♪ Bob and Brad ♪
♪ The two most famous ♪
♪ physical therapists on the internet. ♪
- Good pasture.
- Yep. 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.
- Push on these spots to make your shoulder pain go away.
It sounds like magic.
- Wow. Just like hitting that magic button.
- Yeah. Turn it off.
- There you go, so cool.
- Trigger point therapy, we're referring to.
- Okay, good.
- And Brad and I, I think we can be honest.
We're not really trigger point practitioners
would you say?
- Right.
Little bit, but we're certainly not -
- Experts.
- Right.
- But we both have people working for us
that are good at this.
- Right.
They're the, I call them the the resident expert
and let them do what they do best.
- Right. And they get good results with it.
- Sure.
- So we are believers in it.
We just haven't been doing it ourselves.
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Bob and Brad,
cuz you guys look like you could be our friends.
- Yeah. We look likable don't we?
- Yeah.
All right, so let's talk about this.
This is, this work was on,
based on the work of Janet Travell
and Bill Simmons - or David Simmons.
I'm sorry.
Both MDs kind of dedicated their life's work to this,
- To trigger point.
To trigger points.
- Okay. Yep.
- They got the textbooks in the area.
- Sure.
- So what's interesting about it.
We're gonna talk about two muscles there
that are on your shoulder blade.
- Okay.
- Okay. The shoulder blade is,
Show right where it is, back there.
- Right there.
That's scapula.
- So we're showing it on Sam here
and there's one muscle.
This is called the spinous process right here.
There's one muscle that is above that.
And there's one muscle that's below that.
They both connect into the shoulder and affect the shoulder.
They're both part of the rotator cuff.
- Right.
And you can feel that spinous process there quite easily.
It's just that boney, prominent area right there.
So we're either talking above it or
- [Together] below it.
- Right. The muscle above it, supraspinatus.
If that's involved,
that can actually give you pain
on the side of your shoulder.
- So it's a referral pain
- Yeah, referred pain,
- which therapists, anybody in the field,
work with referral pain are well aware of it.
- So what's interesting is,
a lot of times even if these two muscles are the problem,
you might not have any pain back in the scapula.
- Sure.
- You might have it all in the shoulders.
So it could put it right on the side here.
It can actually go down the side of the arm
all the way into the wrist.
- Sure.
- Sometimes.
That's the supraspinatus.
The infraspinatus, meaning below the spine,
that can send pain to the front of the shoulder.
- So it makes diagnosis a little confusing.
- Right.
- Particularly for a rookie.
- So that could actually be
what a lot of people mistake for the bicep.
- Sure.
- So that kind of covers a lot of part of the shoulder.
The side and the front.
- Right.
- So we're gonna keep that in mind when we're treating it.
We're getting loud over here, aren't we?
- And what we find out is supraspinatus,
most often times a problem muscle,
and you would agree
we have people with pain here.
- Right.
- And it, so clinically it all makes sense.
- Yeah.
And what you'll find too, like with the infraspinatus,
quite often is
you're really gonna have trouble raising the arm too.
- Sure
- You're gonna have pain.
You're gonna have trouble
bringing your arm back like this too.
- Right.
- So these are easy treatments.
So it's certainly well worth a try.
Let's talk about the supraspinatus first.
So there's two trigger points
and I outlined them in green here.
So I'm actually gonna have Sam do the limbo here.
- Oh yeah, look at him extend.
- Yeah. So there's one there.
- Hold on big guy.
- And there's one there.
So you're gonna want to, like Brad said,
you're gonna wanna find that spine
and then you're gonna just go right above it.
- Right.
- And now what works really well for this
is either like the Thera Cane or the Back Knobber
because it's real easy to get into that spot.
- Right.
- So I find the spine,
I go right above it
and I can hit one of the spots.
And what you wanna do
is you wanna work that knot.
- Yep.
- And like 10 to 12 times,
just rubbing around, making a circle,
trying to get it to dissipate.
- And you're putting a fair amount of pressure.
It's one of those it's gonna be uncomfortable,
but it should feel like it hurts so good.
And when you're done, it should release
and clearly feel better.
- Yeah. And that's the term, release.
I think we failed to even say what a trigger point is.
It is kind of a nodule,
a hard nodule that's an irritated point.
Right, irritable.
- In the muscle belly.
So I always refer to it as,
you can feel like a,
the size of a Tootsie roll kind of in that muscle.
And hopefully everyone knows what Tootsie rolls are
across the world, I don't know.
- I would hope so.
(laughter)
- Anyway.
So there's one there,
and then there's one further down the spine
right into there.
- So yeah.
I'll show 'em on here.
- We're getting here
- Here, right here.
And then right here.
And again, you can do these 10 to 12 times.
You can do it two to three, four times a day.
- Sure.
- And work those.
- You'll know once you start working with it,
it'll be pretty clear that
- Brad why don't you show your cane method,
I mean, if you do have a cane around,
you can try a cane, especially on this one.
It's almost, you can get to it.
- A lot of my patients,
I don't say go buy one of those if you don't have it.
If you already have a hook cane they work fairly well,
particularly for the supraspinatus.
It's harder to get to the infraspinatus,
which we'll get at just a little bit.
So you can see where I'm getting there and it works well.
You can pull here, I'm pulling with the cane.
You got good leverage.
Not as nice as the bond ones,
- Yeah, these work well.
- but certainly works.
- So if you're up in the North Pole,
you can use a big candy cane.
- Bobby. You're killing me.
- Okay. That's stupid. All right, all right.
By the way,
if you wanna just have someone do it on you too, you can.
You could go up there and they could go with their knuckle
and they could work the area.
You know, if you want to try this first
to see if it's gonna give you any relief.
So that hurts, doesn't it Brad?
I mean, you can feel it.
- It's a good thing that you don't do it to your patients.
Get your resident expert.
- All right.
For the infraspinatus, now there's actually three of those.
Liz is gonna point those out.
So we got one here right below the spine.
Another one, a little more closer to the edge,
towards the middle edge of the, yeah.
So it'd be right over here, yeah.
And then there's one below that.
That's what we call the inferior angle near that.
So what now with this one, what is nice about these.
You can actually hit that,
with the knobber obviously, that's the back knobber.
But you can also use a ball.
- Sure.
- You can use a tennis ball or a lacrosse ball.
- Right.
- So Brad's gonna grab the ball.
What works well for these a lot of times
is the ball and a sock.
- Right.
- Because-
- So we can use a ball and go up to the wall,
but the problem is if you just got the ball,
it kind of can fall down and that's not very convenient.
So if you take just a regular sock
and put it in there, you know, get one of your old ones.
Cause that might stretch it out a little bit
and make it not as good a fit.
- [Bob] Yeah, you don't want to use it after that.
- Yeah, yeah.
Use your brother's or your wife's or your spouse's
or whoever and don't tell 'em.
And then you'll get it right where you want it.
And again, your body will let you know.
If you're over a bone, you'll feel it.
And it won't feel right.
But you get over that muscle and right there
I've got, I'm right on that, that target mark.
- [Bob] And see how it's a little bit at an angle too.
Yeah. You know what I mean?
You're not flat against the wall.
You're angled, which is good because
you're getting into that muscle a little bit better.
- Ooh.
Yeah, this is actually, it feels good.
You know, I don't have any problems.
I don't have any particular trigger points
but you still have that point
in your muscle and you'll you'll feel it.
And you know, it's one of those things that hurt so good.
It's like, oh, there is still some tension there
even though I'm pretty much asymptomatic.
- [Bob] Yeah. And give it a couple days.
Don't expect that the shoulder pain's gonna go away.
But sometimes when you're on those knots,
you'll actually feel the pain going into the shoulder.
- Get that yep, that referral.
- So give these a try.
You could use the Pure Wave too,
but that actually,
Alex is using is using it right now.
But the Pure Wave is a little bit tougher
to get to that area, I think.
- Well, unless someone else is doing it for you.
- Right. If someone else doing it,
- Then you're clear.
But yeah, these are a nice little trick
that you can get rid of that shoulder pain.
Oh, look at...
- Do you think you can bend like that Brad?
- Well, yeah, watch this.
(straining noise)
Yeah. All right. Maybe not.
- Thanks everybody for watching.