♪ Bob and Brad ♪
♪ The two most famous physical therapists ♪
♪ On the internet ♪
- Howdy folks, I'm Bob Schrupp, physical therapist.
- Brad Heineck, physical therapist.
- And we are the most famous
physical therapists on the internet.
- In our opinion of course.
- Humble opinion.
Today we're gonna talk about
how to fix shoulder pain permanently.
Three critical exercises.
With shoulder pain, we've gone over this in other videos,
the first step is to fix your posture.
What we're trying to do is get the shoulder blade
into the right place.
The shoulder blade is the foundation of the shoulder.
- Correct.
- For most patients, posture is a major contributor to pain.
For many patients, it's the main contributor to the pain.
So we gotta correct this first.
I have had patients Brad,
that honestly got 50 to 75% better
just by giving them the one exercise.
Yep, I have them start doing that.
They come back and they go, hey it's better already.
- Right.
- It's, it's amazing.
It stops the impingement.
Which can lead to tendonitis, rotator cuff tears,
we won't get into that.
- Yeah.
- So let's go, first exercise.
We're gonna show you three that you can possibly do.
This one you can do throughout the day,
and that's what I want you to do it
throughout the day because it's not one you do once
and hopefully that's gonna correct things.
- Sure.
- You wanna actually do it several times a day.
And it, what's nice about it,
not only it works to correct your posture, it's a reminder.
- Right, right.
- To correct your posture too.
- So you can do W's.
You can start off like, just like this.
And what this does is it stretches the chest muscles,
which tend to pull you down,
but it also strengthens the shoulder blade muscles.
So Brad, if you wanna turn.
Face that way.
- Oh, sorry.
- Yeah, now you can start seeing how his shoulder,
how his shirt is wrinkling up here,
that's because those muscles
are coming together and working.
- And with this think about your breathing.
When you go back like this, breathe in.
And you feel everything expand out and then exhale out.
It just, things just function better
when you're breathing well with your exercises.
- Exactly, now think about it,
when you're working at your computer,
and after awhile you sink into this bad posture,
you do a couple W's and then you realize,
okay that's where I need to be.
- Right.
- I need to be in this position.
You can also do it by what we call butterflies.
Put the, your fingers lightly on your neck,
and you're gonna open the wings to the butterfly.
And the same thing,
you're squeezing those shoulder blades together,
getting the posture into place.
Nice, you don't need any equipment.
Just a good one to do throughout the day.
- Now I have tight shoulders
and this one is quite difficult.
I would choose a different one, I would do the W's.
So it's up, you know use which one works best for you.
- This next one, I am a huge believer in.
And that's using a tennis ball, a sock, or a lacrosse ball,
or we're also going to show you a device you can use.
But I would definitely start with the inexpensive you know,
you can roll up a sock, you can even use this.
- Yeah, roll it up tight.
- Roll it up really tight.
- Yep.
- I also put a lacrosse ball in a sock,
and I'll show you in a second why I wanna do this.
Brad, why don't you turn around,
face the wall one second, if you don't mind.
So what we're trying to do, very often posture,
the problem is right in this area here.
Right in the upper back.
This gets to be really rounded out.
And this is, yeah, this is held together
by really strong ligaments.
So when the posture goes bad, to stretch it back into place,
for some people they just can't get there.
You know what I mean?
They go, they stretch and they still end up
being rounded out like this.
So you really gotta put some aggressive stretching on there.
So what we do is we take a ball,
let's say you take a tennis ball,
and you're gonna hit right between
the shoulder blades and the spine.
- On that muscle.
- Right on the muscle.
And you're gonna lay on it.
You're just gonna lay right on that ball.
And you can hit six spots here.
One, two, three, four, five, six.
- Yep.
- One, two, three, four, five, six.
And you can just lay on 'em for like 30 seconds to a minute.
It's a simple stretch.
You can relax, do a little meditation.
And if it's-
- Do you- - Go ahead.
- You're not gonna do it on your bed.
- No.
- It has to be done on a carpeted floor
is probably the best.
Bed's too soft.
- You could start on the wall, right?
- Right.
- If the bed's too aggressive.
- Right, and that's why you use the,
you know put the ball in the sock.
You can try and reach back,
but the ball drops to the floor sometimes.
- Right, right.
This is just a lot easier way to get it into place.
- Right, yup.
- And this is really good for beginner's
because Brad and I both have progressed to the point now
where we lay on a device, we lay on the Backpod.
And sometimes people start with a towel.
- Mm hmm.
- Both of us started with the towel,
you used a pillow at first didn't you?
- Ah no, I went to the towel
'cause I thought I was man enough.
- Yeah.
- It wasn't, but it took a little while to get used to.
- It takes a while to get used to.
And now both of us are fine without anything.
- Yeah.
- So you know, it's a progression.
This, if you're really tight, this might be a while.
You can even roll back and forth a little bit like this.
- Mm hmm.
- You can do some angels while you're doing these.
- You can roll up and down.
- Yep, you can roll up and down.
- You should feel the ball kinda work into the muscles.
Not on the bones, but into the muscle
between the spine and the shoulder blade.
And it should feel like a hurt so good.
- Yeah again, this is a great way to start.
Then you can progress to laying down on the floor.
- Sure.
- Where you can actually,
you can use a sock if that's too much.
You can use a tennis ball.
- Yep.
- We're gonna mention the Backpod here too.
The Backpod was developed by a physical therapist
from New Zealand.
- Yeah.
- And the guy is really knowledgeable.
He used it to initially treat costochondritis.
Which Brad has a little bit of that himself.
- Right, it works great for that for me.
I've been happy.
- So but, it's really good for posture.
He was talking about some of the golfers
that are really happy because it's increased
their range of motion with golfing.
- Oh sure.
- And I, I have to be honest Brad,
I was kinda, it was so, I thought it was too expensive.
- Sure.
- And Brad and I understand products.
We've made some products ourself,
and there's expensive molds to be made,
and if you don't make it in China it's, you know.
- Mm.
- Anyway, so this ends up being pretty pricey.
But I love mine.
I mean I use it all the time.
I actually have two of 'em now.
I keep one in our cabin.
- Yeah.
- And the days I don't do this,
I start getting some of that knot pain.
- Sure.
- Shoulder, upper shoulder pain.
- Right.
- I just, I literally won't skip a day with this now.
- So when we can start traveling again,
you'll take it with you in your suitcase?
- Yeah I will.
(laughs)
So face the wall again Brad.
It's the same thing.
I'm hitting different spots.
It's shaped really nice.
This is really tough.
You can run your car over it.
But I'm getting right in between
the shoulder blade and the spine again.
And I'm just hittin' different spots
as I meditate in the morning.
I do my stretches.
(laughs)
So I'm gonna go ahead and do it Brad.
- Oh yeah, absolutely.
- So I'm gonna put it down, but again you can,
you don't have to spend any money.
You can definitely use a tennis ball,
and a tennis ball with a towel over the top
probably feels similar to this.
This is just for convenience.
- Well here, just roll.
I'm gonna show you.
So you just take a towel like this
when he's talking about that.
And it just adds a little cushion.
- Yeah, it makes it, it kinda blunts it a little bit.
- Mm hmm.
- And that, a lot of times people use a pillow too,
along with it.
But I've gotten to the point,
I don't need the pillow, I don't need the towel.
And I just lay on there,
and I go ahead and do some deep breathing.
And I go ahead and bring the arms up and down like this.
I'll do my floor angels I guess.
And then I move over to a different spot.
I actually do leg stretches while I'm doing these.
- [Brad] That's right you're saying you get-
- I'm doing multiple things at once.
- [Brad] Two birds with one stone.
- But this, I, I am serious,
this has been probably the biggest change to my posture
that I've experienced in my lifetime.
I mean, in all seriousness, without a doubt.
- I believe you Bob.
- I'm trying to talk you into it.
'Cause whenever I do, I go running right after this.
- Yeah.
- I just feel so straight up and down.
- Sure, sure.
I mean, I don't feel that about my posture.
I just feel it good.
It feels good and it takes my costochondritis away.
In other words, chest pain that is from costochondritis,
which is another video.
But anyway.
- Do you think it helped your shoulder range of motion?
'Cause you have tight shoulders.
- Ah, not really. - Not really.
- Not, you know, if I could just, I can't honestly say that.
- Say that, sure.
- But it definitely-
- Helped your posture.
- And my costochondritis, which is big.
Because when you have chest pain,
you wanna know if you're gonna have a heart attack.
And so it eliminates that and I-
- Yeah that's not a small thing in life is it?
- Yeah.
(laughs)
- So I'm not quite as tall as you
when I'm kneeling down am I?
(laughs)
Alright, remember Brad and I can fix just about anything.
- Except for-
- A broken heart.
- You bet.
- But we're working on it.
- That, that kinda would help me with the costo,
it kinda relates, it's all.