- Hi. I'm Bob Schrupp, physical therapist.
- Brad Heineck, physical therapist.
- Together we are the most famous physical therapists
on the internet.
- In our opinion of course, Bob.
- I just told Brad that I'm gonna steal these from him
'cause I have a patient that I'm gonna use these with.
And these are good for training with balance, especially
after someone's had a stroke or
the person I have in mind actually has Parkinson's disease.
- Sure.
- We're gonna use it with him.
- Yep.
- And they always need the good visual queuing.
You wanna show again, Brad? How this is made real quick?
- Yeah. Simple two by four.
Make sure you clean the edges off
so there's no birds on 'em or
- Length is?
- Splints. 16, 18 inches is fine.
No real specific, but you should go over 16 inches typically
and sort of visual.
You should put some colored tape on here.
That's all this is is tape.
You know, you can color electrical tape or
- So basically three corners.
- Right. 'Cause we're gonna be able to see.
We want it on one side and then on the narrow side as well.
- Yeah.
- Okay. So let's put it down on the flat side.
- Now we already did a video
on kind of the lower level balance activities.
- Someone that needs a cane because their balance is off.
- I'll put that up here so they can watch that one.
- Right.
- If you wanna click onto that one.
- But once the person's getting pretty good and this is
someone who's already walking outside on the lawn
without a cane, but they wanna get a little bit
higher level.
Then we can use this and maybe one foot is dragging
or there's a problem with one side, like
with a stroke, and we wanna pay attention to that side more.
- Yeah, this is gonna be perfect
for the patient I have right now 'cause he's pretty strong.
- Mm hmm.
- It's just a balance issue and I wanna try this with him.
- Okay.
- With the resistance.
- Good. Okay.
Why don't you start over here, Bob?
- Okay.
By the way, this represents
that I apparently had a stroke and it affected this side.
- Yeah, the left side would be the weak side
but fairly well recovered.
- Yeah.
- In this instance.
So first of all, let's go forward, Bob.
- Okay.
- He's gonna walk forward.
Step,
step,
step.
Now depending on the person,
you may just have him do a single step.
- Sure.
- And if that's too easy, then do it, Bob.
And do it. Actually step over.
- That would be the advanced part of it.
- Yep.
- Because you really gotta
- Yep. As that becomes easier, the person's confident.
They're not losing their balance.
If they are, you're gonna have a hand on the gait belt.
- This really helps people who have what we
call a shuffling gait pattern.
- Mm hmm.
- And a lot of times you see it in a stroke.
- Yeah.
- So,
- Hold if you feel any concern about falling.
Hold that gait belt I have right here.
- So this is kind of a variation here where
I'm going alternate, but I was kind of step stopping in
between.
- Sure. Yep.
- So,
- All right, let's go back to the beginning.
Let's say his forward walking is safe.
He's going step over step. Step two: different strategies.
Now we're gonna go sideways.
Go ahead, Bob. Step there and over there.
And take that step and over and there.
Again, hold onto that gait belt if you're concerned
at all about any falls. Oops.
And you can step right on there.
There is no problem with that.
And you might find going to the right is easy.
Going to the left, with the weak side,
might be a big difference.
So Bob's just trying to mimic some problems you might find.
Oh and then if it doesn't slide it over,
whoop, hold on.
(Bob chuckles)
There you go. All right.
There is one more even advanced one for
someone that's quite advanced.
Go ahead and walk straight forward, Bob.
And Bob's doing pretty good.
One step. Step over step. There you go.
Now go backwards.
One step at a time.
Look back there a little bit so you can see it.
Just one step at a time.
Again, this is advanced.
This is where people are really doing well.
And you want to get 'em back to work or something
of that nature where they're walking around.
Where you know, they have to move backwards.
- What about the resistance, Brad?
- Oh yeah. Okay.
The next step.
- Didn't want you to think we couldn't go any further.
- This is advanced.
This is for someone who probably is gonna go golfing
and they'll be walking up in heels.
They're gonna be swinging the club.
- Right.
- And they're pretty high level.
Take a theraband or a resistance tube like this.
A light one. The yellow one's usually pretty light.
This is a lot harder than it looks.
And Bob will let you know.
- Yeah.
- Okay.
Go ahead. To the right, Bob.
And I'm just gonna hold some resistance here.
Keep going.
- Yeah, this is really, you're really working here.
You're working to maintain your balance
'cause you really want to go like that.
- Yep, this is when the person is already doing well
and they're in the community walking and, if they're
in a crowded area where there might be people bumping
into 'em inadvertently,
this would help them stay steady with that.
And you'll wanna make sure you do this
in both directions, actually three directions.
He's going to the right side.
Now walk straight ahead, Bob.
- This is one that I am gonna again
try on my patient with Parkinson's because
- Yeah.
- He's pretty strong and I think he could tolerate this
and this'll really put him to the test.
- And if you're working with a patient
or a family member doing this,
it's really important that you pretend you're the patient
and have someone else do it so you know
what the person is experiencing.
- So do we dare flip 'em up?
- Oh yeah, this is pretty high level.
Yeah. Now you're going three and a half inches
over.
- It's getting worse, Brad.
- Mm hmm.
- Keeps getting harder.
- Yep. They do.
And again with this. This is two person assist.
We only have one here.
- Someone would be holding me from the behind.
- Someone's gonna be holding.
Can you hold? Open your arms up, Bob.
Holding the belt on both sides here
and then the other person holds the resistance band.
Excuse me, Bob.
All right.
- So someone's holding me back here
and then I'm going way over these boards.
- This could be done with an athlete actually,
that's recovering from an injury at the hip or the knee.
- Yep.
- Yep. Oops. See, now he's tipping them over.
I'd probably say we're not ready for that yet.
- Right.
You've got two, three in a row.
We've gotta go back to the board's laying down.
- Very clever, Brad.
- Yeah. Once again, Bob, we can help fix just
about anything in the body except for what?
- Boom boom. A broken heart.
- Broken heart but we're working on it.
- Thanks.