♪ Bob and Brad ♪
the two most famous
physical therapists
on the internet.♪
- Hi folks.
I'm Bob Schrupp, physical therapist
- Brad Heineck, physical therapist
- And together, we are the most famous physical therapists
on the internet
- In our opinion of course, Bob.
- Brad, today, 10 ways to use a towel.
Simple everyday towel to help stop neck pain.
And by the way, my favorite is number 10.
So you gotta stay all the way till the end of watch it, so.
- You better believe it.
And, and the other thing is
we've got white towels all over here.
You don't have to use a white towel.
You can get colored ones.
- Sure. Whatever makes you happy, whatever floats your boat.
Right? So the first one we're gonna start off
with is, the big problem with neck pain,
quite often, Brad, is, is posture.
- Yeah.
- Especially at computers and stuff like that.
- You bet.
- So you wanna do is gonna roll up a towel to start off with
and you're gonna go ahead and put it in your low back.
And what we're trying to prevent is this.
- Right.
- Right? When you put the rolled towel in your back
and you slide your butt all the way back, and you put this
around your waist level,
that's gonna force you to get back
into this right position.
- Right, exactly.
- The correct position.
- And it feels good.
- Yes, it does.
- If it hurts, you know
maybe there's another problem you shouldn't use it,
but it should feel like good support.
- The nice thing
about a towel is you can vary how big the towel is.
You could make it a smaller towel so
that it just barely gives you a little bit of stress.
- Right.
- And some people will like the bigger towel.
- Right.
- Along with, oh.
- I was gonna say you can see with our towel,
we just tape 'em.
We've got two towels that, that we use here
and they just tape 'em and that holds 'em.
You can use rubber bands
once you get the right size and that'll hold 'em together.
- And then eventually you can buy one.
Yeah. You can buy a lumbar support.
- Right. And along with this
I want you to go ahead and raise your screen up.
- Yep.
- Yep, because I don't want you going like this.
I don't want your laptop to be down like this.
If you have a laptop, go ahead and raise that up on
on a stand and use a separate keyboard.
- Yep. Cordless keyboard, because, what,
twenty dollars or so at Office Depot.
- All right.
Number two.
We're gonna do use a rolled towel to do chin tucks, Brad.
So we're gonna roll up a towel.
And this again is trying to help one correct posture
but also this is the first step
to controlling neck pain or stopping neck pain.
- Right.
- This is, a lot of McKenzie fans out there.
He's a, Robin McKenzie.
He has you start doing chin tucks and
and the way you can do that, one way is to go ahead
and get a towel, put it underneath your
your back of your head like this.
And you're gonna work on tucking your chin in.
Now I'm not tucking my chin down
and I'm not going back like this.
I'm going straight down into the bed.
The movement is probably almost in-perceivable
wouldn't you say, Brad?
- Right.
And you know, you can tell by when he does it
it's harder to talk because it, it does close your, your
- Your esophagus
- And your yeah.
So it's harder to talk, and that's normal.
This should be not painful.
It should just feel like a stretch in the back here.
- Yeah. A good set of ten,
I'd like to see you doing,
and you could do these a lot, Brad.
You could do these, you know, every hour if you want.
I mean, that's how often they can be done.
And eventually you can work
on doing the chin tucks in the seated position.
- Right. You're not gonna do that every hour
for the rest of your life, just to get it loosened up.
- All right. Then the next step quite often with back
with neck pain is we're gonna have you work
on doing cervical extensions.
That's bringing your neck back like this.
And one way to do that, to make it a lot more comfortable,
let's show your way first Brad.
- Okay.
- Which I like too. I like both ways.
- Well, I actually use your way too,
and it depends on the situation.
- All right.
- Actually, I don't use a towel for this Bob,
I use a pillowcase so you can use a pillowcase.
- Okay.
- It really depends.
So I just go here.
A towel is cushy and, and it works well.
- So he's pulling down like this
which does give it a good feeling.
It almost, it's almost like a traction almost.
- Right.
Cause if, if you do this and ow, it hurts.
- Yeah.
- But if you do this, you can obtain the same range
of motion without pain and you can help pull it back up.
- You should do it in the chair, Brad?
- Yeah. Yeah.
The reason I, I use a pillow pace
cuz it's a little bit thinner
and I don't do this all the time so I use either one
because it doesn't bulk up so much.
And if someone has a large neck,
sometimes you need something a little thinner.
I would go back like this.
- By the way, did you say pillow pace?
Nevermind, just keep going.
- And my wife said something about that
you gotta talk clear on your videos.
I thought, well, thanks Bob.
- By the way, for those of you new to us
if you'd like to take just a second to subscribe to us
our subscribe button is over here.
We upload videos every day on how to stay healthy,
fit, and pain free.
And that's what we're trying to do right now.
- Exactly.
- So show 'em your technique, Bob.
- All right, well, my technique,
a lot of times, what I prefer
is that you're gonna go ahead and you're gonna use the edge
of the, the towel, which they call the shelf-age.
- I think you made that up.
- I did make that up, but not really.
And what you're gonna do is you're gonna go
underneath the ears.
Okay. And you're gonna give a pressure here
and I'm pulling up.
- Yep.
- And while I'm pulling up,
I'm coming back and the arms are going along with me.
- Sure.
- I'm not going like this.
- Right.
- The arms are coming along with me.
What's nice about this,
You can go different levels with this.
- Sure.
- You can go lower level
and work it.
- It gets pretty specific.
And that's nice.
- You can really work on the
on the different problem areas that you might have.
Now I'm way down.
- This is from Mulligan, isn't it?
- Yeah. Yeah. This is Mulligan.
- And I think there I say, go up one more time Bob.
No, wherever you were, just do straight like this.
- Oh just like this, yep.
- Yeah. If your eyeballs look straight ahead
that's about where your hands are.
- Yeah, yeah.
- Right at there.
- He's said quite often,
you make a little bunny ears
and follow the bunny ears.
- Oh, isn't that cute?
- Yeah.
- Good old Mulligan.
- Yeah.
So now we're, we're gonna go right into this one, Brad.
Let's say you have a lack of, you know
that that's really good for someone who
especially if they have a lack of motion going this way.
- Right.
- Which a lot of people do.
- Yes.
- And a lot of times when you restore that motion,
the pain goes away.
- Yep.
- The same with turns.
Let's say you find out that you turn one way or the other,
and one of them is limited,
that that's a sign that you should work on that direction
but we don't wanna do it with pain.
So you are going, ow, ow, ow, that hurts.
So what you're gonna do, the same thing.
You're gonna put the towel in the same place
the little, you know,
shelf-age underneath the ears like this.
And this is where it gets a little tricky, Brad
cuz you're gonna actually switch arms.
- Yeah.
- I'm gonna turn to the right.
So I'm dropping this one
and I'm grabbing this one and I'm grabbing this one.
See how I did that.
- Yeah. That's it.
- Tricky.
- Now you'll see that this is getting on his shoulder.
- Yeah. See, I don't wanna do this, do I Brad?
- No. So I'm gonna lift that up to get it off the neck.
- Yeah. And plus I, yep.
I wanna keep my shoulder still and I'm just moving my neck.
- Yeah.
- Now I'm keeping pressure the whole time.
I'm pulling the whole time. I'm pulling down.
I'm pulling out the whole time,
and when you're doing this, then it should be pain free.
If it's not pain free, just do it in the pain free range.
- Right. There's another
caution light I want to put out.
If we go back to the one where you're going back
with any of the ones where you go back,
and you get
nauseous, dizzy or lightheaded, stop.
- Right.
- It's not, it's not the thing to do.
- You don't want pain.
We don't want dizziness.
We don't want any of those.
Okay. Now I'm gonna switch to directions, Brad.
So we were like this.
Now I'm gonna go ahead and flop, put this one down.
This one comes up
and now I'm going in the opposite direction.
- Sure. Yep.
- Now you could do, do you do this one this way too Brad?
Sometimes I'll just have people grab both
and go like this.
- Right.
- Sometimes just to make it simple.
- Yeah.
- If they have trouble understanding.
- Yeah, I do that one a little bit different too, Bob
but I don't know if we wanna get into it.
- Oh, okay.
- Cause it's basically the same thing.
- All right.
The next thing you can do is you can actually take a towel
and you can put it in a pillow at night
and it gives you a little bit of a, you know
let me take that one.
This is just to help and you'd have to, again, experiment
with the size of the, the towel.
- Right.
- But this is just to fill in that gap.
You know, at night let's say you're on your side.
Now this gap is filled in.
And some people like it or you can try it like this.
And it fills in that gap.
- Now let, let's see.
Put this hand down, Bob. Right here is the towel.
And it's just under the ear,
right in that hollow spot.
You need a little support sometimes.
And that's what that towel is doing.
So don't wrap it up too tight.
A fluffy towel works better.
- Right. And you know, eventually you may wanna buy one
of those cervical pillows that is shaped like this
- Right.
- It has the little thing laying there.
The other thing, believe it or not, that works out,
you got that one towel all folded
up, Brad, for this really already.
- Yep.
- Is you can make like a cervical collar
at night.
You just fold your, your
your towel up into like thirds like this.
And then you're gonna put it
around your neck and you can wrap it
around like this and you can pin it in place.
- Safety pins, use safety pins.
Yeah. What happens is now this, this isn't as tight
as it should be, but..
- I'll tighten her up for you, Bob.
- It works like a collar and, and it kinda keeps your neck
from doing weird things at night.
Like turning all the way right
or all the way left.
And, and
and some people really do have success with this, Brad.
- This, this reminds me of when I was a kid,
we always, my mom would use a wool sock
and wrap it around your neck.
And it was for a cold.
If you had a cold, you put the wool sock around your neck.
And it was one of those old remedies.
- It felt good, I bet.
- Yeah, it did.
And so, you know, all these things fit together.
We're all got the same body, same parts.
- All right.
Well go, let's go back to this again.
- Okay.
- I'm gonna show you now a stretch you can do
cuz a lot of times what happens, again,
a postural thing, your shoulders get pulled over here.
What's the first thing your neck gets pulled forward.
like that?
- Your head goes forward, exactly.
- So I'm gonna, well, why don't you do this one, Brad.
I'm gonna have you stand
and pull back behind it like this.
- Oh yeah.
- Could you? I'm tired of me standing up.
- Yeah.
- This is a good one for you
because you can't do this very well, can you?
- Right? I'm not, my shoulders are kinda,
this is all I can do.
- But with a towel, now we can easily pull back and
and stretch, and stretch that chest...
- Yeah.
- Out.
- A strong, manly chest like mine needs to be stretched
but I'm gonna do that with my head up, and not like this
but up here with good posture and a nice relaxed stretch.
I'm actually gonna go out wider.
It feels better for me.
I really am tight that way, Bob.
- Yeah. Now the other one we can do is we actually
take a big rolled towel.
- Ooh.
- This, take probably a beach towel
and you just lay down on it
and this, you might want pillow too.
- Yeah.
- But you can just lay back like this.
- There you go.
- And this is a good relaxation one.
- Right.
- Cause it's gonna stretch everything out,
put the neck in the right position.
You probably want to, again, have a pillow.
- Yep. We would do that so you don't get a sore,
sore neck.
- So, and this is just a great stretch to do to put you
in a good posture and, and
and help decrease the possibility
that you're gonna get neck pain.
- If that feels good, you might wanna purchase a foam roll.
That's the next step up or actually the longer one for that.
But we're on towels, not foam rolls today.
- Next thing. Do you mind giving a towel again, Brad?
- This one?
- Any one.
- Oh, any one.
- So you can start,
let's say the pain is start, and feeling better,
you can do a little bit of neck strengthening,
even with this. You can go ahead
and put it behind your head and now I'm gonna pull back.
And, so if the towel wasn't there, I'd be doing this.
- Sure.
- So I'm working on extension
getting a little bit of strengthening.
- Right.
- You can do side bending even. So if it wasn't there...
- Usually strengthening after neck injury
and you're rehabbing, you're coming back
and may be a time example for that.
- All right, number ten.
My favorite one.
- Okay. They've been waiting all this time, Bob.
It better be good.
- Well, it's really not that great.
- Or there are gonna be some comments coming
out that are not gonna be fun to answer.
- I, honestly though, this has saved me
from my car of giving me pain.
I, when I, whenever I'm in my car, I
I tend to go a little bit like this.
So I take a, a rolled up towel
or a rolled sock, and I put..
- Yeah, I've seen his sock.
- Yeah. And I put it right here, right up in the upper neck.
You know, there's no seat here right now.
- Yeah. He, he, it ends up looking about like this
and he puts it right, right there, there seat right there.
- And while I'm there, I can even do chin tucks.
- Yeah.
- And I put a little pressure against it.
It feels so good when I'm driving.
It's like, I'm getting get a treatment every time I drive.
- It puts a smile on his face
and he looks like a happy driver.
- So to me, that has saved me.
And my daughter used to criticize me on that.
- Well, of course.
- And now what does she do?
She uses a rolled sock.
- So towels are the answer
for therapy and we are just...
- That's right.
Thanks a lot.