♪ Bob and Brad ♪
♪ The two most famous physical therapists ♪
♪ On the internet ♪
- Hi folks I'm Bob Schrupp, physical therapist.
- Ow, Brad, hey physical therapists.
- We're the most famous physical therapists
on the internet.
- Why, Bob, why, in our opinion--
- Sorry, I hit you harder than I planned there.
- Right in the patella. - Did you ever get,
did the nuns ever hit ya?
By the way, we're going to talk about three stretches
to fix your wrist pain in minutes, including decompression.
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- There ya go, Bob.
- All right let's go to work, Brad.
- That's right, okay.
Wrist pain,
you know, it's one of those things that
you're probably going to have wrist pain sooner or later,
whether you're an active person and overuse your wrists
or just as the aging process goes along,
and the reason is, we're gonna look right away to Sam.
Sam, I am.
He's our skeleton.
But, we look at the anatomy of the wrist
and you'll see there's a lot of little bones,
there's eight of them actually.
I'm not going to go through all the names of 'em,
but they're there and they're all there for a good reason.
They all have joint surfaces on 'em,
they have cartilage and there's synovial fluid,
and they allow the wrist to flex, to extend,
to ulnar deviate, radial deviate, and make circles.
It's a complicated joint, it really does a lot of motion.
- It does, it's gotta be stable,
but yet it has to move too,
so that's always a tricky proposition.
- Right - Because again,
you've got a lot of joints there.
- Exactly, if you think about all the times
when you open and close doors,
if you're doing some manual work,
you're pushing, you're pulling, and it's really,
that joint, you know, all those bones
are really going to work.
- Taking a lot of work.
- Yeah, a lot of abuse, so what happens is,
you know, you can have some swelling in there
and a little bit of swelling in each joint
adds up to a lot of pain, lotta loss of range of motion,
a good place for arthritis to set in,
you know, as you get into your 50s and 60s, et cetera.
So how do you get rid of it?
We need to increase the range of motion.
- Right, not only increase it,
but just by doing range of motion
without stress on it.
- Right.
- It increases what is called synovial fluid,
it's almost like a motor oil
- Right.
- For the joints. - Right exactly.
- So the natural motor oil.
- Right, there is one thing we do wanna mention,
if you have success with your wrist pain
and range of motion, like after you take a shower,
or in a bath, or if you're washing dishes in warm water
and it consistently feels better and loosens up, feels good,
there is an option that even one step above,
that would be superficial heat,
- Right. - water or a typical hot pack,
But they make hot packs like this Thermotex.
- This is a Thermotex Infrared,
- Far-- yup - Far Infrared, heating system
and we, Brad and I, you know, you have one in your house,
I have one in my house, this is the one I use, actually,
and I just keep it in my chair all the time for my back.
- Your low back, right.
- It's just a great treatment for my back,
but I'm getting off on a tangent here,
but the thing about thermate far infrared heat,
it penetrates much deeper than normal heat.
- Right, right. - So, we got--
- A normal heating pad will just go,
as far as we have marked here, just a few millimeters,
skin deep essentially.
- Right.
- Thermotex the Far Infrared,
if you look at the yellow tape on the ruler there,
2.36 inches, it's that deep.
Now if you consider that on your wrist,
that's gonna heat not only your skin,
but all the way through the whole joint.
- Right, exactly,
so it's really gonna really provide increased blood flow,
which always helps heal or feel better.
- Right, and it's not an aggressive heat,
it gets up to about 104 degrees Fahrenheit,
and the nice thing, they make one just for the wrist
but I don't see any sense in doing that
because this one wraps up just like one of those--
- A muff.
- Yeah, there you go. - Yeah.
- Had one, well I didn't, my sister had one.
Boys didn't wear one when I was a kid.
- That's right.
- And you put your hands in here
and you get both wrists at once,
and not only that, then you have the full...
- Right you can use it - The full pad
for your knee, your hip, and your back.
- Right, it can be used for anything
- It's just a great thing.
- You need one, we need a portable battery
so you can use it in deer hunting, right?
- Ooh.
- So you can keep your hands warm?
- Well yeah it's a snap fire away,
and then you can disconnect the cord, that's a nice thing.
But anyways let's go to the exercises, Bob.
- Sure.
- 'Cause if heat's not, you know,
doesn't seem to change the pain or increase it,
or this, even if you do heat it up
you still wanna do the exercises,
actually. - You wanna move it, yes.
- So the first one, now these are relatively simple,
we got some tricky ones at the end
that are going to be some nice pearls, if you will,
to get ya going.
But just simply extend the wrist and flex it.
And just work it back and forth,
and start out slow if it's tight in one direction,
go, say it hurts and it's tight this way,
don't push it, just kinda work into it, back and forth.
And after about 10 repetitions, it starts to loosen up,
then you can give it a little overpressure each time.
- As long as it's, it doesn't increase your pain.
- Right.
If you do it each time and the pain gets better,
clearly improves, then you can go a little bit,
but use good judgment.
- Some people will do it off the edge of a table.
- Sure, yup.
- So you can support the forearm.
- Right.
- And yeah sort of a little pressure on,
pressure off, pressure on, pressure off.
I heard one instructor say,
"Don't enter the pain cave, stay out of the pain cave."
- That's a good way to think about it.
You know, along with wrists,
if you got wrists your fingers are probably a little tight,
you may wanna work that.
I know personally in my experience
that's what I need to do,
but then, the next thing you wanna do is circles.
- Sure.
- Not a tight fist but a loose fist,
and you can do it straight or with a fist,
whatever works better, and go clockwise.
Start out small and as it feels better,
work bigger and bigger.
Make sure you go both directions.
You know, 10, 15.
- I always like that one, Brad, you'd show people
is you'd put your fists like this
and then you'd twist out like that.
- Sure.
And that's actually a good stretch for you--
- For the forearm.
- Yep. - Right.
I just always like that one.
It just feels really good.
- Yeah that's a nice option.
Yeah we always like to give people
a little more than we say.
Now this next one is one that I like personally.
But it's the decompression or traction.
- Sure.
- So all these joints,
particularly if you're doing a lot of pushing,
you wanna decompress them, pull them apart.
Let that synovial fluid be able to get
into those joint crevasses, if you will.
So just relax,
this is the hand I'm gonna do the traction on,
or the decompression, relax it,
this hand's gonna grab around the back of the hand,
and then I'm gonna support the weight of my elbow
on my thigh here, you could do this on a table,
you probably wanna have a towel there
so it's comfortable.
Here, as a matter of fact I'm gonna use this.
Oh yeah, that helps a little bit.
And you just relax it, the other hand gently pulls,
and relax.
So you've got kind of a pumping motion, it's very slow,
and relax.
Now what you can do,
this is one of the little tricks I do
when my wrist gets kinda sore and it kinda locks up,
so I'll pull and then I'll do some rotation.
Can you see that Mike?
- Also the form is rotating, you're not rotating the hand.
- Exactly - The forearm rotates.
- This hand is stabilizing the hand.
- I can see that, that'll work.
And then I'm just rotating the wrist,
and that really gets some nice motion.
Can you see that Mike?
- You know, so along with that,
I bet you could even just do a little bit of,
you know, pushing up and down.
- Right exactly, yup, you could go up and down this way.
- Yup, move it all. - Yup.
- And with all these things, if you find one direction
that feels really good,
- Right.
- that's what you wanna keep doing.
- Exactly. Exactly. - 'Cause that's how I,
I wanna show the Mulligan technique,
very similar to this one to some extent.
- Sure, do you wanna have the--
- It's a nice little rest. - Sure.
- So, what you're gonna do is,
I'm gonna take my hand and the thumb
is gonna push the bones this way.
- Sure.
- And my fingers are gonna push it the other way,
provide a counter force.
So I go like this, I push it over.
This is pushing that way,
and then I do flex and extension while I'm doing that.
- [Brad] Oh, yup, yup.
Yeah this is a typical Mulligan
- Yup. - philosophy.
- And I've had this where I had this,
where I had, it felt like a wrist needed to be cracked,
or there was a kink in it.
- Yeah I know what you mean.
- And that's where I did that, went in and I was like
wow that felt really good.
- You mobilized it. - I mobilized it, right.
- There you go.
- Again, pain free.
If it hurts you do not do it.
- Right
- But you'll know right away does it,
oh it feels fine, no it doesn't hurt,
or if it does hurt you stop.
- Yeah. - Very simple.
- Exactly, Bob, it's very simple.
A lot of these treatments are not that difficult,
you just have to understand the concept
and don't overdo it, take the way that is pain free
and there you go.
- It's like a hammer, if you keep hitting your thumb
and it hurts, stop hitting your thumb with the hammer.
- Yeah then you don't have to take ibuprofen.
- That's right.
These things are very simple in life if you just follow,
remember Brad and I can fix just about anything.
- Except for
- A broken heart.
- There you go but we're working on that.
- I don't know I feel like Brad
hasn't been working hard enough on it,
it seems like, you know, you're slacking.
- I dunno Bob, but I know I'm gonna work on slacking too.
- All right, he's good at that.
(laughing)
(happy jingle)