♪ 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 therapist on the internet.
- In our opinion of course
- Wonder if this mic is okay.
- Yeah. Well.
- I don't know.
- Thanks Bob.
- Today, Brad, we're gonna talk about the best
shoulder rotator cuff strengthening exercises.
Well, basically it starts here.
You need to have a core for the shoulder
- Right.
- Just like you need to have core for your legs and arms.
- Right. So if you strengthen your legs
it doesn't matter how strong your
quadriceps and hamstrings are.
If your core is not strong, because this is where it starts.
So this is kinda like where the shoulder starts.
- Right. The core for the shoulder.
- Exactly. Or the core you can think
of the foundation or the base.
So why should, why should we go on further, Bob?
- I don't know.
- Let's look at, let's look at this
in a little more detail.
Here, of course we got Gumby.
Don't forget. But we we're gonna look
to Gumby's right our left.
the shoulder joint or the GH, glenohumeral, joint.
- Glenohumeral joint.
- That's what everyone thinks
about is a shoulder joint.
- Right?.
- There's a ball kind of a shallow socket
and a lot of motion comes from there.
But if you look at this, right
here's the scapula
- The shoulder blade.
- Exactly. Now when you lift up like this,
on this model that's all you see of movement here
but in a real human
- This is moving also.
- Yeah. And just because they have to attach it
somehow so it doesn't fall off.
They don't have the muscles that we're
gonna try and strengthen.
- Right.
- That really has motion.
So if we look at it.
Here, we have a scapula here.
- Yeah, there we go.
- Now watch this.
When this goes up, see all that motion
and you really can see it with those muscles there
here we have the rotator cuff muscles.
And then when you...
- Is that two to one ratio.
I don't remember.
- Three to one.
- Three to one is what I was taught by
George Davies, as a matter of fact.
- Sure, the man.
- You bet.
Okay. So if this scapula is, doesn't have strength
you're not gonna have strength here.
And it's just the way it is.
- [Bob] Yeah. It's, it's gonna hurt you in sports.
It's gonna hurt you in any athletic event.
It's gonna hurt you with lifting.
- If you're a thrower of any sort
make sure you focus on the exercise.
- So we're focusing the exercise.
They are focusing on the shoulder blade, the scapula.
How do you get that stronger?
- Right.
- And you know, these muscles are really
kind of interesting and they got kind of cool names.
- We got the upper traps
the middle traps and the lower traps.
Most people are familiar with those.
But what about the romboids they're back here as well.
The, the serratus anterior.
That's underneath the scapula, here.
- Yeah. That's the one that gives you that pushup motion.
We're gonna go through all these
- And then the laveda scapula.
- Oh yeah.
- Which is right up from here up to the neck, right?
- Well actually goes up to the base, yeah.
And that one's troublesome, 'cause that can tighten
up and cause headaches and that kind of thing.
That's another story though.
- When I was in therapy school,
we'd always say see ya lavedor.
- Yeah.
- I mean that's, that's, what's a therapy joke?
- Yeah. We better get a...
[Laughs]
So how do we strengthen it, Bob.
- All right. Well I bet you're gonna show us.
- Well, I'm not gonna be because I see some new people.
- Oh, hello. Thanks for coming.
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- All right.
- So let's get going there.
I've divided this into four different basic movements.
The first one, Bob, can you hold this off to the side?
- Sure.
- You can start up against the wall is just one option.
We're gonna show you a couple options.
- I think you better move him out of the way completely.
- Oh yeah. Get him out.
Get Leopold out.
Elbows. The key is elbows must be straight.
And all I'm gonna do is get all this motion
from my scapulars.
- [Bob] So you're kind of rounding out
and then you're bringing your shoulder blades together here.
- Right.
- [Bob] But you're keeping your arms
straight the entire time.
- Right. Now this would be early phase strengthening,
for this exercise.
Bob, you wanna show 'em as you get stronger
or if you're already strong.
- Well, you can also go this way.
- Sure.
- I mean, this is almost like the same thing.
You're putting a little more weight now on your
on your shoulders.
- Right.
- And again, I'm going up.
- Elbows are locked and we're getting
all the motion from the shoulder blades.
If this is too easy
you can go right into that pushup position, right?
- Well, by the way, what I just,
just for the full disclosure
I actually lost my serratus anterior muscle.
- Did you find it?
- No, I didn't find it.
- Actually his serratus is not working.
- Yeah
- You had a neurological issue with it.
- Yeah I had a... my long thoracic nerve got taken out
and it got inflamed.
- Okay. So you're gonna see a problem here.
- Maybe you'll see it. Maybe you won't
- Well, you, you, yeah, you pretty
much would have to have the camera right up here.
But you can see this, this scapula, right here.
Stay right there, Bob.
Down. There you go.
I can put my hand right in this hollow spot here.
Yeah. His serratus scapular is not working well.
- Serratus anterior
- I'm sorry.
Okay. So now the next motion
we're gonna get to the traps.
- Traps.
- We're gonna do this one.
- Right. So we're squeezing the
shoulder blades together and
usually we, what we'd like to think about,
okay you got these two shoulder blades.
You're not only pull 'em together.
You're trying to put 'em down.
It's a, it's a visual thing in your mind.
You're trying to think that they're
gonna go down into your pockets.
- Right.
- Is what the, the cuing is.
- Right. And we're gonna show you some the another way to
do that with some theraband in just a little bit.
Okay. And the next one.
So we're pushing out, we're pulling back now we're
gonna do the lower muscles that do this downward motion.
- This is where dips come in.
- Yep.
- Now it's nice if you'd have a dip bar.
- Right.
But if you got good solid chairs like this, it works good.
The key, again, elbows have to be locked.
I'm not doing this.
That's not gonna work.
Elbow's locked. And, and I just go.
These are not real easy.
So what you can do if you're recovering from a weak muscle,
from an injury, whatever. You're gonna step on a stool
and take off some of the weight through your legs.
And then work 'em works really good actually.
- And actually, if you're a little taller like me
you don't need a stool.
I can still like this.
- Right.
- Bring my knees in. Then I can.
- If you're over six foot
depending on the height of your chair, okay?
- If you're not a midget, like Brad.
- Then if you have some dumbbells
you do need some weight or a theraband for this one.
- How much weight?
- These five pounds.
- It might start off with more, even on a professional.
- Right.
Especially some of these big, stronger guys.
You may go up to 40 or 50 pounds possibly.
And just shoulder shrugs.
Okay. Now I do wanna go
over the options with the wonderful theraband.
- Sure.
- You can do the exact same thing.
You don't have to go out and buy weights,
theraband is cheaper.
You can take it with you on trips, you know
in your hotel room.
- Because they hook into the door.
A lot of times
- Exactly.
- Close the door on them.
You want me to be the door or?
- Nope. I'm gonna show you something, Bob.
- Oh, okay.
- Yeah. Oh, oh for that one, actually, I'm gonna
I'm gonna put it right here.
We pretend this is a doorknob.
Then you can show my...
- Okay.
- Show my scapular motion.
- So again, look at it.
How it's pulling the shoulder blades together
and it's a great way to get strengthening
so he can go up, you know, up more up this way, Brad.
- Oh. Yeah.
- Like that. There you go.
That's what I was looking for.
- That changes.
- Yeah. And he could go to the one that he was just doing.
And then he could even go palm down and pull that way.
- Right.
- In some of the lower traps and, and the rhomboids.
- Yeah that really gives a nice overall workout
to those posterior muscles.
- It's nice about that one.
It's just, it's fast to do.
And you feel like you're really doing something.
- Exactly.
- Working on that core. Core of the shoulders
is basically what we're trying to do.
- Now for the push up ones.
The way I like to do this one, if you have
these is I double it up, both hands on one.
You gotta loop.
Put your hand in there, like this, over the back,
like this, straighten the elbows
and the same activity is going on.
And you get that nice support across your back
with this one as well?
- Yep. Looks good.
- Now this one you pretty much need
to have something overhead.
I haven't figured out how to do this without getting
the theraband attached to something overhead.
And you're just gonna go down like this.
So if you're in a hotel and you're doing it.
You're probably, you're gonna have to bring your
drill and a nine bolt.
- Probably deface the hotel.
- I'm just kidding.
You may have to just skip that one. Okay.
- I got another one for you, Brad.
You wanna see it?
- Okay. Yeah.
So this one, you start with your arms above you.
Just take the stretch band like this
and you're gonna go ahead and pull it down like this.
Do you see what I'm doing here, Brad?
- Oh yeah.
- So I'm going down.
See how I'm strengthening.
- Yeah
- It actually works pretty good.
- Yeah. As long as you've got that kind range of motion
'cause my shoulder's a little tighter.
I think I can do that.
I might be able to,
'cause my shoulder are just inherently tight.
I was kind of born that way.
Oh yeah.
That works.
Good. Nice idea, Bob.
- And you can actually make it a little closer
put your hands closer even and really work it.
- Oh yeah.
I see what you're saying.
Oh yeah. Yeah. Nice, Bob.
Okay.
- There is a whole series of ones you can do prone too.
Brad, do you wanna show some of those?
- Well, I wanted to show the, finish up the pull up ones.
- Okay.
- If you don't have weight again, the here, hand here,
step like this and you got a fairly good resistance there.
Up and down
- [Bob] That's a good one to do.
- [Brad] Yeah, it works real well.
There we go, Bob
And you know, you work these muscles
particularly these muscles here and it just relaxes you.
Cause all those, those are the muscles that tighten
up with all the tension
- The stress through the today.
- Yeah. So I think if you're an office worker,
you're all stressed out working on the computer.
- It's gotta double benefit
- Pull this right outta your drawer and start working it.
- All right.
- Get that stress worked on.
So again, Bob, this is,
this is really getting close to our core part.
Not just the core of the shoulder
but the part that we're working on fixing
but we can't get to it yet.
- That's right.
We can fix just about anything...
except for a broken heart
- Oh yeah, there it is.
Yeah. We're getting it though.
- We're getting it there.
- We're not stopping until we get it.
- Yeah. We're working on it.
Thanks.