♪ 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 therapists
on the internet.
- In our opinion of course, Bob.
- Today we want to talk about stubborn sciatica,
three advanced exercises to cure it,
especially a herniated disk.
This is an updated video.
We actually did this one before,
but we're trying to constantly improve
so we are re-doing it.
- Right, changed some information,
got some new techniques in here,
and you'll see what we're talking about.
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- Yes they're, well we could say more, Bob,
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- There you go.
All right Bob, so what I'd like to get into is
the inversion or traction
as a couple options at home, as well as some exercises.
Now I'm assuming you've already done
some of the basic exercises that we have, recommend,
and they're not working.
Or you've had this and it's just not going away.
This stretch, that stretch and nothing's working.
That's when you go to these two.
Okay, so the first option that I wanna cover, Bob.
And the reason is because
we've had a lot of success with this over the last few years
and these aren't new
but these options are things you can do at home.
- Yeh, and it's a great one to do when your stuck.
- Right.
- The typical things aren't working for sciatica.
- Right, so and it's traction,
and you know, it used to be traction was quite popular
but they used to have expensive machines to do it,
you'd have to go to the clinic or hospital.
- Thousands of dollars.
- Right, and we found out you can simply use gravity.
What we're gonna use here,
is we've got these hanging handles
that connect right to the wall, and you can purchase these.
- Yeh well, the link below,
they're not that expensive, and we're actually using
one of our wall anchors here.
That has to go right into the stud
and you gotta make sure someone knows what they're doing
to put them in properly,
and you can actually do exercises with these too.
- Right, there's a lot more you can do
other than just traction
but for this purpose, you grab ahold of the handles,
and you just gently let your body go down,
and you're gonna, you can adjust really,
infinitely, how much traction you put through your back
by the control of the weight of your legs.
- What's nice is you really, if you don't feel safe,
you can leave your feet on the ground the entire time.
- Right, just like I'm doing now,
or you can go like this.
- Yeh, what's nice is the wall
keeps your back perfectly straight
while you're getting the traction.
- Yeah, and you also get benefits of good posture,
with your shoulders as well as shoulder benefits.
- Yeh.
- But this is a really nice thing.
Now, if you don't know if traction helps,
one thing you can do, you know,
and you probably don't,
a lot of people don't have a pull-up bar at home,
if you can go to someplace that has a pull-up bar,
or something you can hold onto, and just hang.
- And see if your back feels better
when you're in that position.
- If that's the case, these will definitely be,
they're better than a pull up bar...
- Yeh, it's nice you can do in your own home.
But these hold 275 pounds, each.
- Right, so you could be you know,
a 500 pound person and still deal with that.
- So let's go on to the next one, Brad.
- Okay, another form of traction
that has become more and more popular
is the inversion table.
We like the Teeters made by Teeter.
Actually, the name of the gentleman who invented,
or who developed it, is Teeter.
- Shockingly enough.
- But anyway, we're not gonna go through a lot
of how to use it but if you do get
an inversion table, we have a video,
a complete video on how to set it up and how to use it.
But essentially, I'll just give you a brief demonstration.
You go back, and they're very controllable,
and right now, the weight of my trunk,
my head and my arms are acting as weight
to pull traction through my low back
- And it's got a very good device here
for securing your ankles and feet.
- Oh yeh, this is like the Cadillac
as far as I'm concerned, of the inversion tables.
- So you're gonna spend a little bit more money on this
but these are pretty reasonable and you know,
if you can tolerate, you know,
your blood pressure can tolerate,
and you don't have any problem with your eyes.
This would be, maybe, another option for you.
- Right, watch one of our inversion table videos,
and that'll help you determine if they'll work.
- Type in, Bob And Brad Inversion Table,
in YouTube and it should pop up.
- All right, let's carry on Bob.
- Let's carry on.
- Okay, again, difficult sciatica.
Let's say Bob is a patient,
he's already tried the standard press-ups,
they're not working, every time he goes up it hurts more,
doesn't get better,
so then this is one of the advanced techniques,
we call it the Banana.
So we're gonna have Bob shift,
now let's say it's on his right leg he's got the sciatica,
we're gonna shift away from that,
so he's gonna shift his hips to the left.
But if you notice,
his knees and his shoulders stay where they are
so it puts a curve in his body
that looks like a banana, as you can see.
And then go ahead, Bob.
- And then I'm gonna try some baby press-ups.
I'm not going all the way up
because it's kinda difficult to do that.
But I'm just gonna press a little bit up like this
and see if that helps now take away the pain.
Remember with these, we're trying to take the pain
as far away from the body first.
So I like to see symptoms in my feet or calf get better,
and for aggressively,
get better up the leg as we move along.
- Right, so eventually the pain's just up in the buttock,
and hopefully just to the back.
Now, you'll find when you do the Banana,
within the first, usually five press-ups,
if it's gonna get better, you'll...
- If it's gonna work, it's gonna work.
- Yeh, you're gonna notice, oh this better.
If that doesn't work
then we can go to this next one,
and I have had a lot of luck with this,
with people who are stubborn, have really stubborn sciatica.
If that one doesn't work,
or the traction that we had just mentioned
earlier in the video doesn't work,
I'll try this.
And lay in this position so...
- He's laying in the hook line position.
- Hook line position but a critical thing,
lets say, it's my right leg that has the pain,
I'm going to lift my hips up,
shift it away from the pain, and set it down.
That's step one.
Step two is,
I'm gonna take my knees, and I'm gonna hold them here,
and gently go over to... - If you can't grab the knees,
you can grab underneath the thigh too.
- Right yeh, and go like this and typically on this one,
by the time you get to here, people say,
oh that's feeling okay, and then I'll say,
oh yeah, my leg is starting to feel better,
and if that's the situation, then you're gonna hold it here.
My shoulders are still flat to the table or the bed
and we're gonna hold it, and monitor that leg pain,
and as long as the leg pain continually gets better,
you can hold it here up to 30 seconds.
I've done that many times.
- Now in this case, you know,
you actually left the feet on the bed,
which is fine,
some people actually have it further up,
I mean, you can vary how far the knees are up.
Some people go up, like that. - Yep, that's a good plane.
- And some people keep it all the way down there,
or somewhere in between.
- Good point Bob.
And actually, once you get used to this
and if things are going good,
like Bob said, it varies.
I've had people do this, and then stick one leg out
and it actually puts a little more pressure
to help eliminate that leg pain all the way.
- Absolutely gotta be pain free though,
you wanna see symptoms getting better, again,
you know, if you have symptoms all the way into the foot,
that should get better first,
then this, then this.
- You don't want things to get worse.
- Yeh, if you do this and you start going over
and it starts to get worse and it hurts more,
don't think you're gonna push through it
and its gonna be okay.
Just forget about it
- Stop immediately.
So, good luck with that.
- Yep, good luck with trying one of these.
Hopefully they'll help you.
- Moving along with your sciatica.
- Exactly, these can be tough.