Hi folks, I'm Bob Shrupp, physical therapist. Brad Heineck,physical therapist.
Together, we are the most famous physical therapist on the internet. In our opinion
of course Bob.. Seven Brad. That number we really love. Seven, 60 second pain relief
exercises for a stiff neck Nobody has time anymore to do anything, do they?
Right. So it's like a quick, quick, quick, da-da-da.
but you know something Bob, seven, you know why we picked the number seven? I'm
just waiting to hear. The number seven is complete. Is it really? That's complete.
There's seven days in a week there's seven candles on the candelabra. There's
seven as they come. Where does he come up with this stuff? I learned that from a 90 year
old gentleman and he was very knowledgeable, and believe me, if he said
it, it's true. All right, well ,we have seven people here waiting right now that
are new to our Channel please take a second to subscribe to us. We provide a
video on how to stay healthy. Videos on how to stay healthy, pain free and we upload
every day, also once seven of you go over to Facebook and like us because Brad and I as
children, this is really sad, we're not liked, and now we're. There might be seven
people who did like me though Bob. That'd be a lot If I sat down with a piece of paper.
Including your dog. Let's get on with the exercises. These are the exercises we're going to do for cervica,l or start
with the upper neck, right? Right. Okay, you've got neck stiffness, I'm talking
about stiffness. We're not talking about pain or symptoms that run down the arm.
You might have pain and stiffness up in the neck. Neck or up in shoulder. Yeah, if
you've got stuff going down in your arm that's, that, we're not going to treat
that here. That's more of a McKenzie thing You may want to watch one of our McKenzie
videos. Right. McKenzie. Yup, for arm pain we've got lots of videos. They know how to find us Bob. Yeah okay,
so we're talking about the neck here, and should we get closer? Yeah, we should
get closer. I had, I had my little red pointer but I
lost it. So here we ,we got a little rubber - Yeah, what is all that about?
Well, that's another video Bob. Here you go. Here's your pointer. Oh, all right. so man
I am just all thumbs today. So we're talking about the neck. Now, if you look
at the neck we got seven cervical vertebrae and the top two are
responsible for 50% of our head movement, right to left.Yeah. So there's a lot
going on up here ,and that, as therapists that helps us decide how we're going to
treat,so we're gonna give you a quick overview of that. Yeah, so generally, if I see
someone comes in, and they have a neck that's not turning very well, I look at the C1
C2. Right. By the way, you kinda missed something Brad here. There's seven
cervical spine. Didn't I say that? Yeah but that goes along with our number
seven. Precisely. What a segue huh? so anyways if you have if you're finding that you're
turning like this, chances are you've got some tight muscles up it here.
In the upper upper cervical spine. Right. But if you can turn your head like 45
degrees each direction and then you're turning your body, you're probably
loose up in here but you had a lot of tight muscles in the lower cervical or
the lower neck. He's tight to the left. Yeah, we're gonna work on him. Let's
go after him. Maybe we better save his his treatment
for later Bob. All right .we'll let,we'll let Gumby take care of him for now.
He looks hungry. All right what's the first one Brad? Okay, first one. That's not my
favorite chair. First thing we want to do just, maybe the muscles are tight
back there, for whatever reason. We've done this before, but you're gonna go up
just below the ox but that's the bone right here ,go down and when you start to
feel some muscle there you're gonna work that and we're gonna splay it out, like this.
He's pulling his fingers apart. Right. Pulling his fingers apart, and well ,you know, if you
sit a lot, and you're on the computer a lot, and your heads forward like this
these muscles tighten up. Yup. And so it works out really good to go ahead and do
that splaying massage and also little circles. Yeah,
there we go, and you're gonna get in there and you'll know, I mean you might
feel one side is more tender than the other you'll feel a knot in there. You're
gonna, you're gonna spend more time on that side. It's hard to believe somebody would not
like this, I mean it always feels good even when you don't have anything going
on. Right.It feels good right now. It's better to have somebody else do it for you. Sixty seconds is
up Bob. We gotta go to number two.. Okay. Our famous chin tucks. In
like this. Looking at it from the back we're going
in and we're stretching. We're not going down. We're not going up. we're going straight
back yeah like I was gonna do that to Bob's face, okay. But you can
see it pulls and gently stretches those same muscles we just massaged okay? This
is a great one to do throughout the day, because one, not only does it, it's good
to get the neck moving ,but two, it realigns you, where you're supposed to be.
Ears are supposed to be over the shoulders. All right. And so, when you're
if you're finding yourself like this, and the ears are lined up with my thighs.
Right. You need to readjust and get it back into position. All about posture. The
next one is, this one is, if this feels good you make a fist, okay? You know we've
might turn fist up like this. Yep, so the thumb would go down, but you gotta get
the thumb back in there. Yeah. Okay, put it in here, right above your sternum, and
underneath your chin and then just gently grab here, and we're gonna use
that for a little fulcrum and we're gonna I wonder if they can hear you Brad. So
he's using it as a fulcrum, the idea here by the way, you can, you can overdo this
so be very gentle with this because you can get a lot of stress on the upper
neck with this but this can help loosen up and almost gives a little bit of
traction, doesn't it? Yup a little bit. You're only going to do this, if it feels good. If it doesn't feel good, you don't do it. good you don't do it right yeah okay the
O.K. Next one is rotations. We're going to work on rotation, particularly, if there's
one direction and you can see that this one goes about to here and this one is
normal, taking a nice towel roll like this or if you happen to have the Yoga
strap, yoga strap that works really nice as well. Any products we talk about or
recommend, they're always in our description below in the Amazon products
Yep. So. Yep, there we go, and this is a one where I like to do the crisscross. So
yeah, what he did is, okay I got my right hand and left hand I'm actually gonna
switch them and now I got the right hand on the left strap on the and left hand on
the right strap and I'm pulling down on this one. Right. That's just kind of an
anchor is what I tell people. And then I go across like this. Actually on this one
Brad, I actually like to the strap better, because this strap really can get on
different levels. Sure. This is, cause if you look it's getting the whole neck which
is fine. Yup. I definitely would try this. Yup, but if you want to get a
little more advanced, now I can go a little bit lower even, and do it again.
But notice, he's always going across the jaw bone. Not across the neck like this. That will cut off
breathing and we like to breathe,, so. Air is good. Okay, so you can
work both directions. Now, if you're in that situation where you can turn here
and then it get 's stiff, it's more than likely the lower neck. We're gonna start
out with again some soft tissue work. You can get it back with your hands. It's
kind of hard to reach back there unless you've got excessively long forearms and
fingers. If you have a hook cane like this or you grab a theracane or we got
the Back knobber here. The back knobber, yep. And we're going to get back to those
muscles and you're just gonna work them. You'll find that you'll get on a trigger
point and a lot of times I just like to hold pressure there for up to 30 seconds
and typically it's gonna feel like it hurts so good and then it actually feels
better and when they say it releases after about 30 seconds and when you're
done it feels like oh boy, that helped. then you know you're doing the right
thing. I like to do it a little bit differently. I like to get on the spot
and I like to do movement with the neck while you're doing it, and I find out which
one helps. So let's say I put it on the spot let's say you have a knot there. I
might try chin tucks. I might try rotations. Yup.
And I might do side bending. Right. I'm gonna see which one seems to take
the pain away. Right. If there's one I'm gonna keep doing it. So usually, I try
side bending toward the pain first. Okay. So, I'll go like this and I'll go I'll
keep doing it it's like oh that is starting to feel better then I know I'm
on to something ,so. Yeah. I'd like to do the combination of both. Right ,so there's
a couple options and you do what works best for you so yeah. We're trying to
give you tools. Yeah. Okay Bob you probably' want to try this, because
once again we're gonna work with chin tucks because that also works the lower
neck as well as the upper and after you do five or ten of those, then we're
gonna do extensions and this is really nice to have a kind of warming up. And
then you know you could start off like Brad likes to do, like down like this. Yep.
My neck just cracked a little. There you go, and I tell you if this is one of those things
like you can go back a little further and it feels better when you have the
support here, then you're gonna continue to work it. If for some reason it hurts
or gives you pain down your arm, you stop all these and then it's a different
treatment. Again, why I like the strap for this one now, is now I can work my way up.
Sure. And again or work my way down. And I work,and I like it, when I
do it that way then I like to have it my thumbs right here and my eyes are
following the thumb. Yep. I'm not going like this. I'm going like this. This is a
different way of doing, it as opposed to doing like this. Yep. You do. Follow the
thumbs or the little bunny ears. I don't know. Whatever you want to make it. So, the
next one very similar to the previous upper neck work, again, we're doing the
rotatation. We're doing the rotation. Sometimes, I may pull over down here. It
seems to emphasize lower on the neck and that's up to the individual. I hope I can,
My mic is working here. So, I'm not gonna spend a lot of time with that
because we have just done that. Yeah., we already did it, yeah. And the last one this is a kind of a fun one
because when this one works it works really well and it's not that hard.I think you should show them on the
spine-first Brad. Let's do that. Got your little pen? Yeah, yeah I guess the red one
too. So there's, these little bumps are called spinous
processes and. So you can feel them on your neck, if you feel back there you'll,
that's what you're feeling is those bumps. Right. There's always a big one
that's, that's C7 like right here. What you do is, you're gonna grab with that and
you're gonna actually pull and help the spine move and get it moving and we're
actually doing this through your skin, so it's a little, you don't get a good grip
on it like you do on the spine but I've had a lot of success with this in the
clinic with people. And it's an experiment again, because you'll grab
onto the spine and then maybe have them turn. Right. And if that goes ow, ow, that makes
it worse, stop. Right. Then you might try going up a little higher a little lower
grab the spine above it and move it. Can you see that Lonnie, where I'm I'm gonna
rotate to the right and I'm pulling me to the left right so I'm pulling this
way and it's pretty subtle, and this should feel better like, oh man that
feels good and I can rotate more. You're right on. If it hurts just forget about it.
Just forget about it, yeah. Forget about it. Those are some good
hints Brad, and I think you did well. Remember, Brad and I, we haven't said
this in a while. Yeah. Remember Brad and I can fix just about anything. Except a broken
heart. Okay. But we continue to work at it. There it is. Thanks.
you