
So you pull as far as it starts to feel comfortable.
You're gonna stop, and then you're gonna rotate your foot
right and left.
And you'll find one position is more comfortable.
- [Bob] It's a lot more comfortable.
You want to find the spot that feels really good.
- And then you have to hold it at a relaxed position,
put a pillow under your head,
so you completely relax and breathe.
- [Bob] Once you find that spot,
then you go ahead and...
- My fake pillow.
And you're gonna hold it for 90 seconds,
and you have to look at a clock.
You're not gonna guess that 90 seconds.
You need at least 90 seconds.
They showed studies that that's important,
up to a minute or two minutes, 120 seconds.
And once you do that,
that allows that muscle to relax and get blood flowing
in it, which is gonna help.
And it does feel good when I do this.
And then you're gonna get up slowly.
This isn't something you're gonna get up and start doing
that hip stretch and be aggressive.
Then you are done, give it a few minutes.
- [Bob] I would probably finish with this, wouldn't you?
Maybe?
- It all depends.
I would try it and see how you respond to it.
And that's the thing, we got six options here.
- [Bob] It might make the muscle more respond
to the stretch,
but sometimes stretch tightens it back up again
too a little bit
- They always say don't do anything real aggressive
after this.
Give it a 20 minute break or whatever.
I would just...
- I was, again, surprised.
It bought me a couple of days of like,
I kind of forgot about it.
- Yeah, that's exactly right.
Bob, we gotta get going. - All right, keep going.
- There's four things to look at.
Okay, so that's the strain, counter strain.
Now we're gonna get into...
- [Bob] Using products here.
- Right, using some extra,
we'll call them modalities, if you will,
in the therapy world.
We're gonna use some deep heat.
Now, if you put a regular hot pack on your hip,
it's never gonna go to the hip flexor muscles.
That's superficial heat,
a standard hot pack that you buy off the shelf.
If you get a infrared hot pack, like this one, it'll go,
they've done studies, 2.36 inches,
which is enough to get into that hip flexor,
unless you're a very large person,
then that's not gonna help.
But if you're thinner, you will get into that.
Well, if you use this,
and this is a Thermotaxis, the platinum model.
We do promote this, 'cause we really like it.
We've used them for years.
- [Bob] I had it on my back last night.
I just leave it in my chair.
And it's cool enough now, again, then.
- He's always gotta get a word in.
We're in the middle of something here.
Anyways, you gotta put it over this, over like this.
Don't sit down and try to get it into there.
It won't do it.
You have to get flat so that it can get to that muscle,
and leave it there for 20 minutes at least.
Okay, it takes a lot longer for these to get deep.
- Yeah, it does.
It takes a little bit to heat up.
It is one that you wanna do while you're doing relaxing
and then something else.
Like I said, before I was rudely interrupted,
I put it on my back every night when I'm watching TV.
I mean, you do too quite often, right?
- Right.
- It's a treat.
Sometimes I leave it on and I forget,
even though that's not a problem, because--
- Bob, there's a point where they say
we're babbling. (laughs)
- I know, but I think this is a good point.
I leave it on.
It was like so warm already right where I got it.
(Brad laughs)
Okay, go on.
- So you could use this and then do your stretches.
Heat that muscle out, get it more plastic, if you will.
- It'll respond better.
- Exactly.
The next one is,
a lot of people are buying these now, the massage gun.
We like using a massage gun,
the ones that reciprocate and pulsate,
and they get deep.
On this one, I would probably use,
we'll try the round headed one.
This gun, actually, we like it so much,
we've got our name put on it at the top,
and Brad massage gun.
The quality is good enough.
We said, "Let's promote it."
And I'm gonna get it moving here.
- [Bob] We've been real happy with this company.
We've been dealing with them for quite a long time.
We didn't have a professional association.
We just kind of had a loose association with them,
and we decided to actually do some things with them,
because they do such a good job.
- Can we go now? - Yeah, go ahead.
- I've got it going here.
I've got it turned up on high.
There's six adjustments on it, but you can see this.
So your round one is what I think is gonna work best.
I'm gonna get in here,
and you can feel this get in deep.
There we go.
Ooh.
And you're gonna work it not on the bone,
but into that muscle.
You'll feel it.
Now I feel like doing this for a while,
but I know we should quit, but you're gonna--
- [Bob] You said it never hurts, Brad, though?
It should never hurt?
- No, it should not create any pain.
- For me,
this is what I do before I run.
- Oh, you do? - Yeah.
It hurts so good.
It feels really good.
You know what I mean?
- And then when it's done, it feels--
- Yeah, even better.
- Yeah, there's a reason why people are buying these,
because they work well.
- They're awesome.
My wife uses it.
I use it.
I mean, you just pass it around.
- Bob, do you wanna show the next one,
which is the six inch roller?
- Sure.
- And this is one that you've done in the past.
- Yeah, this is similar to...
I actually do both, Brad, believe it or not. (laughs)
- Oh, you really work that hip.
- I really worked that hip.
So this one, too, has different intensities
and go higher, higher, and higher.
- So this is a vibrating six inch roller.
- Yeah.
Now this is, what can you say?
This is a family show,
but you do have to get on it like this.
And I get right on the hip flexor,
and I just roll back and forth like this.
So it really does the same as the massage gun, Brad,
to a large extent.
- [Brad] It's not as specific as you have that point.
- It's not as specific.
What I do is I hit the hip flexor,
and I go right into the hip abductor like this.
- [Brad] Oh, wow.
- That probably doesn't show very well.
- [Brad] You don't have to show it, Bob.
- Well, no, I'm like this.
I hit the hip abductor,
and then I go right to my hamstrings.
- [Brad] Oh, good.
- See, and then I go to my--
- [Brad] Do you do both at the same time?
- Yeah, I do both at the same time,
and then I do
- [Both] Calves.
- And the reason I do both at the same time,
these aren't problem areas for me.
If it's a problem area, I focus on one at a time.
- If you got a tight knot, you wanna get rid of it.
- Right, and that's why the hip flexors, I do singly.
I roll right on them like that.
That feels good right now.
- [Brad] I believe it.
- That's pretty intense,
Because this is loud and sounds like a truck,
I have to use it in the basement.
- Oh right, you don't wanna wake your wife up.
- That's exactly right if she's sleeping in,
because she had a long day.
(both laugh)
I mean, it really does.
It sounds like a cement truck is pulled up in your yard.
- Oh, up on that wooden floor?
- But it works well.
- Yeah, well good.
- All right, remember Brad and I
can fix just about anything.
- Except for.
- A broken heart.
- There you go.
Thank you.
- If we could stretch the heart, we probably could fix it,
'cause we could unlock the heart.
(Brad laughs)