- Hi, I'm Bob Schrupp, Physical Therapist.
- Brad Heineck, Physical Therapist.
- Together we are the most famous
physical therapists on the internet.
- In our opinion, of course.
- Brad, today we're gonna talk about
having tricep pain.
- Mm Hm.
- That's the muscle underneath the arm, right?
- Right, right there.
- And first off, I wanna make sure
that the pain is coming from the tricep
and it's not coming from your neck or shoulder,
'cause quite often you can get pain
that refers down into the arm,
and there's a simple test to know really, Brad,
if you rub on this area
and you find a tender spot,
it's probably from the tricep.
- Sure.
- If it's not, you know
if it's from the neck
and quite often you'll see pain that comes all the way down
then you rub on this area,
it really doesn't even hurt there.
- Sure. - The problem is up here.
- And also if you're moving your neck all around,
it would be uncomfortable.
- Right, there's other signs.
And occasionally, like I said,
you could even have a shoulder pain so bad
that it could refer down the arm too.
But in most instances here,
you maybe were doing
some type of lifting or strengthening
and you tore your tri, or probably had minor tears
in your tricep, or it's tricep strain.
I've had this injury, Brad.
- Sure.
- And, and it's very interesting.
What you'll find is, and I used to do do dips,
I still do dips,
is that the pain just doesn't seem to go away.
It's a nagging thing that just keeps going on,
so you need to do something like this.
What that normally means is that
there was a minor tear in there
and that it started to lay down scar tissue.
And scar tissue lays down
in an erratic fashion, Brad.
Doesn't it?
- Yeah, he's trying to show a model
- Like a cobweb.
- Right. And I always think of muscle fibers,
are actually like straws
that lie on top of each other
in a nice uniform line pattern.
- They line up.
- But, not like this.
They're like this.
And so they slide in and out.
- So what happens, this is like a scar.
Like, if you got a scar that breaks open
every time you start to use it again,
that's what's happening.
Is it breaks open
and has to go through the healing process again.
Sorry for taking so long.
But this, you have to understand,
is why we're doing this.
- You bet. - So what you're gonna do is
let's say it's Brad's right arm
that's giving him trouble,
you know the tricep, to put it on relaxed,
a good way is just to keep it straight like this.
- Right.
And now the, the tricep is nice and relaxed.
Generally, it's gonna probably be
in about the mid belly of the tricep
and all you gotta do is, take the other arm
and you're gonna use your fingers,
and you can put 'em, you know,
one on top of each other like this,
or two together, or three together.
And you're really gonna need
a good strong tool here,
to do the rubbing.
So basically you're gonna go across
and you're gonna rub across the,
the part that's sore, Brad.
- Versus up and down.
- Right. We're going to cross the fibers,
you're breaking those fibers up.
And, and again, we're not just moving skin here.
We're getting deep down
into the muscle
- (wincing) And it can be a little uncomfortable.
- Yeah. - And tell them the rule about
when to, to stop.
- Right.
Basically if you do this,
and after a minute or so, it's getting worse.
It's not getting better.
It's not going down.
Then it's probably too sore.
It's probably too fired up to do this.
I'd take an ice pack and throw it on there
and try it in a couple days again.
If it's starting to get a little bit better
maybe even a little bit numb, that's a good sign.
That's what we want to see.
- After a minute or so?
- After a minute or so.
Now you can take your fingers and, and rub like this.
You can even use your thumb as kind of a base here.
And so like this, right. You know what I'm talking about?
- Get that thumb in here and reach over.
- Right.
- And, and you'll, you'll know.
Where, if you're doing this to yourself
you gotta go into the muscle belly
and you'll find that
- You'll find that spot.
Yeah.
- And you run right across there.
- And it might even feel a little ropy in there.
- Yup.
- Like that muscle's tightened on it.
That's a very good point.
When you, when you've done a lot of it,
like Brad and I have,
I can actually feel the spot.
I can go, yeah.
You can feel, it just doesn't feel right.
Doesn't feel like nice, smooth muscle fibers.
It feels rough.
- Right.
Some therapists say, look,
I found that Tootsie Roll.
It's like, it's harder there.
- Oh, sure.
- Yeah. That's what my teachers said in school.
- So now you can do this.
I, you know, again,
you can do this three to five minutes.
You may not be able to even last that long.
You know, it's something,
what's nice about this
you can do this,
you can even do it through your clothing.
- Sure. You bet.
- And you can do this throughout the day.
I'd like to see you do it at least once a day.
And do it for a couple weeks.
And you're gonna be surprised.
I quite often had, I had relief from it fairly quickly.
- Right.
And we've had people write in on our YouTube.
People that learned through this process
that are having good success.
- So.
- Yeah.
- All right, good luck.
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