♪ Bob and Brad ♪
♪ The two most famous physical therapists on the internet ♪
- Hi folks, I'm Bob Schrupp physical therapist.
- Brad Heineck, physical therapist.
- We're the most famous physical therapist on the internet.
- In our opinion of course, Bob.
- Just one simple trick
is gonna help you stop your neck and arm pain, Brad.
- I like that, Bob. - You believe me?
- Of course. I believe you, Bob.
- All right Brad, I'm glad to hear that.
- You're a very believable person.
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- It's gonna work sooner or later, Bob.
- That's right, eventually we're gonna be
helping people like us, so.
- Let's get to the main topic, Bob.
We got neck pain, we got pain running down the arm.
How we gonna get rid of this?
- Yeah, so we got pain, you know, you're feeling it,
you might be feeling it in the trapezius,
you might be feeling it in between the shoulder blades,
you're feeling it up in the neck.
- You can see the dark purple here is where we have
the pain is off in this area.
Sometimes it goes down to the lower back
or the scapula a little bit.
- And it can also travel all the way down the arm.
If it's going all the way into the hand
I want you to see a therapist.
You know, the tingling and stuff
but if not you can try these things.
This is all based on the work of Robin McKenzie.
This book is really valuable. "Treat Your Own Neck."
It's written for the layperson. It's very short.
You can read it probably
within a night, even. - Sure.
- And it's got a lot of golden tips
that we can't go over through everything here today.
So we're just gonna give you a basic of it.
- Right we're gonna get through the basic concepts
but you know, it's not just pain you might be feeling,
but it may be some numbness, some tingling, burning,
cool or cold sensation it's described as,
you know, it's because the nerve is being impinged
up in the lower neck,
and that nerve or those nerves
go all the way down into the hand.
- So the one simple trick Brad, is that we are trying
to find the way his system works,
is you're trying to find the one repeated position
that's gonna help centralize the pain.
- Centralized?
- What do we mean by centralized?
Right now, the more the pain is going down,
the further it's going, the worse it's getting.
- Yep. - The more it comes up
and starts to what we call, centralize,
you know, show up more just in this area,
the better it's getting. - Right.
So what you wanna see is, let's say I do a movement
and that helps take away this pain.
- So it used to go to the wrist,
- Now it just goes up to the
- [Both] Elbow. - Yep. Good sign.
That's the movement you want to choose then.
And you're gonna keep redoing that movement.
- Right, even if there's a little more pain up here
but you get rid of it down here,
it's centralizing, it's positive.
- I just had a lady that she was getting pain
down her arm just like this.
Now it's out of the shoulder.
She goes, "but it's a little worse up in my neck."
A little more stiff."
I go, "That's great.
That's a good sign." - Right.
- So the next step would be trying to get the pain
out of the the upper arm like this.
- Sure. - And then eventually,
we'll get it outta here too.
You wanna take that off Brad?
I don't wanna walk around today with that.
- Turn around once more Bob,
and actually what'll happen if things are going well,
it'll actually go right into this area.
- Yeah. - And I feel like,
they'll say, "Oh, it's like the size of a tennis ball"
and it's right in that lower neck.
And that's a good sign, then, you know,
we're smiling as therapist because we know
things are gonna do very well.
- A lot of times it may just feel stiff in there
towards the end. - Sure.
- So the first one we're gonna start off with
and this is also if you're, you know, really hurting
you're gonna start off with the chin tucks
and we've done these many times.
But this is the one movement you start off with.
You wanna make sure it's not gonna make things worse
but you're gonna go ahead
and you're gonna tuck your chin in, like this.
So go you forward like this, you're gonna tuck your chin.
Now the key is with these movements,
is that you're gonna do them quite often.
- Sure. - I mean,
they talk about five to six to seven times a day
and you're gonna do at least 10 repetitions.
- With good postures. - Yeah.
- Bob is sitting up tall here.
- Always good posture with all these.
You gotta really make sure you got good posture.
So you're gonna do your chin tuck.
Sometimes we even do a little bit of over pressure.
And you go ahead like that.
Now, if even that starts making your pain worse
then you're gonna probably do them down here.
- So yeah, you can lay on a carpeted floor,
you could do it on your bed.
You're not gonna have a pillow and you'll lay down.
And my head's touching here and I'm gonna tuck my chin in
I always tell my patients,
"Can you touch the back of your neck, down to the table?"
And so I know that'll give them the right movement
that we're looking for. - Sometimes I'll put
a rolled towel underneath their head.
- Right here? - Yeah.
Just to give them a little bit of support.
- Sure. And get a little gap in there.
- Especially if their head, you know
they have a forward head posture.
- Right. For comfort.
'Cause they're just not able to do this,
particularly older people usually.
- But as soon as you're able to start tolerating that
then you're gonna go ahead and start doing extensions.
So we're gonna go back to the seated position
and now you're gonna start going back like this.
And then what you wanna do,
is you wanna have a chair generally
that's gonna hit you below the shoulder blades.
This one's a little bit high for me.
- Yeah. - And you're gonna start
working on this because you're not just doing this.
You're leaning back into the chair and going back.
- You're actually extending the thoracic
or that upper back as well.
- Yeah, exactly.
So the lower neck, upper back,
and you're gonna work on this.
Brad, do you wanna show what to do with the towel?
- Right. - Let's say
that's not working for you.
- They probably thought I was gonna snap you.
- I bet you they did think that.
- Maybe they were hoping.
- Sure, if we took a poll, there'd be plenty
that would be hoping.
- All right. - So this is what Brad and I
often do when someone can't do the extensions
- Right, this is starting to go well,
but this is starting to be uncomfortable.
You take a towel and you roll it up
and you get it low on the neck.
And there's a couple different varieties to do it.
This is how I'll have my patients do it.
First is here, and then I'll say,
"Can you go back now with the towel?
And does it feel better?"
And if they say, "Well, yeah, that feels a lot better"
and can go back farther, then we're gonna stick with it.
If it still hurts or whatever,
but I would say over 90% of the time this is-
- This is usually the one that solves it.
- Yeah. - And if it doesn't,
I mean, if you can only go a little bit of range
while the towels in there just do a little bit.
- So the towel helps you come forward
and it supports going back
and you may, you know, do 10 of these,
and by the 10th one, it should feel better.
A little more range in motion.
You don't fret if you can't go all the way back yet,
'cause that probably will take a little while
if it's a bad case.
- So let's say you're getting back there
and the pain is real still localizing or centralizing.
The next one you're gonna wanna try is really good posture,
and let's say the pains on this side
you're gonna do a chin tuck
and you're gonna bend that right side,
to the side that's painful, right?
This is the one that works for me.
This is the one.
And I had a dentist, this just worked beautifully for him.
He was having pain down- - I'm glad you mentioned that.
'Cause on our comments
we had more than one dentist actually say-
- Really? - Yeah.
- I don't know if they're right handed or what it was.
I think they tend to lean one way when they're working.
- Sure.
- So this really, I mean it was almost miraculous
to be honest with you.
And again, you could do these every hour.
You can do 10 of them.
You can do even a little bit more if it feels good.
- Right, and the rule is as you do it,
good means it's either centralizing, coming up
and/or, you know it's feeling better overall.
- If this does work too, Brad, I generally do recommend
that you try some extensions after doing that too.
- Right.
All of my McKenzie classes, they say,
"Work the Sagittal plane", other words straight back,
if it works, you know, otherwise go to the alternatives.
- Another one is, Brad, if it's giving you trouble,
and you kind of get stuck,
you're gonna maybe try the rotation.
Now the rotation one, you can go to the painful side
or you can go to the other side, but you figure out
which one starts to reduce the pain.
So let's say I rotate to the right
and that's reducing the pain.
I'll pick that side. - Right.
- But let's say that makes it worse.
I'll try rotating to the left and just rotate to the left.
And you can give a little over pressure on those too.
- [Both] Gentle, gentle.
- So, you know, you gotta find,
that's the one secret tip, this one simple tip trick
is to find out which direction
is gonna reduce the pain.
In addition to that,
I'm gonna go over just a couple other things.
We wanna make sure that you have good posture
throughout your day. - Sure.
- If you're working at a computer workstation
don't have the screen so low
that you're leaning forward like this.
You've really gotta get your head up,
ears over the shoulders. - Right.
- The other one, I think that really helps, Brad
is especially if you're getting pain
all the way down the arm,
throughout the day try to keep that arm supported
as much as possible. - Sure.
- Put a pillow there. I just have people do this.
They think, "Well, it's resting like this."
It's not, it's still pulling on the nerves.
- Right. - So I just, I said,
"Whenever you can get a pillow,
maybe even two and support that arm.
And you'd be surprised how that all starts to come down."
- And there are some nice office computer work chairs
that you can actually adjust the arm up and down.
Some people aren't even aware of it
but you can push a button in here
and you wanna make sure it's adjusted so that you can
you know, intermittently rest it on there.
It's gonna feel good to get the weight off
of pulling on those muscles.
- Just real quickly on sleeping posture too, Brad.
- Oh yes. - When you're sleeping,
you don't want to be sleeping with the,
and they go over this in the book by the way too,
they go over all these things. - Sure.
- We'll have a link below for the book.
You don't want to have two pillows like this
'cause what it is you're doing
is you're putting the neck forward here
so you're in bad posture again.
So when you're on your back, you know,
and even if you're reading,
don't be putting your back or neck in this position.
- Right. Or watching TV.
- Yeah, so you're gonna go ahead and put it down like this.
And now my ears are lined up with my shoulders
and I got good posture here.
- If you happen to have a thick pillow
get yourself a thinner pillow.
I've had people have that happen already,
'cause they just got those big bulky pillows.
- The difference only would be though,
if you do lay on your side,
then you do want the thick pillow.
- Right. - 'Cause you're trying
to fill in this gap here.
- So you need a thin pillow and a thick pillow.
- You do. Or two pillows.
- Or you can have a thin pillow,
and then when you lay on your side-
- You can - [Both] double it up.
- Now also, if this is the painful arm
it's not a bad idea,
do you wanna gimme one more pillow, Brad?
- Sure.
- Go ahead and put a pillow here.
And then you put another pillow underneath the arm like this
and keep that arm supported even all the way
through the night. - Right.
- I would avoid laying on that shoulder if you could
because that's just gonna irritate it, so.
All right, Brad, I hope those tips
help the people out there. - Oh, I'm sure they will.
- Because if they get help, they'll like us.
- Right.
- It's the circle of life.
All right, thanks for watching.