♪ Bob and Brad ♪
♪ The two most famous ♪
♪ Physical therapists ♪
♪ On the internet ♪
(clapping) - Okay yippee ki-yay.
Hi folks, I'm Bob Schrupp, physical therapist.
- Brad Heineck, physical therapist.
- Today we are the most famous
physical therapists on the internet.
- In our own opinion of course, Bob.
- Could Tech Neck cause
your headaches, neck and shoulder pain?
How to cure it.
We're gonna show you all this.
- Not only could it, it does.
- Yeah it does and we see it all the time.
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- Very good Bob, very good.
(coughing)
- You know, Bob, I was with a younger crowd
the other weekend.
Well, some younger
and they start bringing up this term
Tech Neck.
- Tech Neck.
- Tech Neck, they were like Tech Neck.
and it's like I didn't, you know.
- I ain't heard that.
- Yeah but I figured out really quick-
- What it is. - Yeah exactly.
So Tech Neck is that posture that you have.
The head forward posture as we've referred to it as.
And it really can do a number
on that lower neck, upper neck.
Cause headaches, pinching nerves,
irritates the discs,
all kinds of structures.
- What is amazing is how poor posture affects
your shoulders too.
- Right, good point.
- So, just real quickly, do you mind if I show it?
- Go ahead Bob.
- So here I am in good posture,
my arm goes all the way up.
If I go in bad posture like this,
that's as far as I can go.
And now it's impinging.
And so, if I'm like this all the time,
every time I bring my shoulder up,
I'm getting an impingement there
which can actually, eventually result
in a rotator cuff tear.
So it's all bad.
- Yeah, so let's take a look at the spine itself.
- Where does the tech come in?
The tech comes in because they're looking down at a phone
or they're looking at a laptop or a computer.
- Right, some technology thing
that's making our lives a little less pleasant,
so we're just gonna correct this right now.
Okay so let's look at,
if I'm sitting, particularly if you're sitting
on a low chair or on the floor.
On your bed and you're looking at your phone like this.
And your head goes forward
and a lot of times you'll even kind of
bring it up like this and
- Forward and extended.
- Yep and so, let's show
what's a good posture is on the neck
versus Tech Neck posture
- So should we go in the same direction
as you're going, Brad? - Yeah.
- So the spine is looking this way.
- We're facing that way
- So see the contrast here.
- Here would be the phone
like there and here.
And this is what happens with the neck with Tech Neck.
You get what we call Flexion
in the lower cervical spine.
And then it has to go into extension
and extreme extension to get your
- Get your eyes level.
- Yep, you have to keep your eyes level.
So what happens is the discs can have
undue pressure on them, causing problems.
You could have pinching of the nerves.
You can have the occipital nerves
that come up around the head
get irritated from pressure right here
which could cause headaches.
Problems with the peripheral nerves here
becoming pinched or irritated.
- The spinal nerve roots.
- They go down into the shoulder into the arms
and you can cause problems all the way down
into the hands actually.
- And for those of you who are sensitive about this,
I mean visually it looks awful.
And what you'll start getting
is that a little bump on the back your neck,
that's one of that spinous processes here.
And you feel that big nodule there.
- What do you call that bump besides Dowager's Hump?
- There's Dowager's Hump.
- Yeah, but the slang name Hump...
- I don't know where you're going with this, Brad.
- Wow, that's amazing how we can't remember
things at this age.
But, anyways, we're gonna show you
how to straighten it up
so we can avoid those things.
Hunchback. Hunchback, Bob.
- Oh, hunchback. - There ya go.
- See, it comes back. - It comes back
It's a slow...
- One thing you can do
is if you have a flat wall nearby
without anything on it, use it.
Just go up against the wall.
Put your bottom up against the wall.
Put your shoulders and bring your shoulders back
and then see if you can
touch the back of your head.
Not up here.
- [Bob] Not extending your head.
- Yeah the lower part of your head right there.
And if you can do that,
you're in pretty darn good posture.
You're gonna do that at least ten times.
And Bob I'm gonna give you the special bonus.
Bring your phone along with you
and every time you're gonna read your text
or look at your YouTube video
of Bob and Brad, do this
and look at it in this position
so your body has muscle memory of good posture.
- So basically he's got Tyrannosaurus Rex arms.
If he's got his arms like this,
he's got shortened arms in order to look at his...
- Yeah, up here.
You get that from that movie, right?
- What movie?
- The movie.
- I don't know (laughs).
- Tyrannosaurus.
I can't remember the name of the movie.
Jurassic Park. - Jurassic Park.
- Okay let's go on the next one.
This is a little easier.
You can do it laying down.
But not on a soft bed.
It should be on a carpeted floor
or if you have a mat
or if you happen to have a 6-inch roll
like that pretty blue roll right there.
Wonderful ideas for a posture correction.
So, I'll do it without the roll first.
I'll just lay down here.
Instead of having a flat wall, you have the floor.
Bring your shoulders back.
- [Bob] You're gonna chest stretch here, too.
Which is one of the things that tends to, you know...
Your shoulders tend to internally rotate
or tighten up.
- As a matter of fact, just last night
I was treating my daughter because
she had neck problems and I said,
"Straighten your neck out.
"Put your fingers right here.
"See where they're wiggling?
"And push your neck down until it touches the floor."
A lot of times you can't do it
but that's the stretch that you want to get.
- [Bob] So his fingers were right in the hollow here
- Yep
- And he's trying to flatten that out.
To stretch it out.
- And once again, you might as well
just look at your phone with good posture
and that can help with some of that habit.
Good postural habits.
If you happen to have a six-inch roller.
It works better if you have one
that's a little bit soft.
The lower density as opposed to the black ones.
They're a little bit harder.
- [Bob] Just a lot more comfortable.
It's more comfortable for foam rolling even, too.
- Yep, exactly.
And this is a nice relaxing posture.
Unless your shoulders come back even more
and your head, and then you can do
your chin tucks in this position.
Read your phone here.
- [Bob] Now if your posture is really bad
you probably won't even be able
to get your head down to the roll to start with.
You're gonna have to start with a pillow
or I don't know.
we probably don't have our arch.
- Yeah it might be behind the windows but,
just a pillow here.
Particularly older people I find that,
they have a hard time getting their head...
You know if you're 30 years old
and you can't get your head back to here,
That's a... - [Bob] That's a bad sign.
- That's pretty severe, yeah.
- You know, you're gonna need to start working on it.
It's not too soon.
You know, I'm gonna mention this too, Brad
if you are older and you got bifocals
which I do and I was working at the computer
and with bifocals what do you do?
You have to go like this.
- Precisely.
- I was getting headaches from this.
And so I finally ordered glasses,
reading glasses just for the computer.
- Oh really? - Yeah.
They're made for 20 inches, for a computer.
And they work fantastic.
- So you don't have to look down.
- Nope, the whole thing is a reading glass
- Really? - Yep, I use it...
- What site did you get it on?
- I actually got mine from ZenniOptical.
- Zenni? - You get them for $50, $60.
They're inexpensive.
You do need the prescription, though,
for what your vision is.
- What if you just need cheaters?
- Cheaters would work, too.
- Then you don't need a prescription.
- No, you don't, but I wanted big glasses.
- You got those big pop bottle ones?
- I got fairly big ones because
I'm sitting at my desk, nobody's seeing me there.
Yeah, just so I can see the whole screen
- I want you to bring them in.
We got to do a video on that.
- I'm gonna bring them.
They actually don't look that bad, Brad.
They don't.
Actually, yeah, my wife looked at them,
went, "Yeah, they're okay."
- Yeah we're gonna bring it in
and then we'll have people comment.
- Yeah we'll do that.
- Wait, we got number three, yeah.
- All right, number three.
- I got another one is,
is simply monitor your posture.
And we we need to do this.
We mentioned this earlier.
You know, have your wife or your family member,
a friend give them little hints every...
"Your posture's not looking so good"
and straighten them up.
- What works in my family is
I correct my wife's posture and then she just
revels in the fact when she could do it back to me.
She's like, "Oh, oh.
"Your posture's looking very..."
(laughs)
"How do you like it?
"How do you like to be..."
But it worked on video, too.
We noticed it on video when we...
Some of our earlier videos.
- Oh, my goodness.
Well, even now, Bob, we have some viewers comment
on some of our posture.
Well, we're working out.
Don't worry.
- Yeah, we're working on it.
Just like if you have a broken heart.
We can fix just about anything.
- except for
- a broken heart.
but we are working on it.
- and we'll never stop.
- All right, thanks for watching folks.
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