♪ (Catchy music with bass) ♪
♪ Bob and Brad ♪
♪ The two most famous ♪
♪ Physical therapists on the internet ♪
- All right, hi, folks,
I'm Bob Schrupp, physical therapist
- Brad Heineck, physical therapist
- Here we are, the most famous physical therapists
on the internet.
- In our opinion, of course.
- Neck pain.
Don't ever do this.
Do this instead
We're gonna give you the guidelines.
- Oh, yes.
Right from the therapist's mouth.
It's kinda like the horses mouth?
- To your ears. (Brad laughs)
That's right.
- Carry on, Bob.
- By the way, if you're new to our channel,
please take a second to subscribe to us.
We provide videos on how to
stay healthy, fit, pain-free,
one upload every day.
And yes, you also want to always join us
on our social media channels
and also our website, bobandbrad.com,
because we're always giving something away.
Brad?
What are we giving away?
- The Peanut Vibrator.
- The fit index vibrating peanut massage ball.
- Yeah, it really is a nice unit,
are we gonna show them how to do it?
No, we don't.
- You can turn it on real quick while I'm talking.
So, if you also want a shorter version of Bob and Brad,
you can go to us, visit us on Twitter or Instagram.
See how that thing's vibrating?
- Well, they can't see from here, but boy!
- Put it on the floor, so they can see it moving.
- [Brad] Oh, that's great!
- [Bob] There we go!
- [Brad] This'll be good for parties, too!
- [Bob] That's right!
(Brad laughing)
Okay, let's move on Brad.
- Yeah.
- All right, what are we talking about, Brad?
- Oh, neck pain.
Or neck.
Neck stretching in general.
This is one of those things
as a therapist,
I've been to a number of fitness classes
throughout the years,
and one of the big misconceptions
is the instructors will say,
"Never look up!
Don't stretch your neck backwards!
It's gonna give you serious problems!"
There's nothing further from the truth
with the exception of
if you do that and you get dizzy or lightheaded.
Then, it's a big red flag.
Do not do it then.
But, we're gonna show you how to do it properly
in just a little bit, but that's one thing.
- There's actually a whole treatment protocol based on that.
- Right.
- That you do.
And in fact, I saw a study, Brad,
where if you work on neck extension,
it actually improves your motion in other directions.
- Right, right.
- That was done at the University of Lacrosse.
- Dr. Fader was involved with that.
- Yep. - Yeah.
Anyways, we're going off on a tangent!
- Yeah.
- We're gonna get into a little more details,
but just wait.
You could fast forward if you want,
but we got things that you should never do with your neck
for stretching, and I've seen people
advocate this stretch as well.
- Sure.
- So, what stretch are we talking about, Bob?
- Flexion.
- Flexion, in other words, going forward with your neck.
You know, this isn't bad to do this,
you look down, but if you're going to do this as a stretch
to get these muscles, these tight muscles loosened up,
and you do this, and you add a stretch like this.
There's just...
- There's very little benefit to that,
and it could be some harm.
- Over 23 years of being a therapist
and doing a lot of neck pain,
I have never said to anybody,
stretch your neck like this.
- You might go off to the side.
- Right, right.
- You might go like this,
and to pull on the trap a little bit.
And we've even shown this stretch before.
- That levator scapulae, but...
- Going straight down.
The fact of the matter is,
throughout the day,
half of the time, your neck is down like this
looking at your phone or looking down at your computer,
or whatever you're doing,
and so there's no reason to stretch it that way.
It's already stretched out that way.
- Right, exactly.
- You need to stretch it in the opposite direction.
- So, anyways, we got that out of the way.
- Right.
- And the other thing is,
do not ever stretch your neck, like,
if you want to be able to look over your shoulder better,
which is a common way necks will tighten up
particularly as you age.
It's a good stretch,
but if you do that stretch in a poor seated posture...
- I'll go to the side, Brad, here, so,
you want to use a stool?
That's a good idea.
- If we're out of posture,
and the neck and the spine is rounded,
you cannot do effective and a good quality stretch.
It actually puts stress on the neck and the cervical spine
so that you can injure yourself doing that.
- Absolutely, you want to be as straight up,
in fact what we tell people is to do a chin tuck first.
- Right.
- And then work on rotation.
- Which is one of the three things you should do.
So, should we get right into that?
- Just a repeat:
don't do straight flexion,
don't do rotation with the neck forward
with the forward head.
- Yep.
Which rounded shoulders, rounded back.
All that is poor posture on the spine.
You're gonna get things out.
- We're gonna do these instead.
- So, the first thing is:
with all three of these exercises,
first thing you want to do is get yourself up.
Arch the back, shoulders back, head over the shoulders.
Get that spine in good proper alignment.
Then, you can start working
some good stretches on your neck.
- When he says head over the shoulders,
a lot of the times, you can line up
the ears with the shoulders, that's gonna be a good sign
you're in the right position.
- So, I can have my shoulders back like this,
but if I'm forward, that's not good.
Bring it back, which leads us to the first stretch.
If you're tight that way and you can't do that,
the chin tuck, going in like this,
is a nice way to stretch the neck.
If this hurts,
it means you probably have a tight neck,
or maybe have a problem,
but it should just feel like a stretch.
And you can give a little overpressure,
you can, right on your chin,
gently push in like this.
- You're not going up like this,
you're not doing down like this,
you're just going straight back.
You'll feel that.
This is the part that'll stretch right below the skull here.
- Yep, the suboccipital muscle, we call it.
- So, if you want to stretch that area,
instead of doing this,
you do it this way.
- There you go, Bob.
- The neck is safe while you're doing it.
I was trying,
"Nafe is seck".
(Bob laughs)
I was trying to reverse the words there, Brad.
(Brad laughs)
Okay, let's keep moving.
- All right, so you can do that five to ten times.
You can do that throughout the day, often.
It's a nice way to maintain good posture,
keep that stretched out.
Now, the second one is,
you really should hae a chair with a back rest, okay?
Bob?
You want to pull that one out.
- Sure.
- Also, it's helpful to have a towel roll,
(mumbles) a bigger towel works better.
Not a little hand towel.
You want to show, Bob?
- Sure.
I better show first without the towel.
- Sure.
- So, you're in good position here,
good posture,
then you're gonna start working on neck extensions.
Now, for some people,
this might be a little bit painful,
especially if you have a sore neck.
So, the way to start it quite often is to actually use
a rolled towel, we actually have some tape around it,
that's just to keep it in place,
you don't need to do that.
One easy way to do it,
is to actually just grab the ends of the towel
and pull down like this and then work back.
And I've got my back supported up against
the upper back of the chair.
- Yep, so you can relax.
- So, you don't want to spring back,
you want a nice solid back,
and I can work on it,
and if I hit pain, I back off.
This is not a, "no pain no gain" thing.
You always want to stay away from the pain.
We don't need it to trigger any ongoing pain.
- And again, if this creates
any dizziness or lightheadedness,
you need to stop doing it.
Then I would actually probably go see a doctor
and let them know that there's a problem with that.
- Interestingly enough, a lot of times as
you gain full motion, your pain levels
start to go down your neck.
- I've had this so successful.
And often times, people do this
and not only feel pain in their neck,
but it revers down into the shoulder, shoulder blade area,
and it reduces and goes away
as the range of motion improves.
Five to ten repetitions and you can do this one
throughout the day, every couple of hours,
as long as you're making good progress.
- Exactly.
- And finally, if you're having problems with the rotation,
looking behind one way or another,
again, good seated posture,
it's good to have a back rest, again,
and you can work on your rotation to the right or left.
- And I always kind of do a chin tuck first,
then I work on the rotation.
And then I work on the rotation.
I actually haven't,
I'm gonna show a video next week, Brad,
on how to increase your rotations.
- Oh, good, 'cause there's a lot of,
we're not gonna go through all the tricks to do this.
This is a basic one.
- Right.
- You can put your hand on your jaw
and give a little additional overpressure,
but not too much, you know,
this should be gentle stretching.
- And it should not be painful.
- Right, just feel the stretch.
- It should feel good to actually get
a little more extra stretch.
- And if you do five times each direction,
it'll be a total of ten.
I think that'd be a good place to start.
Again, posture is so important, you'll find.
And if one direction is painful and the other one isn't,
work the non painful side,
and then go back to the painful side to see if it improves.
But, again, like Bob said, this isn't a "no pain, no gain."
You wannna...
- Stay away from the pain.
- Yep, stretch it and let the pain relieve itself
as we gently stretch it.
- We don't want to fire things up,
nerves become sensitive to pain
if you keep firing them up.
- Right.
- And also then it doesn't take hardly
any motion at all to set them off.
- Good judgment, and keep listening to us
and watching our videos.
Like, next week, we're gonna have
a detailed one about rotation.
- Yep, on rotation.
I promise.
- He's getting fidgety,
we're gonna have to cut off now
because this happens every now and then.
- Thanks for watching.
(plucky music)