♪ Bob and Brad, the two most famous ♪
physical therapists on the internet ♪
- (claps) Hi folks. I'm Bob Schrupp, physical therapist.
- Brad Heineck, physical therapist.
- And 'cause that we are the most famous
physical therapists on the internet.
- Well, in our opinion, of course, Bob.
- So this is way better than stretching.
So if you have knot pain in the shoulders, upper traps
you know, between the shoulder blades, all-
- If we have knot pain, is that like we not have pain or...
- No. (chuckles) That's a good point.
- Oh, K-N-O-T, knot. - Yeah.
Pain from knots, yeah. This is gonna help you way better
than any stretches you can do.
- Yep. - And what's nice about this
is you can do it without spending money.
- Yeah. It's just time and a little effort. Feels good.
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This week we are giving away a boo-yah stick.
- Oh, boo-yah! We'll show it.
- Yeah. - Should we get it now?
- Yeah, go ahead. - Okay!
- I'll hold onto the sign.
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and we have what, Brad?
- Podcasts! - Yeah!
I almost forgot. Wow.
I feel so much better when I have the
boo-yah stick in my hand.
- I'm glad. You look strong like bull.
Okay. So this is not a new concept.
There's a lot of people who are in the know
that recommend this and we had a person who is an
expert on stretching agreed with us a hundred percent.
- (chuckles) - that it's so much better,
more effective than stretching is.
- I dunno if he agreed with us or we agreed with him.
- Right, I think we agreed with him.
- But Kelly Starrett, who wrote the book
"Supple Leopard" talks about giving an example here.
So if you're gonna stretch a muscle and a lot
of times with the muscles, some of the muscle may be adhesed
down or it may be center or it may be wider.
- Knotted up.
- Yeah. So we're gonna show a muscle here
that actually is thinner at one point
and thicker at another.
- That's not really a muscle.
- No that's not a muscle, but it's a representation.
- Yeah.
- So when I stretch, look where most of
the stretching is occurring.
- In this thin spot,
not so much here in the muscle belly, if you will.
- Right. So in other words, the stretching where
I really need it at the thick spot is not even occurring.
- Right. - So when you stretch,
- Don't let go of that. - Yeah. (laughs)
It's gonna occur on the part that's
probably stretched out already.
- Sure. - So if you have a part
that is kind of adhesed down,
which the body does,
the fascia, - Mm-hmm.
- it's not gonna work.
And so you have to do mobilization
and that's what we're gonna show today.
- So we're gonna mobilize that soft tissue, probably that
thicker belly of the part of the muscle and get in there.
I tell you, I- - Right.
You get to specific spots.
- Yeah. There you go.
And with things you have around the house.
- Yeah, exactly. We're not gonna make you
go out and buy anything.
- Or just go to your neighbors. They'll have it.
- Right. If the kid leaves the ball in your yard,
don't throw it back to him, just steal it.
- (laughs)
- So we got a couple of things here.
We got a softball, which is pretty aggressive.
This is probably for big muscles.
I don't know if I'd use it on the knots up here.
- Yeah. I've tried it, but with the towel
it's okay. We can maybe
- Okay, sure. - show that later.
- Sure, with the towel. A lacrosse ball.
- Can it? - Yep.
- Probably the least aggressive is a tennis ball.
- Sure. - We've got two tennis balls
in the sock here.
- Don't, yeah. We'll show you why we have
the sock in a little bit.
- Yeah. Oh actually the least aggressive would be
a rolled up sock. - Yeah.
- You know, you'll get some pressure
out of them. - Oh, yeah.
It's amazing what you can do with your socks.
- So what this is gonna do is
not only is it gonna work on the muscles
but it's gonna work on your posture
- Ah. - because all of us have
trouble with posture in this area here.
We're all kinda flexed forward here.
The best way to correct this is mobilization.
- Sure. - I'll tell you right now.
So let's start off with the easiest one, Brad.
I gotta clear out my area here.
- What are we gonna do with this rubber band model?
- No we'll keep that because
- Oh! - we'll be using it again.
So not in this video, but...
- (laughs) I like that, "not". No pun intended.
- Yeah. So, the first one you can start off with
this is just a rolled sock and put it in the area
and you're just gonna lie on it.
You breathe and raise your arms up overhead.
- So you're putting that sock right on the spine
right in the middle?
- Right? Oh, I'm going on the side.
- You are. Okay.
- Yeah. Good point, Brad.
Why don't I show it on you?
- Let's clarify for our viewers because-
- Let me take a colored ball here.
- Oh yeah, a green one.
- So here's the spine running right down the middle.
We're trying to hit these areas up in here.
You could actually hit the knots up here too, Brad.
- Sure.
- But we're gonna stay off the spine.
So on the right side,
between the spine and the shoulder blade:
one, two, three.
- Yeah. - Three different spots
you can hit. Four, five, six,
six different spots you can hit.
You could even go out to the side of the spine.
- Sure. - Now you can all, like I said
you can also hit the upper traps.
- I think we can show that, that works good on the wall too
- Sure. - with the sock
and the ball thing.
- And I would recommend that you're on the floor
with a sock, not on a bed.
That's just not gonna do anything.
- So you may have more than two socks.
You're gonna roll them fairly tight.
- Yes, exactly.
- So, you know, be careful and
- Yep. - be mindful of that.
- And then if you tolerate that well,
then you may try the lacrosse ball or...
- The lacrosse ball is very solid.
- Yeah. - It's pretty firm.
- This is gonna be too aggressive
for a lot of people on the floor.
It just is you...
- You got, put a lacrosse ball, yeah.
- You can put a towel over it.
It'll soften it a little bit.
- Yep. Now Bob's doing it on this soft bed
- Yeah. - which you're not going
to do, - Right.
- but just so it's easier to film.
So a towel, they got four layers there
- Yeah. - but you can do
whatever you need.
- It makes a big difference.
If you're on the floor, you can start doing it.
You can put a pillow underneath your head if that helps,
you can take some of the pressure off too.
But eventually you wanna get down
where you're doing kind of a chin tuck,
and again, raising the arm, Bob
take a deep breath.
- Yep. Breathe in and relax.
- And then you're gonna move it down.
And you know, Kelly Starrett recommends you stay
on that area until it starts to improve.
- Sure. - So if it's tender,
you stay there. If it's not hurting,
I wouldn't even do it there, Brad.
- Sure. - I mean,
let's hit the spots that are tender.
- Right, yep. Get right to the point.
- I'm sure you got enough of 'em.
So you're gonna start with that.
Brad's gonna show against the wall
how you can also do that.
Now, Kelly what he recommends is
he's got like three methods.
I'm gonna talk about two of 'em today:
the smash method where you just basically smash
into the muscle and there's the static.
- Sure.
- You just lie on top of it.
And that's what I was just doing.
Brad's gonna show the, what he calls the pressure wave.
So he's rolling. The pressure is
rolling along. - Yep.
So, you know, if you just have a ball
you'll try to get it back there
and get it in the right spot and know you kind of roll
on it like this
- And it works. - It works pretty good, yeah.
But sometimes a ball falls out and
it's hard to get there depending on your flexibility.
So there's two balls in this sock.
You might start with just one. - Sure.
- Sometimes it's nice to have two, you cover more area.
So I'm gonna go, I'm gonna drop it to that right side
where Bob was pointing out and I'm gonna go on there
and you can still get a little movement
a little better with one ball but two is okay too.
And you can go right to left.
- The two is actually for a lot of times
people lie on it just for the smash method.
They'll have one ball on the right side of the spine
and the other ball on the left side of the spine.
So you can hit, you just lie on it.
So you can, it's a little more efficient.
- So the smash method you might, like right there
I can feel a knot.
- Yeah. - That's not bad.
I'm gonna hit it and I'm just gonna relax into it.
I'm gonna look at the clock
and usually, you know after about 30 seconds
it's gonna, you're gonna feel it release.
That knot is all tightened up and it's got all kinds of
lactic acid in it 'cause it's tightened.
Then you get it to release, circulation flows,
it feels better. And then you're happy.
- Yep. Again, better than stretching.
It's funny. There's a lot of NBA players
and professional athletes that are buying into this
- Yeah. - now, too.
And there was a NBA player that played for the
Minnesota Timberwolves and he used a-
- Basketball! - Yep.
He used a softball.
- He did? - Yep.
And he would roll out his whole body.
He'd roll over it.
- Yeah. And like, you know, if you do this really long
you may start with a towel.
But once you get used to it,
- Right. - you'll go down to
nothing probably, or just the ball itself.
- It's funny, I was just showing a friend this
and he used to be a Marine, always had really good posture
but I noticed he's starting to drift over
and it was affecting his golf game.
- Oh wow.
That's not good. - That was sacrilegious.
So I was showing him this type of stretch
- Sure. - and I was like,
"well you probably won't be able to tolerate the start"
and he goes, "oh yeah".
Yeah. He was like...
- Is that right? - Yeah.
- And he just emailed me and said
he just loves it. - Oh really?
- Yeah. - Wow.
- You know Marines, they love pain.
- Yeah. Well, they're tough, I mean...
- Boo-yah! Right?
Isn't it "boo-yah" what they say?
- I'm not
going there, Bob. - It's not boo-yah?
That's not for us to talk about.
- Yeah. - So he was using
a lacrosse ball? - Yeah.
- Oh really? - Yeah.
- Yeah, 'cause these are aggressive.
- Right. - They bounce well too.
- All right. - So what's next?
- That's it, Brad! - Oh really?
- Yep. We got through the whole work.
- Good job. - Remember Brad and I
can fix it about anything
- except for - a broken heart.
- Right, and these, this ball
- No, you don't wanna roll on your heart.
- Yeah. - That's just not gonna work.
- Yeah, that's not gonna work.
- That'll break a heart probably.
- Oh no, no I don't think so, but it might.
(scoffs)
Well it's, let's go to work.
We've got another video coming up.
- All right, thanks.