♪ Bob and Brad, the two most famous ♪
♪ Physical therapists on the internet ♪
- Sorry to hear about that, huh?
Hi folks. I'm Bob Schrupp, physical therapist.
- Brad Heineck, physical therapist.
- And we are the most famous physical therapists
on the internet.
- In our opinion, of course. - In our humble opinion.
By the way, Brad, today, we're gonna talk
about how to unlock your hamstrings.
Kind of an important muscle, because if they're tight
they can cause back pain.
They can cause even hip pain really, too.
So they can cause all sorts of problems.
And I was noticing mine was starting to get tight.
So I'm like been using different techniques to
to try to start to loosen them up.
So you agree with that?
- The hamstrings are very critical
and I would say they're probably one
of the most injured muscles in the body.
- Yeah. And we're gonna show you today
if yours are a little bit tight, how you can measure that.
We're gonna show you the average.
You know, now I don't know Brad, you
should be average at age 55, right?
- Oh Bob, I've never been average.
- That's true. By the way-
- I've never been above average either though.
- By the way, if you've never come to our channel before
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We're not liked.
And we're trying to turn things around.
All right, Brad, let's go ahead and show
how to test a hamstring right away.
- Very good.
- Get rid of your roll. What is that?
- Oh Bob, you know I like the roll.
- Okay. Now there's two things that can affect when
you're testing the hamstring.
One, if your back is not flattened.
If your back is too arched and I could put my hand
underneath here, you're not gonna go up as high.
The pelvis is not gonna let you go as far.
So Brad, that's about where you're at right now
without, arched the wrong way.
Now, he's gonna flatten the stomach or flatten the back.
And look at that. He goes way up.
But on the other end, you also don't wanna cheat so much
that like let's say this leg is up, watch this.
He goes up even further.
So this is all I want you to do,
these two things before you test.
Flatten the back and hold this leg down.
- Bob, I know you wouldn't do it this way
but just so they can see better,
you wanna do the other leg?
- This way? You mean like this? Okay.
Yeah. So he's flattening his back
and I'm holding this leg down.
Simple as that.
All right, then I take it up and normal is about 80 degrees.
Now 90 degrees is right straight up.
So Brad, I hate to tell you.
- Am I normal?
- You are a little bit less than normal.
I dunno. What is that, 70 maybe? 65.
- That'd be abnormal.
- Yeah. That's right.
Why be different in anything else?
So let's check the other one too, Brad.
Flatten your back. Come up.
Now why, you're much better on this one.
This is average, I would say. What's going on here?
- Well, Bob, you know, I'm a little asymmetrical.
My right side is literally always a little tight.
- Remember the hip thing we did last week?
- Yep. - My right side.
- Did you hurt your right side?
Well, that's a long story, Bob.
I don't want to get into in front of everyone.
- All right. Let's start talking about how
are you gonna stretch it now when you found out
that you're tight.
So you're definitely gonna focus on your right side
but you're gonna wanna do both.
Let's do the first one, Brad.
This is one that many people think is one
of the best hamstring stretches to do.
You're gonna bring the leg up and you're gonna grab
underneath the thigh. Yep. Right behind the thigh.
And you're gonna bring it up.
You're flattening your back while you're doing this.
And now you're gonna go ahead and work
on trying to straighten it.
- Oh yeah. So here, no stretch.
Stretch, stretch, stretch.
A lot of stretch as I pull more.
And if I keep my knees straight
and then I work it that way you could do it that way
if you want to.
- Right. I like this one.
I just started doing this one.
I feel like it's just a different angle of going at it.
I think with a lot of these, we're gonna show you a lot
of 'em so you can try different ones and see which ones
and you might wanna mix it up and that way
you'll get a little more results.
- What's really nice about this one, Bob, is it really
protects the back.
Because some of the other ones, when you're standing
you need to lean forward a little bit
and this way you're completely relaxing your trunk.
- Yeah. We're trying to keep that in mind
as we demonstrate all these is that you want
to protect your back.
Now, if you have trouble grabbing the thigh
which some people do Brad, you can take a towel
or a sheet and go around like this.
And now you can go ahead and pull up.
And then go ahead and work it back.
Yep. Wonderful.
- I'm gonna work it up a little bit.
Get a little more leverage.
- Now you can also use the stretch out strap to do that.
The reason why I'm gonna show you that is because
on this next one, the stretch out strap really is handy.
Because you can use a sheet to go ahead
and put it around the heel and go this way.
Brad's gonna show it.
Yep. Like that.
And I'll show you in a minute why we want you
to do this one as opposed to the other one too.
But this is where the stretch out strap
really comes in handy.
You just go ahead and you can loop it around.
- You want it around the toe, Brad?
- Yeah. Like that.
Yeah. This is really much more easy to manage
as far as hanging onto it.
Just everything about it works.
It's like a tool that works, you know, Bob.
- Right. So what we wanna add on this now is contract relax.
So what he is gonna do, he is gonna pull up
and now as he's pulling up he's actually gonna push down
in this direction.
- I'm pushing Bob.
- Yep. And now, but he doesn't give, and then he relaxes.
And while he relaxes, he tries to go further.
- So I'm gonna pull up on my arms, relax there.
And about as far as I want to go, Bob.
I feel a nice stretch there.
Should I do another contract relax?
- Sure. Do another contract relax.
So one more time.
He's pushing this way, pushing his foot this way.
And then when he relaxes, he tries to go further.
You're already doing better here, Brad.
You're not completely straight, but you're doing better.
- Oh, I'm feeling it, Bob. Don't worry.
- Are you feeling it?
Everything's down. So you made-
- See if I go like this, I can go up higher.
- Yeah. That's right.
So he's already made some nice gains here.
- No cheating.
- All right. Next one, Brad, this is the one
I do at home too.
We're basically, let's say you can go into a doorway.
- Oh, for sure.
- And let's say this is the side of the door,
or I actually do it on stairs.
And I put my feet down the stairs
and I put my foot up against the rail.
- The whole idea is your bottom leg,
if it is up a wall, your leg would bump into the wall,
the bottom leg.
But now my bottom leg goes through the doorway
- Through the doorway.
And this is the side of the door.
And he can just keep sliding his butt this way
and work it away.
- So this would be the wall, the door jam actually.
- It's very relaxing. It's very easy to do.
So it's an excellent one to do, you know, relax
and kind of start maybe doing a little focus for the day,
you know, little breathing and substance.
- Right. Maybe not fall asleep.
- Right. Okay, Brad. How about the next one?
A standing stretch.
- Oh, sure.
You can stay down. 'Cause I'm gonna
have you do foam roller next. - Oh yeah. Okay.
- But so the standing stretches,
you find the staircase or something like this.
You wanna really keep good posture on this one.
I don't want you leaning forward like this.
This is hard on the back.
So I'm gonna keep good posture
and I'm leaning forward like this.
- And notice how his knee is nice and straight.
Because if you bend the knee-
- Obviously I can go like this.
- So this is again, a real simple one, especially
if, you know, right before a runner's race
or something like that.
And you don't wanna lay on the ground 'cause it's wet
or something like that.
- You got dew on the grass early morning runners.
- You're looking for-
- What's wrong with those people?
- I don't know.
Why don't you say we join them sometime?
All right, next one is a foam roller.
This is a nice foam roller from OPTP.
People (indistinct) what I just said.
OPTP. I'll put a link down below in our Amazon products.
A lot of people like this one,
'cause it's a little bit softer.
- Yeah. And it looks nice too.
- It looks nice. Yep.
- All right. So I'm gonna roll on that hamstring
and you can see I'm controlling my weight through my arms
and this leg, but oftentimes the hamstrings are pretty meaty
and a lot of people can tolerate more pressure
to get that muscle relaxed.
So that's when you can cross over.
Now I'm putting a lot more pressure right
on that hamstring muscle belly.
Now, you're gonna do this on the floor, on a carpeted floor.
We have a soft nice massage table,
which is not desirable for this.
- No it isn't. It's actually Boeing.
- Right. But we're doing it for the camera angle is better.
- The sacrifices we make for the camera.
- Yeah. We care.
- So we care.
- We do, Bob.
All right, next one Brad.
- I just gotta get my calf muscle a little bit there.
- All right. How about the lacrosse ball?
- Oh yeah. Right.
- So you can actually just sit on the edge of a table even
and you know, put the lacrosse ball underneath you
like here and roll back and forth.
- Here. Let's do it off the end here once, Bob.
- Gotcha.
- Again, it's not gonna work on a soft area.
- You'd wanna do on a end of a chair or something probably.
Now you can roll back and forth.
I mean this way.
- Oh right to left.
- Right to left a little bit.
You can really work on the tight areas.
And then after that you can actually just go ahead
and lift the leg up and stretch it a little bit.
You know, like that.
- Now you could use a tennis ball.
That'll work. It's a little bit less, you know,
not as firm as a lacrosse ball.
This is pretty aggressive.
If you're on a hardwood chair with this
you're gonna get in deep enough for sure.
- Now if you want, you wanna spend a little money and
and you wanna get one of these anyway for, you know,
all the aches and pains in your life,
you can take the pure wave too.
Again, we got that listed below and it's got good percussion
and that's just a good way to work your hamstring.
You know, you can get down and work it this way.
You can lay on your side and work it.
There's just a lot of different ways.
- And you know, there's different heads on this
but you definitely for the hamstring. Oops.
- You're probably gonna wanna use the pointer head.
- Yeah. It's down there. There goes Brad.
- There it is.
- All right. The final thing Brad, that I was gonna show,
and I've started doing these.
It was after you did your videos
on trying to get higher kicks.
I was like, God, I can't kick very high at all.
So I started doing some dynamic stretches
to the hamstrings.
So you're gonna go ahead and you can lift up like this
and then you just gently go out like this.
So I've been just, you know, I don't get real aggressive
Brad, but I just start, I start doing these
in between where I'm working out.
I go ahead and start throwing these in there.
So am I doing something wrong?
- You can do it with the knee and do it like a kick.
- Yeah. That's what I was doing.
- You could do it just- - Just straight leg.
You can do a straight leg and raised ones too.
- Yep. And then for a little variation
to kind of get the outer hamstrings, the inner hamstrings,
I'm gonna do, I don't know, do you guys call these clocks
or you have any name for 'em?
- Well, I just call a straight leg raise with a hook.
Innie or outie.
So yeah, I'm going out and then I'm going in.
If you want to give yourself a little, you know, target
you can put something out there like this
and you gonna go over like this.
- Yeah. That's a nice idea, Bob.
- It makes you work a little harder
'cause it gives you a goal.
- Ad you know, and if you need something to balance on
you know, you can use your balancing stick there.
- Oh yeah. And that's really a good idea
because a lot of people probably can't do this to start.
- Right. I mean, if you've been into martial arts
you're probably, you know, kicking head level.
But most people aren't, and this is a really
unusual thing to do for a lot of people.
- So it's funny, you know, I did those
and I did get sore from it.
Which is not surprising.
But I feel like, you know, I got sore
because I was doing something.
All right. Make sure you unlock those hamstrings
and throw away the key.
- There you go, Bob. Relax, relax.
The old hammies. Could be a key to the broken heart.
- Thanks for watching.