♪ Bob and Brad, the two most famous ♪
♪ Physical therapists on the internet ♪
- Hi, folks, I'm Bob Schrupp, physical therapist.
- Brad Heineck, physical therapist.
- And we are the most famous physical therapists
on the inter (coughs) internet.
- Oh. - In our opinion, of course.
- Oh my God, cough it up, Bob, wow.
- Well, today we're gonna go over foam roller mistakes.
You should watch this before you ever foam roll.
- Right.
- Especially if you're a beginner to this.
- So you don't make these mistakes.
- Right, by the way, if you're new to our channel,
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Also, speaking of foam rollers,
you're gonna want to go to our bobandbrad.com,
go to the giveaway section.
'Cause this week we are giving away
a couple foam rollers, vibrating foam rollers.
These are the best. - Right.
- And what's nice about these,
they've really come down in price now,
for around 50-some dollars, I think you can get them.
- Right, yeah, it's affordable now.
They're built well and they work well.
- Yep.
- It's very, what about, do you have some more?
- Yeah, you can also go to Facebook, Bob and Brad.
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go to Instagram or Twitter.
We got a 60-second version of our program.
- There you go.
- All right, Brad, you want to use this one, I think, right?
- Oh yeah, we're gonna use this--
- It's got-- - For demonstration purposes.
- It's got like, four different settings.
Okay, the first area that you never
want to foam roll is your low back.
And let me show you on the low back, why that is.
First off, you have a naturally-occurring
arch in the low back,
so when you foam roll it,
you're jamming all the joints together.
- You're, and plus there's no support there.
And there you don't want to foam roll bones.
And that's the spinous processes.
You want to foam roll muscles.
And you do that, you're gonna hit the spinous processes,
these bony protrusions,
as opposed to the erector spinae muscle groups.
- Right, now it does feel okay on the mid-back to me,
because we're arched out.
And even though we're on spinous processes,
it seems like it works out okay.
- Right, it just works out better,
'cause I think the spinous processes aren't so prominent.
- Right, right. - And the muscles come
out a little further. - Very good point, Brad.
The spinous processes are actually angled down.
- There you go.
- And these are angled out. - Right.
- We're gonna show you though, one alternative you can do.
If you want to do the low back, just go off to the side.
See, I'm not on the spinous processes.
I'm not on the back, I'm not jamming it.
I'm off to the side here. - Right.
And you can do that, but we'll demonstrate.
- Yeah, why don't you do it right now?
- All right, say no more.
I'm gonna get this thing.
- You're gonna get it vibrating, huh?
- All right, you can hear it now?
Yeah, doing a little dance.
All right, so here we go.
Again, how not to do it is--
- Right onto the line. - Straight on like this.
But if you go at a angle like this,
and I'm using my forearm
and my leg here to adjust the pressure,
and that way you can get as aggressive or not as aggressive.
It should feel good, feel into those muscles,
not onto the-- - Oh, you're vibrating there.
- Yeah, the vibrating voice, guh.
And here, you know, you want to do both sides.
There we go, should I?
Oh, what's the next one, Bob? - Next one is the hip.
- Oh, yeah. - Same thing.
We don't want to do it over a bony protuberance,
we call it in the anatomy world here.
You see me, Mike, here?
So we got the greater tubercle here.
No, trochanter. - Trochanter. (laughs)
- [Bob] Tubercle's up here.
Greater trochanter, and over that is actually some bursas,
which over, you can get bursitis.
It's a fluid-filled sac,
and you don't want to irritate that.
You don't want to roll right over the point of your hip.
- So it's just, I mean, I'm doing it right now.
It's not fun, it doesn't feel good.
But if I just turn my body and get into
that glute medius and maximus, then I'm on the muscle.
So you have to learn to work around
that trochanter. - The bones, yeah.
- [Bob] That trochanter.
You're just gonna irritate it.
You could actually develop some bursitis in there.
- Right, right, you could end up limping after that,
if you get after it too aggressively.
- Next one you don't want to do is your neck itself.
Same thing, it's almost like the low back.
You got, if you look here again,
look at the spinous processes, Mike,
how much they stick out versus the thoracic area,
how they start to flatten out.
These stick out.
It's arched there.
You're jamming the joints.
It's just not a good thing to do.
You can get the upper back, but avoid the neck.
- Right, so I'm doing where you can go right now.
But if you roll down to here, onto the neck,
then it becomes very uncomfortable.
It's just doing no good whatsoever, so stay away from that.
- You really are vibrating, Brad.
(Brad laughing)
Okay, next one, again, avoiding the bony prominences.
Now we're talking about the greater tubercle
on the shoulder, the point of the shoulder.
- [Brad] The old humerus.
- So it's right under that spot.
Same thing, there's a bursa over there,
and you don't want to irritate that.
So that's not something you'd want to rotate
or foam roll onto.
- Actually, that whole side of the arm,
there isn't much reason to do that,
because you're not getting on the bicep or the tricep.
And then you get down in here,
trying to get onto the deltoids,
you're just vibrating the joint.
This is something I would probably stay away from.
You know, you could do the triceps like this.
That works.
And the biceps, you know,
we usually just don't do the vibe biceps.
- [Bob] No, not really.
There's really no reason. - Hey!
- Next one, this is a little bit controversial,
probably, Brad. - Sure.
- So you'll all understand where the IT band is,
the iliotibial band.
So that's the band that runs all the way from your hip,
all the way down below the knee, even a little bit.
That's a tough-- - So it's,
it's right where this-- - Yeah, that striped area.
- My stripes are on it from here to here.
- Yeah, it's a tough, fibrous band.
That band is attaching into some muscles.
And if you foam roll the band,
you really can't stretch the band.
- Right.
- You can stretch the muscles.
And I'm assuming maybe you're stretching the muscles
a little indirectly, Brad, when you do the IT band.
But you're better off actually going
right up into the muscles themselves and foam roll them.
So there's-- - Way up here.
- [Bob] Yeah, there's a tensor fascia lata,
tensor fascia lata. (Brad laughing)
And Brad's hitting that right now.
- Yep.
- [Bob] That's the muscle that attaches into the IT band,
so why not stretch it directly?
- Right.
- So the mistake is to go over the IT band.
Just go to the muscle that it's attached to.
- There you go.
- And the final bony spot
that you'd want to avoid is the tailbone itself.
The tailbone is a really small series of little bones here.
I don't want to get to the point
where you actually get that out of place,
you know what I mean? - Right.
- You could actually, I mean,
that's how often these tailbone injuries occur
is you fall on your tailbone and you end up
jamming that bone and it ends up out of place.
- Right.
So if I start at the belt line and you work your way up,
I'm a little different.
It actually feels good to go on my sacrum.
But that's a wholly-- - On the sacrum.
- [Bob] That's this bone right here, that's fine.
- Yeah, that's a solid bone.
- [Bob] Yeah, that's solid.
Just don't roll all the way down.
- Right, so when I get to here and I start to tip up,
oh, I'm getting on the tailbone.
It's a little sensitive.
Your body's saying, stay away from me,
so don't go on that tailbone.
- Well, there we are. (Brad groaning)
Foam roll, and you know, with great pleasure of knowing
that you're not doing the mistakes that we just pointed out.
- Right, and we do have at least one or two videos
on places that you should foam roll,
and feel good and are really beneficial.
- So check it out. - You bet.
- Thanks for watching.
(bouncy synthesizer tone playing)