- Hi, I'm Bob Schupp, 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 if you haven't watched our other video already
on what to do after you have a calf strain or calf injury
you're gonna want to watch
that now I'll put it right up here.
I'll put over your face.
I think I'll cover your face up.
Okay. And you can click onto that.
And then you can come back to this one.
If you haven't watched that one yet.
That's gonna tell you what to do about the pain,
first. Once the pain has started to go away
you want to just work on stretching
and strengthening the calf, you go to this video
top three exercise to do.
Number one.
First one is it's just starting to heal.
Just get yourself a belt.
You could use a rolled up sheet too.
- Sure.
- And you're gonna go ahead
and you're gonna put it around the
the fore foot here, and you're gonna have the leg straight.
You're gonna just start doing a pull here
to get a stretch, right?
- Works best with shoes on
- It does doesn't yeah.
- Yeah. It kind of grips around the rubber
part of the shoe.
- Right? Give a good 30 second stretch.
Yeah, go up to a minute and later
and now after you stretch it
now you can go right into some strengthening.
You can start pushing like this.
I'm giving resistance here.
- Right? So you're gonna allow it to move.
- Yep. So it's really easy to do you just stretch.
I'm done with the stretching.
Now I'm gonna do some strengthening.
That's exercise number one, Brad.
- Right.
- Should not create any sharp pain.
If it does, it's not ready.
Alright.
It's been doing well with this.
You've been doing the strengthening for
maybe a couple days or a week.
So now you're gonna go to phase two
which is you're gonna find a step, Brad.
Go up to your steps. You're gonna represent our step.
You're gonna handle this one, Brad?
- Yep. So if you go to a step
you could use a stool like this too.
Just like I'm doing here.
Stairs work a little better.
You can use the handrails on the stairs to hold your weight.
I'm gonna use the back rest of this chair
and I'm gonna do weight bearing exercises
as the next step up from what Bob did.
And first we're gonna do both feet.
Just like this.
Can you, you got a good view of that, Lonnie?
- [Camera person] Yeah.
- And just let your weight down like this and relax.
And the weight of my body is gonna stretch those muscles
and then I'm gonna push back up.
And that's the strengthening part.
- Yup, exactly.
- So we got a little stretch and back up.
Now, if you go down, it feels good, but when
you get way down, it starts to hurt.
Don't go that far. That'll take time.
That'll come with in a few days.
So you might wanna do 10 to 15 of these.
Okay? When it gets pretty easy to do 10 or 15 of these
then you're gonna go onto one leg and obviously
the one that's injured and do this.
You should be able to do it without any sharp pain.
If there's sharp pain, it's not ready.
Go back to two.
Okay? And again, work yourself up to 10.
If you can go 10 or to 15 easily, then you're ready for-
- Now we're gonna get to the advanced exercise.
- You better believe it.
- Alright, Lonnie. Do you see me?
I'm a little bit tall here.
Alright. What we're gonna do-
Can you see my feet too?
- Yeah.
- If you can't see my face just as long
as you can see my feet.
- Yeah. It it's better for the viewers.
If they can always see the feet we want the face gone.
- Aren't we funny?
Okay. So now things are feeling better.
You've done all that.
So now you're gonna wanna just start getting
some functional exercises here, close chain exercises.
And I want you to start going side to side like this
and that's gonna put some stress
on the calf and make the calf work a little harder.
And then you can start picking it up.
You can even go forward and back,
forward back then a little sashay here
- Yup.
- Alright. Then you can start to do braiding.
What'd you call it Brad? You call it something else.
- Grape vine.
- Or karaoke. I've heard it all.
- Yeah, whatever you wanna call it.
- One foot in front, one foot in back.
One foot in front, one foot in back.
Okay? Those get to be, start to be easy.
So now you can do some hopping.
This is kind of nice.
It's got four squares here.
Do you see that red?
- Yep. I see it.
- So I can hop forward to the side
back and back to the start again.
Now I'm gonna go in the other direction.
Side, forward, side, back.
Alright. That gets to be too easy.
The final one that you wanna do is actually
one legged, right?
Side, back, side, forward, side, side.
- Getting tired?
- Yeah. That's a challenge.
Alright.
But once you're able to do that, now you're getting close
to being back to activities that you want to do.
If you can do that pain free, you know
without any problems, you're probably ready
for tennis again or ready for, I dunno, squash or what
what do you play, Brad?
- I don't play any.
- Cricket?
- No I don't.
I would I go go out in the yard and play football
with my daughter. But anyways,
walking in there too once you get
to the point can walk, you can go
for some walks out with your family
- When you start running.
If you're a runner, try to avoid the hills to start
off with, start with the flat lands.
And then later on incorporate the hills.
Cause that really puts a lot of stress on those calves.
- Right?
- And after that, you know
you don't wanna make sure you do your
stretching and stuff once so this doesn't happen again.
- And then subscribe to us because we're gonna help you
with more helpful tip like this
every day of your life and what, what
what part of the body we cannot fix very well yet?
- Yeah. We just haven't figured
out how to fix a broken heart, but we'll get there.
- Yeah, we're gonna take-