♪ Bob and Brad ♪
♪ The two most famous ♪
♪ Physical therapists ♪
♪ On the internet ♪
- Hi, folks.
I'm Bob Scrhupp, physical therapist.
- And I am Brad Heineck,
physical therapist. - Together we are the
most famous physical therapists
on the internet. - In our opinion, Bob.
In our opinion.
I'm feeling theatric.
- Dramatics.
Today we're gonna talk about the worst stretches
for low back pain,
and the best alternatives. And these are by
Dr. Stuart McGill, - Right.
- who we consider probably the foremost authority
on back pain in the world.
- And I do not jump into the boat on things right away,
cause at first, - Oh.
- it was like, well, yeah,
but I'm not gonna get into it
til I actually think about it for awhile.
It's been a few months. - Do more
research on it. - Yeah.
Right, so anyways, it's by Dr. Stuart McGill, a PhD.
And so it's good information.
Let's get right into it.
Four common stretches that - Sure.
- you should not do.
Now, as Dr. McGill says, and I think we agree,
sometimes these stretches feel good
in the short term, - Yes, they do.
- but they're not getting to the core of the problem,
they're not gonna give you long-term success.
- You'll find these by the way, in his book "Back Mechanic."
- Right, exactly.
- I do wanna mention that.
- Yeah, and that book is written
for the lay person - Yes, it is.
- if you wanna purchase it and get more detail
so you have it right in front of you.
- Do you want me to do some of these, Brad,
or what do you wanna do? - No, I wanna do them.
- Okay.
- I don't really know, Bob,
I haven't thought that far ahead.
No, I'll go ahead.
And so this typically, you can do it in your bed,
I think you're probably better off on the floor,
but don't do that, 'cause we don't wanna do them anyways.
- Yeah, we don't want do that anyway, yeah.
- Single knee to chest.
I mean, there may be some other reasons
why you might do this,
but if it's for your low back, we're not,
we're gonna say - Yeah, but if it's
for your hip, that's fine.
- Yes, there's better options,
and we are gonna show the options
after we go through the ones you shouldn't do.
Single knee to chest.
That would be either leg, okay?
Now, double knee to chest,
you know, there was a time 50 years ago,
these were the Williams, - William's Flexion Exercises.
- And no more.
- Right.
- You know, not for this. - Mourned by everybody.
- So don't do this.
And of course, you want to show the flexion and standing?
- Well, just talking about
reaching to the floor. - fingertips to the,
yep, exactly.
- This one I can tell you, do not do.
- And, but that one, you know, 50 years ago,
you would've, you had a back pain,
would've stretched the muscles.
- Right.
- Not anymore. They've figured that out.
That very, - See that, very common.
- temporary relief. - People doing this.
- Yep.
- So. - So, and the last one,
this one's a little more advanced,
if I can say is,
the one where you take your leg up like this
and rotate to stretch the hip and the low back.
We're gonna avoid that one as well.
So let's go into the ones you should do.
- Let's do it.
- All right.
Now, the interesting thing about this
is he gets real specific about the number of reps.
- Sure.
- Through the research. - Want me to?
- Yeah, go ahead, yeah.
The infamous cat, and camel. - Cat camel.
Yeah, he calls it cat camel.
- If he says cat camel,
I'm sticking with that. - Yeah, that's right.
- Although I don't really care what you call it.
- So when you're bringing
the hump up, - Yep.
- you're bringing the head down, right?
Is that what he does? - Yeah, yep.
- And then legs should be good shoulder-width apart.
- Yeah, he is specific on that.
- Hands are somewhat right below
the shoulders. - Mm hm.
- And then you go the opposite way.
- So then the arch is here and the head goes up, yep.
And do this seven to eight repetitions,
and that's all you need.
- Once a day?
- Yeah. Well that can be done
more times a day. - More times a day.
- You know, I think there's going to be a part
of how you feel with it.
- Sure, how you do with it.
- And you know, in your work,
you may not be able to do this at work.
(Brad laughs)
I mean, I remember talking to patients,
do it before you go to work,
when you get home from work,
and then later on in the evening,
to get three times a day. - Right.
- The next one is the hip flexor stretch.
And this one I do want you to do,
'cause this is not good for my back.
- Which, on the floor?
- Kneeling, yeah. - Okay. Gotcha.
- And actually, Bob,
can you do this one facing the camera?
- I sure can.
- There, and it's because
the hip flexor muscle is one we're getting at here.
And if that's tight,
which it is on a lot of people who sit for a living
as far as driving or at a computer,
we want to get to the psoas muscles specifically.
So Bob is kneeling down.
We just have a pad,
you can use a pillow, - Structured this way.
- or carpet.
So he's,
I'll show you from this side.
He's bringing this forward.
Good posture.
Now the key is,
- Lifting this arm, right?
- Yep, the same arm. That right knee is down,
and then you're gonna lean this way slightly,
- Sure. - to get that hip,
that psoas muscle, p-s-o-a-s,
the psoas, not,
(Bob laughs)
it's like psychology, puh-sychology.
But anyways, there we go.
And we're going to work that one
two to three seconds.
We're going to hold that - All you do,
- six to seven repetitions.
- Gotcha. - Yup. That's it.
That's kinda nice.
You know, none of this
15, 20 repetition stuff. - Right. You need this, Brad?
- Well, I'll take it home with me.
I use it in my chair. - Okay.
- Anyways, now we're gonna go,
this next one is a really good stabilizer for the core,
but it may not be for everyone, cause,
- No, I wouldn't do this.
- There's a component of balance
and it's a little higher level.
It's called the hip airplane.
- Ooh. - Ooh.
So what you're gonna do is
we're gonna tighten up the core.
You're gonna stand on one leg
and I call this, or we call this, the golfer's lift
where you go over like this, - Right, exactly.
- with one leg back like that.
But we're not gonna go that far.
We're just gonna stand on one leg,
tighten the core up.
First you find a neutral position
that feels comfortable,
tighten the core up so it maintains that,
and then you're gonna lean forward.
The foot that's on the floor, you're gonna, they say,
"grip the floor."
In other words, kind of take your toes
and get into the floor
so you feel stable.
And then you think about your belly button
and you rotate it in towards this leg or to the left
and then we're going to go to the right.
You see, I have the Booyah stick
or you want something that you'll,
even the wall or a piece of furniture,
so you can balance.
To be honest with you,
if you can do this without something to balance,
your back is probably not that bad.
I'm thinking, I don't know.
And I'm, maybe when I was younger, and I can try it.
And his goal is to start here and then here
and work out to like this,
and that's why he calls it the airplane.
- Sure.
- And this is, uh, challenging.
- He works with high-level athletes sometimes, too.
- Exactly. - So he works the whole span.
- Right. I'm thinking if you're a 55, 60-year old person
with back pain,
- Check that one off.
- Yeah, there might be some other options.
The last one is the spine hygiene.
I like this.
- Yes. - If you're at work
and you sit all day long,
like at a computer,
unfortunately, for like truck drivers,
you wouldn't be able to do this while you're driving
you'll have to wait 'till you get done.
But, if you sit longer than 20 minutes,
then after that 20 to 30-minute time period, stand up,
and hands behind so you get good posture
and you, you know,
you want to get that neutral posture,
and then from here,
we're going to arms up overhead,
take a deep breath in and expand that chest out.
You're gonna arch the back
and then relax.
And that just opens things up,
takes the stress off that low back.
- Puts the spine in the right alignment.
- Yep, exactly.
And you can, you know,
I think, he didn't mention it in the book,
but I would do that two or three times
if it feels good. - Right.
- And you gotta get back to work, right?
- Well, the thing is, when you've been sitting for awhile,
you start to think this is normal.
- Right.
Exactly. - And you get up,
and you start walking this way,
- Right, yep. - over time.
- So if you get up and go do all these exercises,
you're going to find out,
oh, this is how I'm supposed to be.
- And you know,
you're gonna get through those sleepy periods better
if you do this.
Your production at work is going to increase
taking these mini breaks to do your stretch.
Your back is gonna feel better.
It's a win-win situation. - Yeah, you're taking in
some oxygen,
it's gonna wake you up. - Yep.
- Exactly.
So if your employer says, - Plus, I can hit you.
- Ow! Geez, give me that. - Oh, sorry Brad.
You almost tripped that trigger in me,
that self-defense. - We got this on film.
- Yeah, on film.
- And I was, I was about to
bring out a good point. - Yeah.
- I know. - It's not that
important anymore. - Now he doesn't even remember
cause I knocked it out of him.
- Well, once again, I'm gonna say,
be careful in all that you do for obvious reasons,
- Oh, yes.
- Oh, the giveaway,
this is big. - Yeah.
We're only 8 minutes and 53 seconds into this,
we got time for the giveaway. - We're setting records.
- That's great.
- So this week we're giving away
a SleepOvation mattress
- And it protects you too.
- Yeah, that's right, it's safe.
This is actually just a sample of one,
and you can see the inner guts of it.
- The inner guts,
that's an interesting way to put,
but yeah, 700. - 700 tiny mattresses
that have air channels
and this is a proprietor foam that really is comfortable.
- You can go like this on those air channels.
Remember we did that that one time?
- Let's play piano.
So, it doesn't come this way,
it comes in the size that you want
and it's covered up and,
- It is free.
They'll send it to your house, and it's fun.
You open it up and it,
it opens up slowly, yeah. - Expands.
But these are the most comfortable mattresses
that we have ever seen.
- Right.
- Maybe there's better ones out there, I don't know,
but I haven't seen them.
- Well, I gotta admit,
I did sleep on a memory foam mattress over the weekend
at someone else's house, friend's house.
- How was it?
- Well, it was better than some mattresses,
but I was happy to get home.
- Sure. So it's better than some mattresses,
but not this mattress.
- That's why I said I was happy to get home,
to my mattress. - I wanna clarify,
I wanna clarify, because they're being very nice
and letting us give one of these away.
- Yeah, that is nice.
- So, all right.
- Be careful. - Check it out, it's at
bobandbrad.com, go to the
giveaway section. - Oh, that's right.
- You can also go to Facebook, Bob and Brad.
It'll be pinned to the
top of the page. - Top of the page, right.
- All right. - Yeah, and then, they'll,
- We got it all done now.
- Yeah. Goodbye.
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