- Hi there.
Brad and I are gonna show you today
what to do with a painful knee
before you even got outta bed in the morning.
- That's right, Bob, start your day right.
♪ Bob and Brad ♪
♪ the two most famous physical therapist ♪
♪ on the internet. ♪
- All right, the first step, Brad, you wake up.
- Yes. - You actually sit up in bed.
- Yes.
- And you grab a pillow.
- Yes.
- And you fold it in half.
- Ah, very good.
- And you put it under the painful knee
cause you wanna strengthen the quadricep.
- [Brad] Sure.
- I will guarantee you,
if you have a painful knee,
that quad step has become weak.
- Right.
- So to strengthen you put the pillow underneath.
- Yep.
- And you squish the pillow down
and tighten up the muscle at the same time
and hold probably 10 seconds.
- Yep.
- Relax.
Do another set.
- So the foot kind of comes up
or do you wanna keep the foot down
at the same time?
- You can do it either way, yeah.
- I think did you mention actually
if you touch that quad, you can...
- You can feel tied up, yeah.
- Yep, and that can be a little helpful,
especially if-
- Real feedback.
- Yep.
Biofeedback so we like to call it.
- Now, if you want, you're motivated,
you could do three sets of 10.
- Yep, squish
so don't do 'em do fast.
Don't go on off, on off.
Go squish, relax.
Squish, relax.
You don't have to say squish.
- There we go.
- My turn for number two
- Right. - Knee extension.
Now this is a nice one.
You just take a towel, roll it up
so it's about three or four inches in diameter,
maybe a little bigger.
- [Bob] You can have it next to your bed.
- Yeah, yeah, be ready. - [Bob] Ready to go.
- You can put some rubber bands around that
then you don't have it falling apart.
- Right.
- So I'm gonna take this
and actually put it underneath my ankle
and there's gonna be a gap under the knee here.
And so this actually does strengthening
and a stretch as well.
And I'm gonna push that knee and try to get the back
of my knee down to the bed.
So this holds the ankle up
and we stretch and push.
Oh, those- - Really important.
If you are lacking extension.
- Yep, and extension's critical
for working your full extension.
- Right.
- Now, what you can do, my toe is pointed straight up.
We're gonna get a different camera angle here
and I'm gonna try it rotated out to the side
and do the same thing.
- And you might find that feels better.
- Yep.
- If it does, that's the one you should do.
- Yep.
You experiment, straight.
- Right.
- Rotated out and then you can rotate in
and you can see I got my hand here,
I'm feeling those quads work.
Maybe a little stretch, push down.
And like Bob said, whichever one feels the best,
like you're getting the best extension,
go with that one.
And you may want to, you know, do that over time,
it might change.
- Yeah, eventually you could get some pain relief from us.
- Yep, there you go.
You can never go wrong with a rolled towel in bed.
- There we go.
All right, the final exercise number three
is we're gonna work on knee flexion and extension in bed.
Brad why don't you show manually first?
- Yep.
So you're gonna bring it up here
and you know, so to flex it, I'm gonna bring it up
and use my hands
if I can reach comfortably around my knee
and I'm gonna bring my knee to my chest and down up.
You got a stiff knee
and it doesn't want to stretch or flex all the way,
just work with that gently,
as long as it doesn't create any sharp pain.
Okay.
- Now ideally you want to do repeatedly
so it's gonna be a lot easier
if you have a knee glide.
So Brad, I'm gonna put this place.
- And the idea of the knee glide
is it takes all the friction out.
So you're not sliding across your sheets
and whatever else you have on your bed,
the dog or whatever.
And then-
- Now he can also use strap with it.
- Yep.
There we go.
And now that just allows,
especially if your knee's really stiff and a little painful
it could help you get those arms to do the work.
- Well, plus if you had surgery on your knee.
- Oh absolutely.
You got a new knee, little meniscal surgery,
this is a great way to start in bed.
You can do this right in the hospital,
you know, if they have this.
There you go, Bob.
What else we gonna do?
- I think that's it, Brad.
- Well, yeah, I was-
- You could do a little extension
or you want to show the other strap?
- Well, I guess, you know we...
- Yeah.
- You know, you can, you know, if you don't have that
you can...
You know, if you've got a belt later on
you can put a loop on there
and you get that around your foot.
- That'll work great.
- That works good.
You know, you can't go wrong with an old belt.
These do work the best.
- Right.
- If you have one of these or if you wanna buy one
they're not very expensive,
but the reason they are-
- Yep, they got loops.
- Loops so that if you have arthritic hands-
- Loops galore.
- Problems with gripping,
this eliminates that whole aspect of it,
really makes a big difference.
Then you can take it
and go around the knee like this and do the same thing.
So there's a number of things that, that does help with.
But one way or another, you're gonna get that knee straight,
bending stronger before you get out of bed.
- We wanna match too bad.
If you put your foot back up there, Brad.
- Oh yeah, I'll put it right up.
- (indistinct) work on extension on that.
- Oh yeah, that's right, yep.
- So you can work on trying to get the knee straight
with the knee glide by pushing down.
- And it is helpful a lot of times
to get that range of motion where it's free.
- Right.
- And then, you know, so you loosen it up, stretch,
loosen it up a little and stretch.
- And then of course you can use this
during the day when you're sitting.
- Absolutely, yep.
It's more than a bedtime project.
- All right.
That's it, wake up right.
Gets knee feeling right.
- That's right.
So you can go for a walk without any issues.
- Right.
Cheers.
(upbeat music)