- All right Brad,
this might come as a surprise to you,
- It will.
- but many of you
are not walking right.
- Oh, we walking sideways, or what?
- Well, we're gonna show you.
♪ Bob And Brad. ♪
♪ The two most famous ♪
♪ physical therapists ♪
♪ on the internet. ♪
- All right.
The biggest mistake we see, Brad,
is walking without the glute muscles.
The butt muscles.
- Where'd they go?
- They have amnesia.
- Oh. So they forget to turn on.
- Right.
And it happens quite often when you hit heel first.
- Okay.
- It's to the
foot first.
- Sure, The forefoot?
- Forefoot.
- Sure. Yep.
- Right.
And it shuts the muscle off,
And, imagine that you take,
I don't know, 10,000 steps a day?
- Mmh hmm.
- 10,000 steps reinforcing
no activity of the butt muscle.
- So what muscle takes over for it?
There's gotta be-
- Hamstring.
Yeah. The heel locks.
I mean, the knee locks.
- So those muscles get overworked, I'm assuming.
- Right, exactly. Piriformis.
- Yeah. Yeah.
So we're gonna talk about this.
- We're gonna talk about it.
So Mike gets us laughing before we talk.
Okay.
So we're gonna show you a test you could do.
A single leg bridging.
Brad, you wanna go ahead and do one?
- Yep. So this is probably best done on the floor,
not on a bed.
- Right.
10 seconds, you're gonna hold.
- So this leg is not gonna be working.
- [Bob] Right.
- Lift here.
- [Bob] Lift up and where do you feel it?
You should feel in the butt.
If you feel it in the hamstring,
or the quad,
or it, it hurts your back.
- Yep.
- Your glute is probably not working the way it should.
Brad, what do you say?
- Well, after holding it here
for whatever seconds I've been doing it
now I'm starting to feel
right here. It's the hammies.
- There we go. My hamstrings.
- So,
- Yep they're, I gotta stretch 'em.
- You gotta work your glutes more.
- Yeah, I gotta be glutenated.
- Okay, why is the glute so important, Brad?
- Well, Bob its a big muscle.
- Well, right.
And we're gonna go over some of the reasons.
One, it stabilizes the hip.
If our glute is not working,
the glute amnesia,
it actually, this hip will slosh around
and it can give you a pinching down the front.
- [Brad] So we're talking about the glute maximus.
- Right.
- The biggest, 'cause there's three glute muscles.
We're talking about-
- I had this, so I know what it is like.
- There you go, yeah.
- It is terrible.
I had to actually stop running.
So you want to make sure the glute is working for that.
All right.
Again, if the glute stops working,
the smaller muscles in the butt start,
have to work overtime.
- And they get tired pretty fast.
- Right.
And one of it's called the
[Both] Piriformis.
- Yeah that nasty little muscle.
- And that crosses over the sciatic nerve
and it can tighten up and give you pain down the leg.
- [Brad] Right.
- Like sciatica.
- [Brad] Right.
Which obviously is something we would like to avoid.
- And not fun.
The last thing the glute does,
it actually stabilizes the pelvis.
- Sure.
- Which can help your back pain.
- Right.
And that makes a lot of sense because
the glute max is connected.
- Right.
- The Origin - The ilium.
- Vastly across that whole ileum or pelvic bone there.
- Right - So it all makes sense.
- Yep.
- We don't just make this stuff up, by the way.
- That's right.
Okay Brad, you want to show us
how we could get that muscle firing again?
- This is one option.
On all fours is nice to do it,
on the floor is probably preferable.
And so I'm gonna work my right glute here.
Make sure the knee is bent
at 90 degrees or close to 90 degrees.
And that helps eliminate the hamstring.
Yep.
- Right.
- And so I'm just going to simply work it like this.
I can feel that glute muscle going
and you're gonna work, you know
10 to 20 reps
as you need it,
you could put an ankle weight on
or I use some kind of resistance
which we're not gonna get into here
'cause you'll be fine starting out without any weight.
There we go.
I'm already getting a little fatigue right there.
- Yep. You can also do it throughout the day, if you wanna.
You just while you're standing, squeeze your butt.
- Ah, butt squeezers.
All therapists do this.
- Right.
- They do. They have their patients who do butt squeezers
sometime in their...
- And they, you could do it and people don't even know.
- Right. You can be standing there and waiting for the bus
doing your butt squeezers.
Well, they might notice a little.
- Right.
- But don't worry about it.
Just tell them Bob and Brad told you to do it.
- Next, you wanna make sure you walk with a shorter stride,
so you're not hitting on the heel.
- Which I think is probably the most challenging,
for me, anyways.
- And soft knees,
meaning bent.
- Slightly bend 'em.
- Right.
So just,
a shorter stride
and feeling that butt
kick in.
- Now I find that if I do this if I'm barefoot,
like in the house
or actually I do it more at that swimming pool
where I swim,
then I can feel it.
And with my shoes on
I can feel my heel hit first
very very quickly.
And so it gives me right away.
I know I gotta come down on my forefoot first.
I gotta tie my shoe.
- You wanna break that habit of walking
- Yep.
- With the knees locked.
- And you're gonna have better balance overall
with this technique.
- The next one Brad, you can actually start using your hands
to give you feedback.
- Right.
- You wanna see if the muscles fire in you
when you step on it.
- So, technically speaking
we're gonna palpate those glute max muscles.
In other words, you gotta grab a hold of them,
- Don't do this in public.
- Yep.
- And then - People will wonder
about you.
- Feel those muscles go and that feedback
will help make those muscles,
all your fibers, start to fire.
You don't have to do this forever.
- Right.
- You may do it for a week or two or whatever.
- Make sure it becomes automatic.
- Its training your body to work
the way your mind is telling it to work.
- Right.
You could do some walking while you do it too.
- Yeah.
If you're going out,
out walking like this then people will talk
but some people don't mind.
Actually I do this.
I do it when I work my...
- Oh sure.
- With some resistance, which is another video.
- Gotcha.
- We'll do that little trick later.
- All right Brad, this is a good shortcut.
All you do is walk on your toes.
It bends your knee,
and your glute has to fire away.
- Right.
I was exaggerating just to be silly, but yeah.
So, think about your forefoot.
I think of it as forefoot.
- Right. - Not like a ballerina.
And you can use a cane or a stick if you need balance,
you don't have to.
And then you're just going to,
you see, my knee is flexed.
Again I really think with shoes off
going barefoot
as long as it's not slippery,
really helps train that.
- That's probably one of the easiest ways
to train your butt.
- Yep.
- All right.
The final technique is Brad, a shortcut.
You could actually walk with your knees excessively bent.
- So it feels weird.
It looks weird.
You're not gonna do this all over.
- But it does fire the glutes.
- Yep.
So just simply walk this way.
(Bob chuckles)
Look at the knees are bent.
And it's kind of fun.
It's like, it's like the movie, you know?
- Yeah. Young Frankenstein.
- Yeah. Walk this way, young man.
(Bob laughing)
- All right, Brad.
I wanted to wish everybody good luck with their glutes.
- Yeah, Good luck glutes walking, and walk this way.
- Glute on.
(Brad chuckles)