♪ - Bob and Brad, the two most famous physical therapists ♪
♪ on the internet. ♪
- Hi, I'm Bob Schrupp, physical therapist.
- Brad Heineck, physical therapist.
- And together, we are the most famous physical therapists
on the internet.
- In our opinion, of course, Bob.
- Brad, today, we're gonna give you, or them,
- Them.
- three reasons why sit-ups can be terrible for your back.
- Well, let's clarify this one.
- Yeah. Right. Well, we gotta,
it's a certain type of sit up.
- Right. Why don't get in the position, Brad,
right now so we can show 'em.
- Sure, it said sit-up. I remember when I was a kid,
this is how you do sit-ups,
- Right.
- in gym class.
- The full sit up.
- Yeah.
- In fact, they used to even have people hold your legs.
- Yeah. And sometimes you do this, or this
and pull your neck right, head right off your neck.
- Right. Why don't you stay in this position?
- Okay.
- So the first reason is, when you get up in this position,
go ahead and come all the way up, Brad. If you,
(Brad laughs)
come on up, Brad, like that.
- Okay.
Alright. I want you to memorize this position here.
Alright. Now we're gonna go to a chart,
and this chart is by Alf Nachemson, he is an MD-PhD,
and he's really famous
for measuring pressures in the discs--
- Okay.
- of the back. And what they found is that certain positions
really increase the pressure, and so, the chart should be up
now. And on the chart, you're gonna see a red arrow pointing
to a guy, sitting in a chair, with, holding onto weights,
and that says 275. Normally, if you're just standing,
look a little bit to three three columns over to,
from the left side, there's a man standing there with
straight posture. His pressure on the disc is at 100%.
And that's where, you know, a normal pressure. But you,
so you can see if you were to sit in a chair
with weights, it would increase the pressure to 275.
- [Brad] And he slumped a little bit, right?
- [Bob] And he slumped a little bit, yeah, exactly right.
Now, look farther over, and you'll see the person
doing the sit-up and there, the pressure is 210 pounds.
That's a lot of pressure on your back.
- [Brad] Is it 210 pounds or 210%?
- [Bob] Well, 210% probably.
- [Brad] So, that's over a double of the normal pressure
on your disc. So, it really increases the injury risk
for your disc.
- [Bob] Then plus, when you're putting yourself,
let's come back to, to us now. When you come back
to this rounded out position, this is a bad position
for the back. This is how you blow out a disc
or how you can hurt, hurt your back.
- Sure.
- So now, with someone like Brad who's got spondylolysis,
this actually probably doesn't hurt you, you know?
- Well, I still wouldn't do it. I, I still do my exercise
with my back in a pretty much a neutral position,
a little flex but not to this extreme. I don't do 'em like
this, no.
- So that's number one reason,
you're increasing the pressure
inside your discs,
increasing your risk for a herniated disc.
- Right.
- Good. Okay. Number two, when you're focused
on just strengthening, this is the rectus abdominis,
the muscle right in the middle here,
- Yep.
- And a friend of mine wrote a book on posture,
believe it or not.
- And, and he's a PhD in physical therapy, right?
- Right. And he wrote a book on this. And what happens
when you work a muscle work, work a muscle, it tightens up.
Okay. So you work this muscle. If you were just
working this one, not the other ones also,
it's gonna tighten you up and it's gonna put you
in this flex posture.
- Right, sure. It's gonna promote a poor posture.
- It's gonna promote a poor posture, right, not necessarily
put you in that position, but you're gonna feel more
inclined to wanna be in that position.
- Right, right.
- So that's the number two reason,
we really don't want that bent over posture.
- Right.
- That also can lead to back pain, herniated discs.
Number three, when you're in this position again, Brad,
if you could get in this position, you're believe it or not,
you're actually strengthening the hip flexors too.
- Right. Too.
- These muscles are helping pull him up,
- Right.
- when you're in this position and you could sit back
up again, Brad. And even those are gonna, if you're
you know, pulling, they're pulling on the spine
a little bit,
- Right.
- when you, when you're in, in that position.
So, the US military is actually switching to planks instead
of doing sit-ups, they're actually doing the, and I'll go
ahead and show--
- Yeah, show 'em a plank Bob.
- Okay. And the way, what they're trying to do here is,
is to strengthen the core, with the spine in an erect
position, in a straightened--
- Neutral position.
- Right.
- Right, because that's more functional
and that's more what, you know, in life, you really want--
- Right, go ahead. Demonstrate.
- Do I got room here?
- Oh yeah.
- So this is a plank.
- Yep.
- Kind of boring.
- Straight across there.
- But after a while it starts to hurt,
then there's side planks.
- Now I wanna make note, this is a, this is a good exercise,
but with my back condition, I've tried these
and I get a back gig for about two days.
So I have to do a different type--
- Respond analysis. Respond analysis.
- Right, but the majority of the people,
these are gonna be good exercises.
- Right. I, I still think you can do, these are the ones
I do, Brad, cause my back is completely straight here
and I'll do, I'll do you know like dead bug, you know?
- Yeah. Yep. The bicycle.
- Or bicycle. Yep.
- Maintaining a, a flat back here.
- Yeah, I'm pushing my back down into the mat,
- Right.
- while I'm doing this.
- Yeah. We've done a number of videos on--
- Yeah.
- core strengthening that instruct
the proper body mechanics.
- So anyway, especially if you're prone to back pain
or if you've had back pain, I would definitely
avoid the full sit up, so.
- I'm thinking that this is getting pretty close
to correcting that broken heart problem we're working on.
We're working the core muscles here, close to the heart.
- For those of you who don't know us,
we can fix just about anything but
- A broken heart.
- A broken heart. So, we're trying--
- But, we're another, this is another
step in the right direction.
- That's right.
- You got that nice bright red shirt Bob.
- Yep.
- I'm liking this.
So you just wait, we're gonna come up with it.