- Hi, I'm Bob Schrupp; physical therapist.
- Brad Heineck; physical therapist.
- And together we are the most famous physical therapist
and patriotic physical therapist on the internet.
- In our opinion, of course Bob.
- Yup and this is for my nephew Chase
who's gonna be seeing us on the 4th of July, yeah.
And he's stationed down in Fort hood in the army
and thank you for your service.
- You bet, as well as all your other
men and women who serve our country so powerfully.
So what are we gonna talk about today Bob?
- Our top three stretches for back pain relief.
Now this is what we're gonna do is
we're gonna show you three stretches
and what I want you to do
if you have back pain is try all three
and see if any of them provide you some relief.
- Right?
- I don't know what you have.
I can't assess you over the internet.
So let's try these.
If they give you relief, great.
If they don't.
- These are from our experience of the last
35 years combined.
These are probably the most beneficial abroad.
So try the ones that make that back feel good
and use them.
- The first one is, Brad, generally I'd say 80%
of the patients we have have trouble
because they put their back
in this position that rounded out slumped slouched position.
Yep.
- Sitting.
- Yep.
Sitting on a couch, you know
because you sink into the couch.
Like you said, bend over to pick up something out the floor.
You put your back in this position.
And generally that puts the stretch on a lot
of the tissues and it puts stress on this.
Anyway without going into that in too much detail.
So what we have found, or not
we have found, its been discovered is
that when you bend your back the other way
that quite often, that gives you relief.
- Right.
- So this is what I want you to try.
Okay, Brad, I'm gonna jump on here right now.
- Yeah.
- And so all you gonna do is lay on a hard surface.
You can, you can do this on the bed.
You can also do it on the floor.
- Sure.
- And generally what I'd like you to do is just
to start off laying here for a few minutes
and give yourself some relief.
And then you might even get up on your elbows
for a little bit like this and just start bending your back
in the opposite direction.
And then after you've done that for a little bit
watching TV, whatever you wanna do, then you're
gonna go ahead and put your hands kind of
below your shoulders like you're gonna do a push up
and this is called a press up.
I'm not lifting my butt up or my pelvis up.
I'm keeping that down and I'm bending my back
up the opposite direction.
- Yeah right here.
- And you'd be shocked
at how many people get relief from this exercise.
- Well, you wouldn't Brad cause you do a lot of this.
- Yeah.
- But especially people who've just had, you know
just a incident of back pain that just acutely happened
not too long ago
you know, you can do, you know, a pressure on
pressure off, you can go ahead and do a good 10 reps
of this and then maybe rest a little bit.
- Right.
- And you can do this every hour.
- Sure yeah, if it gives you relief and the pain centralizes
or seems to go to one spot in your back and decreases.
Yeah every hour do it right away.
- Very good point Brad.
What you're looking for as Brad said
is you're not looking, if the pain spreads
out while you're doing this goes maybe
down your leg or just goes out further.
- Out to the side.
- This may not be for you.
This is not the one to try then or not to do
or you need to maybe need to see a therapist
get some more details on it.
If it starts to narrow off, goes
up the leg and maybe even gets a little worse
in the back but it's centralized.
It's gotten more in the center.
- More to the center, more in one spot.
- This is the exercise for you.
- Alright.
- Again, don't lift your butt or
let your pelvis come up like this.
Let it arch.
- Right here.
- Yep.
- The more you can get the arch.
If you can go up like this kudos to you.
Great.
- Yep.
- Okay.
That's number one.
See, that's one you're gonna try.
You wanna do the second one Brad?
- Sure.
- Cat camel.
- Cat and the camel.
- This is for generally a different part
of the back.
Generally and more often it's more of a mid-back issue.
He's so proud of those glasses
I don't know why.
- They're fun Bob, they're fun.
Fun glasses.
Okay.
Here we go.
Cat and camel, as matter of fact
if you just did the one Bob, then it wasn't helping.
- Right.
- Then you might go right to here on your hands and knees.
And you're gonna gently kind
of suss your range of motion in your back
by doing the arch.
- Yeah.
- Is the cat or the camel?
- I would say that's the cat.
- We don't worry about that
but they call it that for whatever reason.
- So he is arching.
- A then you're gonna go the opposite.
- Opposite direction.
Yep.
- And you might find that one way feels good
and the other way hurts.
So you're gonna go the way that feels good.
You may find that both direction
just feel good to give it some range of motion.
At that point, you may go back and forth like this.
Usually not too fast.
Any other...
- Again, you can do this 10 times Brad.
You can do it quite often.
Generally is more aimed at the mid back.
- Sure.
Although you can certainly try for the low back.
I've also seen people, Brad, where it's been suggested
is you put your legs further apart.
- Yeah.
- And you can actually sit back like this.
and stretch a little bit like that too.
- Again, the same rules apply if the pain seems
to be coming more into one spot it's better.
If you did this and you start feeling pain
going down your leg, it's a red flag.
Do that.
- Do it, right.
We're looking for actually relief here.
That actually some
of the pain is actually gonna feel a little better.
The last one is the universal one.
We've had this one on many
many times on our videos and
this is one I would say almost everybody can do Brad.
I'd be surprised if you can't.
- Well, when people have just hurt their back
sometimes it hurts, but you can kind of work into it.
- Yeah.
So you're gonna start off just
laying on your back on the bed and a good one
to do in the morning before you even get outta bed.
But you're just gonna start gently
rotating your hips back
and forth like this.
What Brad was saying is yeah, maybe it might be
maybe it hurts when your leg goes this way.
Well, don't go that way.
Then start working it this way.
- Right.
- Or if it hurts that way
start working it this way.
Whichever direction it'll let you go, do it.
And then if it feels really good to go this way
you could even do a little bit of this.
Keep your shoulders down and don't fall off the bed
but bring the one leg
over and stretch a little bit like that.
Or you can even bring your legs up even further
and stretch your leg way up like this.
- Sure.
- You know and you can go obviously
do the opposite directions
but these are good stretches.
Same thing you're looking for.
You're looking for relief.
You're not looking for increased pain.
- Right.
You're looking for things that actually feel better.
Probably want to do it the first day
with all these exercises, a limited amount the first day
see how you're tolerate it, see how the next day is.
And if that feels good, then you can increase it.
- And, and I always say, you know
a good cold pack on a sore back
almost always is beneficial.
- Yeah especially a back that you've just injured.
But even if you've had back pain for a long time,
the cold pack quite often feels good
cause it penetrates quite deep.
- Yep.
- All right any other advice, Brad?
- Well, you know.
- Life, marriage?
- Well, we don't want them to know Bob,
we're gonna stay away from that.
We're gonna stay away from broken hearts.
We're gonna have these people, if they want more
effective information to make you
like more pain free, they're gonna subscribe.
- Subscribe.
- Yeah 40 and over that's where it's at.
Thank you.
- All right thanks.