- Hi, 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.
- Wow. You just kind of found your way around.
Okay, Brad, today,
we're gonna talk about the top three exercises
that you can do for osteoporosis.
Now these are three that we just pulled out,
that we thought kind of encapsulated
all the things you want to do
when you wanna do exercises for osteoporosis.
They're written right here, actually.
Four things that you wanna look at.
Number one,
with osteoporosis,
you wanna do exercises that are weight bearing.
The more weight you put to your bones,
the more dense they become,
and the more thick they become.
That's Wolf's Law, right?
- Right. Wolf's.
We learn, every therapist knows that from school.
- Right?
It's how bones react to both weightbearing and resistance.
So if you do weightlifting,
that will also increase bone density,
and also even the width and size of it.
- So just give an example.
Swimming would not be the best exercise.
- Right. Very good.
- There's some resistance there, but not a lot.
And there's no weight bearing.
- Right. Or jumping on the moon.
I mean, what?
All right.
Okay. So.
Weight bearing, resistance, posture.
Brad, do you wanna talk about why posture
is so important with with osteoporosis?
- Right.
So what posture, particularly poor posture.
When Bob's got good posture,
if you round forward and you look at the spine,
and remember, with osteoporosis,
the bones are losing calcium,
and they're getting weaker,
and they don't have the substance to them
and the strength.
And if you go forward, like this.
- Actually, go this way, Brad.
- Oh yeah.
Okay.
- So if I'm like this?
- Yep. There we go.
- Forward, like this.
- We're going like this,
and what happened is.
Okay, go ahead.
- I'll reveal it.
- So.
- We got a red box and a red rectangle.
Triangle.
- Actually, we got a symbol,
or this represents
one vertebra right here.
We're gonna get a little closer.
- That's right. Show them Brad.
- Yeah.
So if we look at this vertebra here,
and usually this happens up towards the lower thoracic area,
this vertebra here,
and as you see it goes like this,
there's pressure going in the front of the vertebra,
and it squishes there.
And if that vertebra is weak,
you can actually crush it,
and it becomes a compression fracture.
So if we look at it here.
- The bones are stacked up and here's a healthy one.
He leaned forward,
and, yeah, the front squeezed down
- Right.
He did that compression fracture
and they're painful.
- Yeah. And they, you can get them purely,
you can get them from falls,
I've seen it,
but I have seen people get them when they get older,
just from bending forward and lifting something.
- Sure. Yeah.
- I mean, they can happen very easy.
So posture.
You want be to be very good posture as you get older.
- Right.
- The fourth thing is balance.
And for the obvious reason.
That if you fall,
you're gonna be more likely to break bones.
So we want exercises that work on weight bearing,
resistance, posture, balance.
We have them today, Brad. Let's start.
- Okay.
- All right.
Why don't we go ahead; do the first one,
which I like.
Actually, I'm gonna have you do your first one, Brad.
Yeah. Cause I'm gonna get, get filming here.
You want you do the posture one?
- Okay.
- [Bob] Go ahead and stand up.
- Actually I'll put that there.
- [Bob] All right.
- Okay.
- [Bob] This one works on posture
and weightbearing and balance.
- Right.
So this is one of my favorite ones,
particularly for people forty and over,
cuz it does all three.
You're gonna stand on one leg.
Let's take the left leg here,
and the right leg is gonna extend behind you like this.
And the left arm is gonna go point up towards
towards the ceiling.
And you're gonna look up, towards the ceiling,
and go like this.
And I'm working on balance.
I'm really working on balance here.
This is working on my posture,
because all my posture muscles in my back,
that extend the back,
taking pressure off of those vertebra,
are working.
- [Bob] You can even squeeze your shoulder blades together
a little bit.
- You bet. Good point, Bob.
So it's here.
I'm squeezing back this way.
There we go.
- [Bob] That's actually a good angle, Brad.
- Move this way.
- [Bob] Yep, that's a good angle.
- This way.
And this is one of those exercises that may look easy,
but when you do it, it's challenging.
You may even need to have a cane in one hand,
or hold onto a chair,
because you're balanced.
And if you're like 60, 70, and, you know, older,
this probably is not gonna happen
unless you're holding on to something.
Unless you're really fit.
- [Bob] What I like about it, Brad,
is you can do it anywhere without any weights.
Now, if you get better, you could try weights.
- Sure.
- [Bob] You wanna show that?
- I don't know if I would do this out,
you know, in the middle of a store,
like at Walmart or something like that,
but you could.
Okay, just gonna take one weight.
You could put an ankle weight around your ankle, too.
A couple pounds.
- [Bob] Oh, that'd be a challenge.
- Yeah.
You know this, this would be the advanced technique,
and you're gonna go like this,
and here.
Yes, I'll go all the way around,
so you can see the angles.
Opposite leg.
Opposite arm.
Okay.
- [Bob] Excellent.
- That ipsilateral,
is that the technical, medical word for it?
- [Bob] Got it, Brad.
All right.
I'll give you a rest and I'll go do some lunges,
cuz that's the second exercise.
- All right.
- I'll flip.
All right.
Can we see me?
I've got my head kind of cut off here,
but lunges are just a great exercise,
cause they're weight bearing.
They're gonna strengthen your legs,
strengthen the muscles that you need for balance.
- Right.
- And it takes a little balance to do it,
Brad, wouldn't you say?
- Yeah.
- As I go forward, like this, I'm gonna do it slow.
Now I get here,
now you're not going forward, like this.
You're actually kind of dipping down, like this.
- Right. Right, look at the right here.
- Go ahead.
Trying to stop the knee from going past the foot.
- Good, Bob.
- All right.
Actually, I don't know if you want to film down
a little bit, Brad?
- Sure.
- So you can see that the knee is not passing the foot.
Can you catch that?
- [Brad] Yeah, go ahead.
Flip it, or do the other way, Bob.
- All right.
So now that's what you're gonna be doing,
is you're going back and forth.
Just like this.
I do these every day, Brad,
and the other thing is I'm working on posture
while I'm doing it.
- [Brad] Right. Yeah. Look at that.
- [Bob] I'm trying to maintain good posture
while I'm going forward.
- [Brad] Oh yeah. It shows that you do them every week.
- Now the same thing is you can do these with weights.
- [Brad] Oh yeah.
- [Bob} And you can add a lot of weight after a while,
if you become very good at it.
- [Brad] Oh yeah. I've seen people do this a lot at the Y.
- [Bob] Wonderful exercise.
- [Brad] Oh yeah.
- [Bob] One of my top exercises for anything, I would say.
- [Brad] You know, I had someone do these
in the clinic the other day
and she got really mad at me the next day,
cuz she got really sore.
Yeah. She'd never done 'em before.
So you gotta be careful
that you don't overdo it right away.
- All right, the last exercise.
I wanted to include one exercise, Brad,
for upper extremity, too.
- [Brad] Yeah.
- So for the upper arms.
So we're gonna go ahead.
I'm gonna go ahead and do some wall pushups.
If you've never done pushups before.
Whew, can I catch my breath?
All right. I'm gonna go over the door.
Can you see?
- [Brad] Oh yeah, we can see you, Bob.
- So just hands against the door.
If you've never done pushups before, very easy to do.
Start off this way.
- [Brad] So you're you got your feet, what,
about two feet from the wall or the door?
- [Bob] More than that, Brad.
I'm about four or five feet from the wall.
Four feet, probably.
- [Brad] Well, I wouldn't say that's four feet. Whatever.
- Now. Good posture.
Squeeze my shoulder blades together.
- [Brad] Yep.
- Again.
- [Brad] Don't bump your nose on the door.
- Yeah. That's easy for me to do.
All right.
If this becomes too easy,
now we're gonna go down to the floor, Brad.
- [Brad] All right.
- And now you're gonna do basically,
what, knee pushups do you call them?
- [Brad] Sure. Yeah.
You don't call 'em girl pushups,
cause they don't like that.
But when I was in grade school, that's what we call them.
- All right.
Good posture.
Good, good trunk, core stability.
- [Brad] Sure.
- Good core strengthening. - [Brad] Yep.
- And then if that becomes too easy,
you can go to the final one.
- [Brad] Right.
- And just real good posture.
- [Brad] That is.
Well, Bob, why don't you demonstrate
the two postures that are not good.
- Oh, that's right.
- [Brad] The camel and the slope.
- Sure.
A lot of people are like this.
- [Brad] Yeah.
- Or they're like this.
- [Brad] Yeah. Yeah.
- That one's actually kind of harder, this way.
- [Brad] If you hold it like that it could, yeah.
- More people are like this.
They're doing this.
- [Brad] Yeah, no.
- They're not keeping a good, straight posture like that.
Those things, all those three exercises.
Now again, I would say
that if you just wanna make your life easy
you can add in some walking,
cuz that's gonna get some good, lower extremity
weight bearing and strengthening of the bone.
But if you wanna throw in those three exercises
that's a great thing to help stave off osteoporosis.
- [Brad] You're you're breathing kind of hard, Bob.
- Whew!
All right. Thanks a lot, folks.
- Wait for me to get off.
I wanna say goodbye, too.
- All right. Goodbye, Matt.
Whew!