♪ Bob and Brad ♪
♪ The two most famous ♪
♪ Physical therapists ♪
♪ On the internet ♪
- Hi folks, I'm Bob Schrupp, physical therapist.
- Brad Heineck, physical therapist.
- And we're the most physical therapists on the internet.
- In our opinion of course, Bob.
- So if you have back pain or sciatica,
we're gonna show you how to get up and down
from the floor today.
This is something that some of you
may have trouble doing,
especially if you have bad knees
or you're just overall not that strong.
But it's important that you be able to
get up and down from the floor
for a lot of activities because it's just gonna be a lot
easier on your back if you could do
some activities on the floor,
especially once you do press ups on the floor.
- Right, one of our common exercises for sciatica
is laying on your stomach and doing press ups.
It's best to do them on a firm surface,
like a carpeted floor; your bed is not so bad.
But I always tell my patients,
if you cannot get on the floor safely or comfortably,
the bed is okay.
- Yeah, exactly.
- But as soon as you can get down to the floor
using this technique and you feel comfortable with it,
this is the way you go.
- All right so we're gonna start off with
you need to be able to do a lunge.
So a lunge is you're going forward like this
and you're dipping down like that.
Now, to help yourself out,
it's good to use a pillow to put on the floor.
It's also you wanna be nearby
a stable object that you can hold onto
to lower yourself down to the floor.
So I'm gonna lunge, I'm gonna grab onto the chair,
but the first thing I'm doing is
I'm keeping my back completely straight.
- The pillow, by the way, is for your knee.
- Right, what did I say?
- Nothing, just so we know why we're using the pillow.
- So I'm holding on, you might even hold on to
a higher object if you're as tall as me,
to a countertop, but I'm keeping the back straight,
I'm trying to keep the arch in the low back,
and I go forward like this with the lunge.
This should've been back here like this.
And I'm gonna lunge down like this.
So I go from here down to here,
just a good way to keep my back straight.
- Yeah, and you can see Bob's keeping nice and tall,
good posture.
- Now, you can also put one hand on the thigh here
and one hand over here,
and now that gives you leverage on both sides basically.
- Using the chair works very well,
but the chair has to be a steady and solid chair,
and one with armrests works better,
and you'll see why the reason is.
- All right, so from this position now,
now you're just gonna go ahead
and bring the other knee back like this.
And again, you can use the arm of the chair
to help keep you supported.
From this position, now you're gonna walk your arms
or slide your arms down the legs
and get down to the quadruped position,
that's where you got support on all four extremities.
- And Bob continues to maintain this
good, strong back posture.
- Yep, so then you can walk your hands out like this,
and keep walking down,
and meanwhile you're gonna go ahead
and straighten one of the legs.
- Yep, one at a time.
- Yep, and then straighten the other leg,
and then you're gonna go down to the elbows,
and now you're down onto the floor.
Now, you can go ahead and roll onto your side.
I'm gonna go ahead and roll over
all the way onto my back,
and now I'm in this position that I wanna be apparently
for some reason I wanna be down here on the floor.
But let's say you fall, you wanna get up.
You're gonna go ahead and slide
one of your legs up like this;
that's gonna help you roll this way then.
I'm gonna keep everything straight:
back, neck, everything, rolling like a log basically.
So I'm gonna tuck my arm underneath
and roll over onto my side and then over onto my stomach.
Now, in this position, you're gonna get up on your elbows,
and then you're gonna go ahead
and you're gonna start lifting your buttock,
and walking your hands back.
This is something if you're really weak,
it's something you wanna try with a family member
or with a therapist before you do it on your own obviously.
- Right and if you do it with a family member,
make sure you have a good belt on,
'cause that's always a good place to help assist with
is a belt versus an arm or a clothing.
- Now, if you're not near a chair,
you might have to crawl to a chair to get to it.
I don't know about you Brad,
but we've seen many many people
that have fallen in their lifetime and couldn't get up.
- Oh yeah, right.
- And sometimes they lay for 24 hours or 48 hours
before somebody finds them, it's really kinda tragic.
So from this position, I'm gonna work my way all the way up,
and I'm even put my hands on my thighs like this
and work myself up.
I can also grab onto the chair,
get myself up to the upright position.
Now from this position, I'm gonna go ahead
and this is probably the hardest step here
for a lot of people is you gotta really
probably lean on the chair
and you're gonna bring this leg forward like this.
- Especially if the person has back pain
plus knee problems.
- Right, I'm trying to keep the back straight
the entire time.
- Thinking about tightening that core up,
supporting the back with your abdominal core muscles.
- So now this is, if you're really quite weak,
what you might do is grab this side of the chair
and just push yourself up enough
to get your butt on the chair like this,
and then you can work from there and get up again.
If that's not an issue, you can go up like this,
I'm pushing off here, I'm pushing off here,
I'm getting to this point,
and then I can just stand right up.
- Right, right.
- So the big thing, again, if you're weak,
you're gonna wanna avoid being on the floor.
But if you find yourself in one of these situations
where you're gonna need to get up off the floor,
at least now you know some of the steps to do to help you.
- Exactly, or again if you're doing them for your press ups.
But if you're doing them for press ups,
you're probably doing it relatively comfortably.
But you still use the similar mechanics.
- Yeah, anything else you wanna add, Brad?
- No, I think that was a good coverage, Bob.
- All right, thanks for watching.