♪ Bob and Brad ♪
♪ The two most famous ♪
♪ Physical Therapists on the internet ♪
- Hi folks. I'm Bob Schrupp, physical therapist.
- Brad Heineck, physical therapist.
- Together we are the most famous physical therapists
on the internet.
- Well, Bob, once again, in our opinion.
- Well I took a week off, Brad.
A little bit under the weather.
I'm feel better. Not a 100% but I'm probably 95.
- Yeah. Well, yeah, you look the same, Bob.
- Which is bad. (laughing) - Nothing to look at.
I'm just kidding.
- So could some of your back pain be the result of fascia?
So fascia is that tough fibrous material
that's in your back.
We're gonna show a demonstration on the board,
the Smartboard.
- Yeah, so you can see. It's all over your body.
It kinda encapsulates the muscles.
It's a wonderful tissue.
- But, the thing is it's populated,
densely populated with pain receptors.
- Sure.
- So it could be the source of your pain
or one of the sources of pain in your back.
So we're gonna show you some of the things you could try.
- Mm-hm.
- If you suspect it is fascia.
I'm gonna say that generally the pain is spread out.
- More diffuse. Is that the proper word?
- Diffuse. Maybe.
- Well I don't know, I'd have to Google it.
- All right.
And also if you have a lack of motion,
like you bend forward.
And you don't turn one way or the other,
which could be a joint.
You just go straight forward like this
and you don't have any motion.
You can't get down.
It could be partly fascia.
- Sure, if you don't feel your hamstrings,
and it's across that back.
Yeah, there's a lot of fascia going across the back.
- [Bob] So we just wanted to show you a diagram
of the fascia in your back.
This is somewhat of a representation,
but the white stuff represents the fascia.
The fascia does go up into the muscles everywhere.
- [Brad] Right.
- [Bob] But it's thinner.
So again, as they already have a round circle around it,
it actually has a lot of pain sensitive fibers.
So if that fascia is bound down,
'cause we mentioned it has two layers
and it's not gliding on each other.
- [Brad] Sure.
- [Bob] It can cause you a lot of pain and as a result,
that's where your pain is coming from, not the muscle.
- And then you lose mobility and flexibility with that.
So you get the motion back, you break the fascia up,
get things sliding, you know, all over in the muscles
that connect muscle to muscle, fascia to fascia
and life becomes much better.
- Yup, be happy.
So the first thing I would recommend
is actually to put some heat on it and Brad-
- Heat?
- Yeah. You just had an episode here
where you could do this. - Yeah. As a matter of fact,
this morning, well, last night an this morning
I was using a hot pack
for my back pain, which I think was from shoveling
a bunch of heavy snow Saturday morning.
- How many inches?
- I don't know we had about four, but it was heavy.
And it was kind of wet. - Oh, four. (scoffing)
- And then my wife drove the car over it.
- Oh yeah, that's always
a big mistake. Big mistake. - So it packed it down.
It was like two inches of,
and the snowblower was not having it,
so I had to-
- So tell us what you had for pain.
- Well, it hurt Bob.
- Up here?
- Left side by the shoulder blade.
Actually it was one of those back pains when you breathe in,
(breathing deeply) oh, it would hurt.
And then this and that, you rotate a little bit,
it would hurt it.
I don't think it was-
- Rib cage, maybe.
- Yeah, I don't think it was really fascia related,
but I tried so many things
and actually the hot pad seemed to take care of it
last night, I was grateful.
- This is just not a hot pad though.
- No.
- This is a Thermatex heating pad,
which is actually infrared.
So it actually, instead of penetrates skin deep,
which normal hot packs or hot pads do,
this one actually will go 2.36 inches.
- Exactly. It's radiant heat,
which is what comes from the sun.
And that's why the snow melts. I was thinking about that.
That's why the sun was making that snow melt.
It's 30 degrees out, 25 degrees and it's still melting.
It's the radiant heat.
- That's why we recommend using this for fascia
because some of the fascia is very deep.
There's two layers and we want to get to both layers.
So we recommend trying that.
Next thing, we're gonna recommend Dr. Schleip,
who we had on our podcast, his book, "Fascial Fitness."
And we're gonna show you some of the exercises from there
that he recommends for back pain.
- He's been studying fascia for decades.
- Decades. Yeah.
- He is an expert, worldwide.
- The first one is gonna be foam rolling.
- Oh yes.
- We're gonna use it for the mid back.
- Yep.
- And then the low back. - Sure.
- We're actually going to do a little bit differently.
- Yes. - Up against the wall.
- Do you want me to do it now?
- Yeah. Why don't you do it now, Brad?
- Okay, here we go. - Why don't you go to work?
- So we got the foam roller.
You don't need the three foot one for this.
You could use a shorter one,
but I like the long one 'cause it's more versatile
for other things too.
But you'll get down, and again,
we're not doing it on the lumbar spine by the belt.
We're going between the shoulder blades,
and oh, I just had some nice cavitation.
That's not fascia cavitating in the joints,
but oh, there we go.
Ah, yes. So you can just roll back and forth.
And does he have some recommended variation?
- Just arms over.
- Oh.
- Just arms over. Yep just like that.
- I did a video. Mike and I did one last week.
And that was from a fascia expert
that continued it on.
And she recommended to do some rolling.
- Oh sure.
- Rotation along with this. - I think that's a great idea.
- Just to kinda get in there and work on that.
And also, she would obviously just suggested too,
I'm sure she's very familiar with Dr. Schleip.
And oh my (groaning) that's good.
See down in that low back it's no fun.
- Now, we do not recommend
that you take their foam roller
all the way into the lower back.
- Yeah. That's why I was grunting.
- You're gonna jam the facets together
and it's not gonna be comfortable.
So we recommend, I talked to Dr. Schleip about this
and he said, you go up against the wall
and that way you can take some pressure off
and you still can foam roll that low back.
- Yup, this is much more comfortable than down there
in this low back.
I saw you kinda, you asked him that,
I don't think you knew,
if he knew what he's was gonna say on that interview.
- No that's right.
- Yeah, that was good.
Bob was trying to catch Dr. Schleip,
but he was ready.
- Oh he's sharp. - He's got it all figured out.
- So next one is actually,
you can reach for stairs or something low,
and you're gonna bend forward like this and arch the back.
Now we normally wouldn't have you do this
with a disc problem or anything like that,
but while you're down here,
the fascia runs all the way down through your body
into the legs and he actually had you,
as you straighten one leg
and then straighten the other leg like this.
- So if you look at like his tee shirt actually
and the clothing being fascia,
you can see when he bends over things tighten up,
it's getting stretched in the back of the legs.
- And I'm stretching the leg at the same time.
- Back and forth.
- I think that's a pretty good analogy
'cause now it's all wrinkled when you're standing up.
It's stretches when you bend. Yeah.
- There you go.
Next one, you can actually do this one in your chair,
Africa Bends. They called it.
- Yeah. We don't know why. - Sit back in your chair,
We'll have to do some research on that.
Legs far apart and you're gonna reach down
and you're gonna kinda bounce up.
Again this is a very pliable, very bouncy material.
So you wanna get some of that bounce back.
- So if there's two layers of fascia and they get stuck
and they're bound, that can be painful.
We want to get them to slide over each other
the way it should as a healthy tissue.
Then you're on the right road.
- All right, next one.
- What next one? Oh yeah.
- We did Africa. Now the Flying Sword, Sword.
- Who makes up these? Is this Dr. Schleip?
- Yeah, apparently so.
- We're gonna have to get him back on the horn.
- So you just take a lightweight and you bring it up
and you bring it down.
Up and down.
- It's kinda like a kettlebell.
- Yeah but you're really going.
You don't take a kettlebell up over the head.
- Well, I don't know I might be,
I'm kind of concerned about, you know,
what if you hit yourself in a kneecap,
if you're kinda getting crazy.
- I'm more worried about hitting something else, Brad.
- Ew, wow.
- Okay. The final one is actually you take tennis balls,
and put them in a sock.
- So we've got two tennis balls in there.
You can see them right there.
- If you wanna show on me, Brad,
why you have two in and where it's gonna go.
- So if you look at the center of the spine,
I can feel his bones we got the muscles here.
We're gonna bridge that spinous process.
- You can work all the way down.
- Yup and do that,
but obviously we're not gonna do it standing.
We're gonna do it lying down.
- Now I'm gonna do it on here.
Brad, would you mind putting this in place?
- Oh. Yes. (grunting) See look at that.
I'm lifting properly.
- Yup, you're gonna put the feet up like this
- There you go.
- And you're gonna put the balls in place.
- Right in the lumbar area.
- And you're gonna stretch
all the way along the lumbar area.
Now this is fairly comfortable,
because this mat gives way.
- Yeah. It's too soft.
- But if the floor was hard, which it is,
you can work your way all the way up the spine.
Just for 10, 15 seconds on each spot,
then work your way up.
And this works out nice, Brad,
'cause could brace yourself and lift your butt up.
And get it out of the way.
- So, you know this, you could use as a piece of furniture
a chair, whatever you have.
- Ottoman.
- Ottoman, yes. In your house.
I wouldn't recommend doing it up on your bed.
As we mentioned, too soft.
- Probably, you might need a little help
with this next one, Brad.
You actually could take some massage guns.
And I asked Dr. Schleip about this.
- You did? I'm curious.
- And I didn't know what he was gonna say.
- Right.
- I go, what do you think of massage guns?
He goes. "At first, I didn't think much of them."
- Yeah.
- He goes, "Now I love them."
He goes, "They seem to work just perfect
"for working with the fascia."
- Oh really?
- So, yup.
So basically.
- Which one you want?
- I'll take this one. (laughing)
- Bob. There's a certain way you pull those out
- Yeah, I know, I know
- I'm gonna need to go through that with ya.
- So again, could be a little bit difficult
for you to do it to yourself.
- Oh yeah.
- This is where it would be nice to have a partner.
I was thinking if we had three people.
We could go in a circle. You know what I mean?
- Well yeah, you could have a little massage party,
but you know, if you could get in,
if you got the round ball,
I'm using the round ball head.
Now, are you saying to go straight in at it
or at an angle or what.
- I think you could do it either way, Brad.
- Oo, this is nice, Bob. I'm happy.
- This is the air head.
So obviously, easy on the skin and on the spine.
- Yeah don't call anybody an air head,
specifically talking about a massage head.
- But again, Brad, if you come here,
obviously I could work the muscles
a lot easier than you could yourself.
I could have you lie down flat on your stomach and we could
really hit that, go to it.
- This really isn't too bad on the low back,
I feel pretty comfortable, but this upper back,
that's a tough one, yeah.
- All right.
And the final thing he recommends is a walking program.
Like we all do with any back pain.
- Yup.
- and make sure your arms are swinging.
- Right, right.
- You know, I liked that part of his video
or the conversation.
He said, you know, if you maintain your activity in general,
you don't need to do so much time stretching the fascia.
So, just be an active person,
do what you need to do and do a little extra.
- I have someone in my neighborhood that has back pain
and I see him walking, he walks like this.
- Stiff?
- Walks like a robot and I'm just thinking
I should sit him down and go,
"These are the things you should try."
- Get your elbows back.
- Yeah, get your elbows moving.
All right, this is something you can consider
and try and let us know in the comments,
how it works out for you.
- Right, oh yeah, thank you for coming and be careful.
(musical flourish)