♪ Bob and Brad, ♪
♪ The two most famous ♪
♪ Physical therapists ♪
♪ On the internet. ♪
- Hi folks, I'm Bob Scrupp, physical therapist.
- Brad Heineck, physical therapist.
- And we are the most famous physical therapists
on the internet.
- In our opinion, of course, Bob,
- Today we're gonna talk
about the three worst core exercises
for low back pain and what you should do instead.
We're gonna give you answers.
- Options.
- Right.
- Proper options.
- Doin' a complete job here today.
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- There you go, Bob.
- So this information, Brad, I got
from Dr. Stuart McGill, definitely an expert
on low back pain.
I seriously think he's done like a hundred studies on back.
- He did, or he read 'em.
- No, he did.
- He's done them, yeah.
- He's doing foundational work in back pains.
- He must be pretty old.
- Yeah, he's up there but he's got a bunch of textbooks
and he's got a book for the lay person too.
- Yep, that's what I like.
- Really good, good stuff.
So any exercises that increase flextion
of the spine, bending forward like this,
along with compression of the spine, is bad.
- You're putting force from two different planes
if you will and that, it compounds.
- Well, you remember the work from (indistinct).
He was measuring the disc pressure
and they'll still do that now, too.
But when you flex, it puts a lot of stress on the disc.
- Right.
- And so obviously anything
that increases compression of the spine,
so you can lift too heavy of a weights, too.
- Well, sure.
- And if you twist and compress, that is very bad too.
So the ones that we're going to show you today,
that's basically what people are doing.
- And you don't even really aware of it.
So we better get on with it.
People are waiting.
- All right, we're gonna show you the four that are bad.
So I'll start off with just regular sit-ups.
Now you could have your legs straight or bent.
They're both bad.
So I don't even want to do these anymore.
I haven't done these in such a long time.
- [Brad] Remember the old traditional
where you'd go like this and...
- You'd pull on your neck.
- [Brad] Yeah.
- But you're curling all the way up.
And I used to do these with a plate, a weight.
- [Brad] Oh, I thought you meant a paper plate.
- I'd hook my feet up on a bench.
So I used to do the, probably the worst thing you could do
for your back.
So that's a no-no.
You're not gonna do full sit-ups.
I think most people know that now.
- [Brad] Yeah.
That's pretty well-known.
- Yeah, it's pretty well known.
Double leg extensions.
Now what they mean by
that is some people do double leg raises like this,
and the problem is the back arches
and compresses really heavily.
- [Brad] Right.
And that takes a little understanding of body mechanics,
where the hip flexors connect and whatnot.
But you're just going to have to trust us.
- Yeah.
You can do single leg.
Absolutely, all day long.
You can do these and you can even do some weight
on your ankle.
And do it that way because you're able
to stabilize the spine then, and it's not as much pressure.
You can feel it.
When you do these, Brad, I can feel it,
that my spine's working.
- [Brad] I believe you, Bob.
- All right.
All right, next one.
I'm gonna show this, the Russian Twist.
This wasn't one of McGill's but it's one that I see.
- Oh, this is very common, yeah.
- So people go like...
Well, I'm on a ridge.
- Oh yeah.
Be careful on that table, Bob, you fall down
and we're gonna have an issue.
- You know, these twists.
You're bending, you're flexed at the spine.
You're rounded out.
You can't stay straight on these.
- You got compression.
You got almost..
- Twisting.
- Every negative thing.
All combined into one.
But yeah, it works those abdominal muscles quite well.
- Oh, absolutely.
- But.
- If you want to hurt your disc,
if you want a blown disc, do some of those.
- Yeah.
Well, we're learning here.
- We're not gonna tell you what to do in life,
but if you want to hurt yourself.
- We're gonna to hear comments about that.
- I actually feel like I could do a (indistinct).
- Absolutely.
- All right, So the last one,
and this was Dr. McGill again that came up with this one,
is actually called the Superman pose.
So people lift the arms and the legs at the same time.
And they found out the compression was greatly increased.
- Particularly in the lumbar spine.
Is that correct?
- Right, right, exactly.
And you can feel it.
And you think you're working out now,
you can do one at a time and we'll show that later.
- [Brad] I think that's a nice way to,
that's a good alternative.
- Yep.
So Brad, you wanna show just the right way to do one?
You can do the curls?
- To do what?
Oh, the curls.
- Yeah, yeah.
- Oh, I thought we were talking about the Superman one.
Yeah, so, that's where we...
- This is the correct way to do it.
- We just do this.
I gotta get these glasses out from around my neck.
No wonder I was stuttering.
- [Bob] So he's keeping the back, it's completely
on the surface here.
- Right.
- He's lifting, really you're kind of lifting your up.
- I'm not doing this.
- [Bob] And when I do these, I actually take my hand.
I actually put 'em in my low back like that as support.
And you know, it's funny when I started these Brad,
I actually got sore neck from doing this.
And he mentioned that,
that your neck will have to build up for that.
So.
- I wanna say, tell them how I do it, Bob.
- Sure.
Yeah, you do 'em on a ball.
- Yeah, I put my feet up on an exercise ball,
but you could do it on the couch or anything.
It's amazing when you get your feet up there,
it helps take stress off the low back,
which I'm concerned about.
But either way, whatever,
there's lot's of options to do it.
- You do them on the ball too, don't you?
Don't you do some?
- I used to, but I don't anymore
because I do with my banding with,
works a little bit better, but yeah, that's a good option.
- Gotcha.
- Yeah, we're gonna skip that.
Just skip that.
- All right, that's one way to do it.
And that gets kind of, we wanted to do the front,
each side, and the back.
So I'm going to show them how to get a side (indistinct).
- These are an exercise that,
these side planks I will not do 'cause it bothers my back.
'Cause I have spondylolisthesis.
So if you have that,
you will put a red flag up and probably not do it.
- If you're new to this, you may want to start off
a little bit easier,
put your knees together
and just go up from the knee like this.
But if you're more advanced,
you can actually put one foot in front of the other.
Yep.
And then you're just going to go ahead and lift up
and you know, you can do these.
What I do is a set of 30 seconds.
And then I do sets of 10 seconds after that.
- Oh really?
- It just works for me.
It kind of gets me to fatigue.
I just kind of count off, one, two.
- You move your arm like that?
- Yeah, I do, I do.
I count.
- You can't count without moving your arm?
- Yeah, it's stupid.
I know.
- Don't worry about it.
- You're gonna want to do both sides by the way.
And then the third one that you can do it instead
of the harmful ones is the bird dog.
- The harmful ones (laughing).
Yeah, the Superman one.
We're going to do this, as opposed to the one laying
on your stomach and the Superman.
- Now you could do this lying on a pillow.
- [Brad] Sure, sure.
- But you can start off, for some of you
who are new, you're probably just going to maybe start off
with the arm and then maybe work on the leg.
But then eventually you get to the bird dog.
- Hold that out there one more time Bob.
Because you're going
to need the really tighten your stomach muscles
and look at the nice straight line, Bob.
And you know, that's what we're looking for.
And without tightening your core muscles, your stomach,
you could arch your back more than you want to.
And that's something that you have to actually do it
and you'll feel it.
- Yeah.
These are great strengthening exercises.
You're getting the core,
but you're also getting some of the back muscles,
which is core.
- [Brad] Absolutely.
- Again, you can do now a set of 20, 25.
I guess I really didn't prepare
for how many of these they should be doing, Brad.
I just do like, 30 myself.
- Right in a row?
- I do 30 in a row but I built up to it.
- Right.
It's not like you just started doing it.
- And you can actually add weights to your arms
and legs later on if you wanna make it
a little more advanced, but there they are.
Those are the three that we'd recommend.
That's the three that McGill recommends
and he calls them the big three, I think, I believe it.
And avoid the other ones if you want
to avoid injuring your back or making your back pain worse.
- Right.
Exactly.
- So thanks for watching.
- Very good.
Take care.
Get back into shape.
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