♪ Bob and Brad ♪
♪ The two most famous physical therapists ♪
♪ On the internet ♪
- Hi folks, I'm Bob Schrupp, physical therapist.
- Brad Heineck, physical therapist.
- And we're the most famous physical therapists
on the internet.
- In our opinion, of course.
- Time to get to business, Brad, serious.
- Oh.
- Today we're talking about stop your elbow pain,
tennis elbow in 90 seconds, self treatment.
This is not hype, this actually works.
(Brad chuckles) Well, I'm surprised by it.
I used it on a different body part
and it worked pretty well.
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90 seconds, I got 90 seconds on my mind now.
- Very good.
"Back to the Future",
that's what it reminded me of, that movie.
Anyways, elbow pain, tennis elbow,
what else can it be called?
This is a not golfer's elbow. - Lateral epicondylitis.
- Right, right.
Very common, typically it's one of those things
that I think everyone experiences.
- It's that time in their life-
- I do believe it's more male than female,
I don't have the statistics on that.
One way or another, can you see that red dot?
Oftentimes that's where like the heart of the pain is.
It's a small- - He put a marker on his arm.
- Yeah, that's not a- - Bruise or anything.
- Yes.
It's water soluble, it'll wash off.
But if you find that there's that bone there
and if you push on it,
'cause I have a mild case of it right now, it's tender.
And if you've got a severe case, boy, just touch that
and it is very uncomfortable,
I've experienced that in the past.
Now, what's going on there,
is all these muscles on the top of your forearm,
they're responsible for extending your wrist
and opening your fingers or extending your fingers up,
they all end up attaching to that point.
So with a lot of hand activity,
pronation and supination of the wrist-
- A lot of gripping . - Yes.
- [Bob] Like if you're pruning or something like that.
- Overuse and those tendons where they connect to the bone
become inflamed, tender, and it's just no fun.
So we've done other videos on this
and we've done some really good treatments
but this is something new, new to us-
- It's a different technique
and we're kind of becoming believers.
- And it's easier than the other ones.
- Sure, and it did help you, it's not permanent right?
It gave you relief.
- Right. - But then you went back
and did a bunch-
- Well, I quit doing the exercise.
It only takes 90 seconds but I quit,
and my mic's falling off.
And, so I need to get back to it.
- You need to stick with it. - Right.
I'm my own worst patient, Bob.
- I know, I know that.
- All right, here we go, here's the technique.
First thing you wanna do is we wanna relax those muscles,
everything else must be relaxed.
Don't do this unless you're in a calm situation,
works much more effectively.
We're going to put these muscles,
this is called Positional Release by the way,
is a whole system that's been out for decades actually.
- Used to be called Strain-Counterstrain.
- Exactly right, Bob.
So we want to do the counter strain
and actually relax these muscles.
So we're gonna do that by shorting them.
We're gonna take your other hand and we're going to
extend the wrist and the fingers, okay.
Now we're not gonna push on it really hard
and get aggressive stretch by any means.
This is where it's a such a nice thing to do to yourself,
self-treatment, is you wanna get
the position of most comfort,
and I need to take one step backwards.
Before we do that, we want to go to the muscle belly,
which again, is up in this area.
So the muscle belly is below the wrist and above the elbow,
and you just wanna feel around or we call palpate,
and go back and forth.
You're gonna find, more than likely, a ropey muscle.
- Yeah, I found it already. - And it's gonna be tender.
Even if you don't have tennis elbow, you'll find these
but they're more pronounced with tennis elbow.
Mine is right there.
And I'm gonna push on it.
- Use the tips of your fingers.
- Yeah, exactly.
And give it a number.
So 10 is maximum pain, zero is they're soft
and don't feel a pain at all.
I would give mine about a six depending on how hard I push.
- See, I'd give mine a three.
- Okay, yeah, 'cause you don't have a flare up.
- I don't have a flare.
- So, just keep that in mind, and we're gonna go back
and we're gonna assess it
to see if the technique was effective.
So we're gonna go back to where it was, sorry about that.
Extend the wrist.
Now- - You should have it
on something like a pillow.
- Yeah, let's grab the pillows.
Hurry up, Bob, people are waiting.
There you go, thank you.
Yeah, this helps relax the whole arm.
- Right, you don't wanna have it hanging up in the air,
there's no way to relax.
- So again, we're gonna extend the wrist, and the fingers,
but again, if say the finger extension
doesn't seem to make it better or part of it makes it worse,
you don't have to do all that, you're the boss.
You're gonna go listen to your body.
And oftentimes you're gonna find
that might be enough right there,
that might feel comfortable there.
But you may wanna rotate, so away.
So the thumb is pointing towards you,
go away from, so the thumb goes away from your body.
- Maintain the finger and wrist extension
while you're doing it.
- Now with me, if I go too far,
it starts to hurt a little bit,
so I go back to here, right there.
I can feel it, it feels good.
And once you get this point, as you probably are thinking
what's the 90 second part all about?
You have to do all this before the 90-second timer goes.
I'm there right now, and you really need to look at a clock
or a watch or whatever and go for 90 seconds.
Relax, breath in relax to the 90 seconds.
You'll be amazed how long 90 seconds takes
when you need to be like this.
- So Brad, while you're doing that,
now I can do it also on tabletop.
- Yeah, there's other options.
You could try this
and see how it goes. - So I can go
like this, right?
And I turn the thumb out that way, right.
I can be pretty relaxed like this.
- Right.
If that works better than this,
that's the position you do it for 90 seconds.
Let's say we're at 88, 89, 90 seconds.
If you want to go longer, that's fine.
- Sure. - But not less.
And then it's really important when you relax
is take it slowly.
What has happened
is that has actually released the muscle spindles,
this is a neurological phenomenon,
but it's been studied scientifically, pretty extensively.
It relaxes the tight muscle and allows blood flow
and circulation to become maximized
which offers that release,
release the pain and improves circulation.
- So you don't wanna jump in and move it right away?
- No, no.
- Play out.
Let it get the full effect of the shortening of the muscle.
- Right.
And then slowly you can do some
gentle range of motion of the wrist,
even do some circles, but don't do this
and then go into an aggressive project
or something where you're gonna work your wrist.
you need to let it relax after that, take advantage of that.
- So then we wanna try it again, right?
- Yeah, go back to that, that spot you're at
and then push on it and go back and forth.
Now mine was at a six, I can still feel it right there.
I'd say it's down about a three, it didn't go to a zero.
Now, if I did this again in an hour-
- Oh, by George, it is down.
- Yeah.
- Mine was at a three, I'd say it's at a one now.
- Yeah, so yours went down.
- This just shocks me, I don't know why.
- Mine is smaller.
I was about from here to here longer
and now it's reduced but I'm still at a three,
I'd like to get this down to a one or a zero.
- It just shows you when there's that inherent tension
in the muscle, there's not as much blood flow there.
- Right.
- And so it just builds on it and it's cyclical
and makes it worse and worse.
- Exactly right, Bob.
- So it's kind of changing my thinking
about some of the stuff.
I think some of the stuff,
it's great to do stretches at one time
and then maybe do this at another time.
And you kinda get the best of both worlds then.
- And you can go in here,
and finish up with a little gentle massage.
And we've got some more information
on actually combining this technique
with a more aggressive massage
but that's another video.
- Sure, we have to start doing that.
- We continue to learn so- - We get smarter.
- Yeah, well, I don't know.
- The other people may not think so, but we do.
So, thanks for watching, folks.
- Be careful.