♪ Bob and Brad, the two most famous ♪
♪ physical therapists on the internet. ♪
- Howdy folks, I'm Bob Schrupp, physical therapist.
- Brad Heineck, physical therapist.
- And together, we are the most famous
physical therapist on the internet.
- In our opinion, of course, Bob!
- And this is Sam.
- Sam I am. - You know,
we're gonna talk about a tight psoas muscle.
We actually are gonna talk about
a tight ilio psoas muscle.
- Okay.
- But before we do, Brad, we'll mention
our giveaway. - Oh, yeah.
- We're gonna show it later on,
but it's the Essex.
- Essex.
- We had to remember the name, but show 'em real quick.
- It's a nice gun.
- Yeah, it's very nice. - This is
a very powerful gun that will must massage deep.
- Yeah, we'll show you in a minute.
- Yep.
- Okay, what muscle are we talking about here?
Brad, I'm gonna move this for a second.
- Oh, here, yeah let me do that, Bob.
- Okay.
- So we're gonna get rid of,
this represents a ligament, that we're gonna see.
- This is a very crude demonstration,
but this is the psoas muscle.
- Yep.
- And it blends in with the iliacus muscle.
- Sure.
- And they both make up the hip flexors.
- Which means they're responsible for
this motion. - This muscle, right.
- Yep.
- You can see this muscle
slackens up when I do that.
But, if we wanna stretch it,
you can see if we go the other way.
Go like this.
I don't know if you can see that band
that's stretching. - Right here.
So, stretching the hip flexor muscle,
contracting it, does this.
- All right and this is supposed to be
the inguinal ligament.
- Yes.
- It's an important structure,
for this particular video, - Right.
- that you should know.
- This is a very deep muscle,
very difficult to get to with a massage gun.
We'll show you how to try it.
- Right. - But,
we don't want you doing it if you're pregnant
or if you have constipation or colitis
or you know, something along a kidney disorder.
- Right. - I mean,
it's just not a good area to be digging in
when you have those type of
things going on. - Right.
You need to have good, healthy skin.
You're a good, healthy person.
You're athletic, type of a thing.
- So, the first thing Brad, I wanna show
the stretch that I found a study
and they compared the contract, relax massage,
oh not massage, stretch, to a static stretch.
- So in other words, you just holding it
statically for 30 seconds, versus you stretch
and then you relax
- You tighten up. - and then you tighten it.
Yeah, we'll show it in just a bit.
So we're working on this muscle,
the hip flexor muscle, the ilio psoas complex, if you will.
Sam, you're, we're bringing Sam back,
yeah that's right.
- So this is the muscle we're stretching right here.
So you start off by, I'll bring this leg up,
Brad. - Yes.
- Now, ideally, what you wanna do
is you want to tighten that muscle for 10 seconds.
So you gotta put your hand down here
on the thigh and push up against the hand.
- Yep.
- And, so if my hand wasn't there,
leg would pop up like this.
- Sure.
- But it is preventing me from doing that.
One, two, three, four, five,
six, seven, eight, nine, 10.
- That was a pretty fast count.
- One, two, three, four.
- That's good enough, I was just kiddin' Bob.
- After 10 seconds, then you're going
to stretch it by letting it do
a static stretch, by pushing down.
- Yep.
- I'm actually gonna push down,
because when you activate one muscle
it actually relaxes the muscles on the opposite side.
- The antagonist.
- Right.
- Yeah so, the glute muscles puLl it down,
it relaxes, it's a great way to stretch this muscle.
- So in 30 seconds you got a good stretch.
Relax.
- Yes.
- You do this five times, Brad.
That's what the study did.
- Okay. - So tight,
and one, two, three, four, five,
six, seven,
eight, nine, 10. - Isometric.
- And then the 20 second stretch.
- If you had someone, you know
a partner that you trusted, you know?
- Yeah, it'd be a lot better.
- Yeah, we could do a little
manual push here, but not real aggressive.
You don't wanna hurt 'em.
- So, there you go.
That's the one the study showed.
Now, we're also, we were talking about
the agonist and antagonist.
So the way the body works, it's really a strange thing.
But, when you tighten one muscle
let's say I tighten the bicep
or I contract the bicep,
the opposite muscle automatically relaxes.
- Right.
- It makes sense, because if it wouldn't relax,
you couldn't move the arm in.
- Yeah, if they both turn out,
well, it just becomes a motion issue.
- Right. - And so yeah,
it does make sense when you think about it.
So we got the agonist, the antagonist
and it flips around it, depending on which way you move.
- So quite often, if you loosen up the hip flexor,
you can then fire the hip extensor, which is the glutes.
- Yep, so now that we thoroughly confused everyone
with that terrible explanation, just believe us.
- So you wanna tighten up the glutes,
you wanna strengthen the back,
and that'll help stretch your hip flexors.
- Right.
- So one thing you wanna do is
hip thrusts are a really good
one to do. - Oh yes, yes.
- Now you could do this off a chair, a ottoman,
I like to do 'em off the edge of my bed, Brad.
- If you happen to have a bench
for a bench press, they work really well.
But a lot of people don't have those.
- Don't have one at home.
So I'm gonna go ahead and I'm gonna
squat down like this, Brad.
- Yes.
- And I've got my elbows on the bed.
And I'm gonna go ahead and when I lift up
like this to hip thrust, I actually
wanna make sure I squeeze the buttocks here.
- Yes.
- Squeeze the buttock, yeah.
- So think about squeezing those butt cheeks together.
We've gotta get right down to the point.
Like someone put a quarter in between there
and you're gonna squeeze
that quarter, so it doesn't fall out.
- Now eventually what you can do
is you put some weight on this area,
the inguinal area, and that'll help
give you some resistance.
- Sure. - Now,
you could take some kitty litter bag,
or you could take a, you could take a -
- Okay, what about dog food?
- That may be fine too,
we don't wanna discriminate.
So...
- Well, you know, yeah.
There is another way, Bob.
- But Brad has another way.
- Yeah, if you happen to have, you know
you don't have a bunch of weights,
or dogs or cats around, but you do happen to have
some loop bands, these larger loop bands,
this is exactly what I do at home.
And I put it around here like that
and I have a chair and you gotta get
the right distance, you'll figure it out.
You need to kneel close to the end of the chair.
If you go back here, you do a wheelie.
So get here, get in there, hold here.
And then I push and do that same thing,
I'm squeezing that quarter in my gluteal cleft,
or you know, the plumber's butt thing.
And then, squeeze, and it works great.
- I'm glad we don't see that.
- But yeah, this has been a wonderful
design. - And that, you know
it doesn't look like you're working that hard,
but it is giving you good resistance.
- Yeah, if it's not hard enough,
you simply move the chair a little farther
or get a different strap.
So, yeah, there's an option.
- Brad, do you wanna bring Sam back over?
- Yes, I do.
- And so, one thing I wanna point out.
- He's usually gone, when we kick him out,
he's gone, but he's coming back for round two.
- Yep, second round.
- Take two.
- So you know, again, we're talking about
the psoas muscle, the psoas muscle
actually attaches up you into the back.
All five vertebrae.
- Sure, the lumbar vertebrae.
- We probably should explain why we wanna stretch it, Brad.
Because if it's tight, it's gonna pull on the vertebrae.
pull you over, and then you'll try to
straighten up, so you'll hyper extend your back.
- Right, and poor posture promotes,
there's a number of things.
- It can be an anterior pelvic tilt.
So, all those things we wanna prevent.
My son, Matt, had this.
- Oh right, I remember you talking about that.
- Yeah, so we had to work on that,
but so if you wanna try the massage gun,
it's a little tricky.
- Well, anything, you know, 'cause the muscle is here,
you got all kinds of abdominal content in the way.
- It's very deep.
- Yeah, so you're not gonna get in there and massage it.
Some therapists do, I never did,
'cause there's a long ways to get through.
But, if you look down here, you can get
the end of the the muscle, where it connects
to the femur. - The lesser trochanter.
- There you go.
- So, if you can find, put your hand on your pelvis
and you go down to 'till you'll feel a bump
on the end, right there.
- Right there.
- That's a-s-i-s.
Now, from there to here,
that's the inguinal ligament -
- Which is the black.
- Yeah, basically you just wanna go
lower than the a-s-i-s and maybe
a little bit over, Brad.
- Yeah and if I took my pants off
and everyone knows that that crease right there
between the the femur and the stomach,
that's the inguinal ligament, that crease.
And that's where I got this pink marker.
- So anyway, you wanna stay pretty close to the bone
but not on the bone and you don't wanna go this way.
For what reason, Brad?
- Well, Bob it's the privates down there.
- Yeah that, and there's somewhat of -
- Oh yes, yeah, we've got the,
what do you call 'em?
- Lymph nodes!
- That pink thing represents one of the lymph nodes
and you do not wanna massage,
particularly massaging it on the lymph nodes.
Brain fart we had just there.
- Yeah, well I was also thinking
of the nerve, artery, and vein.
- Oh another, yep the triad.
- Yeah, so you wanna stay off the lymph nodes,
you wanna stay off the artery,
you wanna stay off the nerves
and stay a little bit more to the side.
So Brad, you wanna put the muscle
on relax, so the muscle, you should be
sitting with the hip bent.
- So I'm gonna, like I could probably do it
like this, I'm flexed a little bit.
- Right, right.
- And I've got the pink line here,
'cause that represents that inguinal ligament,
the femoral crease, so I'm gonna stay well below it.
- Yep, yep, exactly. - We don't wanna
hit those structures.
And actually, you know, it works out.
I feel real comfortable here.
And you can tell, when you start
getting close to that inguinal crease,
it's like uh it's a little tender.
You know, the body says ehhh.
So, get in over here and you can work that.
Oh yeah, mm-hmm.
And this works really nice with pants on.
- Right. - Clothing on,
you put a smooth head on, we got the metal head here
and it slides across it very nicely.
It just works good.
And, do it as needed.
And then you also can work
the quads. - Yeah, go all
the way down to the quad.
- You can go back and work your glutes
a little bit as well. - And, the IT band.
- IT band, on the side.
I mean, if you here, you might as well
do some of the surrounding
structures. - Yep, exactly.
- It all feels good too.
- And this one has some pretty good travel, right?
- Right, yep.
The travel, the amplitude, how far this goes
back and forth has got a really good stall force.
You're not gonna run outta power with this.
- And it's the only one I seen
that has the metal head, right?
- Yeah, which is a little more aggressive.
So you, this is for those people
who wanna get pretty darn aggressive.
So,
- There you go, that's how to release that muscle.
- Anything else, Bob?
- That's it.
- That's right, we went through stretching.
We went through the
- Massage gun
- Massage gun, the antagonist theory
of reciprocal inhibition. - We covered it all!
- Bob I'm feeling very smart.
- Yep. - Yeah, be careful
in everything that you do.
- Even though you couldn't come up with lymph nodes.
- Well, that was just a brain fart, that happens.
- Yeah.
(music fades)