♪ 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 are the most famous physical therapists
on the internet.
- In our opinion, of course, Bob.
- Brad, today you want to talk about the sciatica cur,
cure?
I'm sorry, I want to it say right, cure.
And this is from the master.
- The master, in our opinion, of course.
- Yeah, our opinion, of course, but we're not the masters.
- No, no.
- We've learned from the masters.
- Exactly
- Like the grasshoppers.
- And we're talking about the one person
that we both really feel has probably made more
of a significant impact on low back,
in sciatica, than anybody else.
- Oh, without a doubt.
- And particularly the philosophy that he teaches,
I really like because he teaches the person
how to take care of themself.
It's not like, come in, get your treatment and then go on.
- Right
- And then you have no idea how to help yourself at home.
It's like the old thing where you can teach someone-
You can give someone a plate of fish
and they can eat it for one day,
or you can teach them how to fish and they have a lifetime.
- They fish for a lifetime.
- Exactly.
- He's definitely in that philosophy.
He really wants to make sure
that your pain's not gonna come back.
Because he wants to show you how to do things
to stop it from coming back.
- Exactly, so that's why it's not going
to be a really quick video,
but it's going to show you exactly the concept
and it's gonna make a big difference,
if you got sciatica, on how to look at your cure.
- And then at the end, I just want to make sure,
I'm going to,
I'm going to link two videos at the end.
One's going to, and we'll talk about,
one's how to find a Mackenzie therapist,
but the other one's going to be how to do
the Mackenzie program.
- Sure, yep.
- If you are new to our channel by the way,
- Good point Brad.
- please take a second, just to subscribe to us.
We have a subscribe button over here on the left,
somewhere.
Our left, your right. (Brad chuckles)
We provide videos on how stay healthy, fit, pain free
and we upload every day.
- You bet.
- So. - So.
- Where are we at Brad?
- The story about how Mackenzie started the system
to me is absolutely phenom-
- Yeah, this is a fascinating story.
- Right. - Really.
- This is a sheer genius by McKenzie.
- Right.
- Not only that, but the fact that he pursued
this little piece of evidence and let's go into it.
So this is Robin McKenzie.
He born in 1931 to 2013.
He passed away now, but in 1956, one of his patients
came in with back pain and pain going down his leg
and McKenzie had just treated somebody.
Why don't you stand up once Bob.
- Yup.
- And in his treatment room,
which was in a different location than where he was.
He had the previous patient,
laying like this.
And back in the day, most people were treated
for low back pain and sciatica,
by doing the Williams flexions exercise, very common.
You know, people were working with it
all the time, at the time.
So this gentleman came in, he's got the back pain
and pain going down his leg,
and Mackenzie says,
"Why don't you go in the room and lay down."
- Lay down.
"And I want you to lay on your stomach."
Well, he forgot the fact that he had his table.
- Up like this
- Why don't you move again, Bob?
He didn't have one of these.
He had the table that came up on the hinge.
- Right.
- And he had the table up on the hinge,
like this and he forgot about that.
Otherwise, he would've never told him to lay on his stomach.
Well, the patient walked in and he saw the table.
He says, "Well, the therapist said lay on his stomach."
Why don't you do that, Bob?
So if Bob was the patient,
he laid like this and he was laying there for a few minutes.
- Brad, can I say something real quick though?
- Sure.
- At this time back in 1956,
this was considered awful for your back.
This, I'm serious, everything that, all that was,
you know, all the written,
that was written at the time,
was that you never put your back like this,
it's going to make your back worse.
- Sure.
- So when Mackenzie came in, he was horrified.
- Right. - Yeah.
(Brad laughs)
- To see him like this. - Right.
So he came in and he looks
and he's thinking to himself,
"Oh my goodness what have I done to this patient?"
And the first thing the patient says,
he says, "Oh my goodness I can't believe how much better
my back and leg feel."
And to Mackenzie's dismay,
he's like, he went along with it,
"Oh, well, good."
- Of course (Brad laughs)
Of course it does.
- And so the pain was out of his leg.
It was centralized, we'll talk about that a little more,
to his back.
And Mackenzie, instead of just taking this
and putting it off the side as a fluke,
he decided to study it and he studied it in depth
for the next, for the rest of his life actually.
- Right, exactly.
- And he started a system that started,
that actually now goes over the, across the world.
40 different countries have established McKenzie systems,
where they, where it's, you know
you can call, you can get to the,
you can not call, but you-
- There's a lot of physical therapists, doctors
and even chiropractors are practicing this method now, so.
- Exactly.
Exactly.
- So all from a mistake that happened in the clinic.
- And his observation, but his willingness to accept it
was a really kind of amazing thing, Brad.
- Exactly.
- So, because, again. - Yeah, he was open minded.
- Right.
It was, at the time, just anathema as they call it, so.
(Brad sighs)
All right, so we should talk about
the centralization.
- Let's talk about the centralization.
Why don't you stand up and turn around Bob?
You may have noticed Bob, he had some red on his back.
It wasn't by accident.
So typically with sciatica, low back pain,
will refer pain down the leg all the way to the foot,
or to the toe.
- Into the butt, into the back of the leg.
- Yep.
- And then you go all the way into the foot.
- And what McKenzie had found out is the pain centralizes.
And you wanted to centralize from the foot
and moving upwards.
In other words, if the pain from here to here gets better,
but you still have numbness, pain, tingling,
whatever it may be in this area.
That's not the, that's not how you want this to progress.
- Yeah, the worst thing to see is that the,
the pain here goes away and this pain gets worse.
- Right, right.
- What you want to see, is that it goes the opposite
that it starts getting better.
Why don't you to go ahead and take off some of the red.
- Right, let's do that.
So let's say the person does some press-ups,
or does an exercise and they find out that,
and we're saying pain,
but it could be numbness, tingling, burning, any of those-
- Symptoms
- Symptoms.
This goes way like that.
And all we do is we have symptoms from here to here.
- So right, I had just done some press-ups
- Yep.
and after doing the press-ups,
that pain is better, or that tingling,
or it's gone down 25%. - Right.
- That's a good sign. - Right.
- That's exactly what we want to see.
- Right.
Now, if the pain goes over to this leg like that,
that's not a good thing.
I'm just,
usually that doesn't happen.
- No, I, I don't think I've seen that.
- I'm just,
let's move this pain over here.
(both men chuckle)
So anyways, we have taken this away,
so we continue to do the press-ups
and the next thing you'll want find out,
and it may be that you just change your seated posture,
use a lumbar support.
And it gets rid of that other pain.
And now centralizing is occurring-
- It might,
might stick in the butt yet.
- Sure.
- Sometimes it sticks out.
You want me to... - Yeah, put some.
Should we put some pain back on?
- Yeah.
- It'd be really fun if you could treat it like this
and that's all you had to do was...
- Yeah, I mean, I'm just saying typical what it happens,
it seems like it sticks in that butt for a while.
- Yeah, yeah.
It does.
It kind of gets in,
in that hip area.
- And then maybe a couple days later,
you get it out of the butt.
- Right.
So centralization,
the base of the word is center
and the center is right here,
usually at about out the belt line.
And here it is.
And oftentimes, it'll go here and as it improves,
it centralizes even more to,
from that area, to just one small point.
And if this is your pattern, you can be smiling
because you know, it's going to go away.
- It should go away.
- Exactly.
- So that's-
- That's really good idea, Bob.
Thanks.
- Yeah so that's where you really want to go with this.
You really want to be looking to do press up with that.
Do you want to, what do you want to,
we only got a couple minutes left here, Brad.
Do you want to finish up with the model,
or what do you want to do?
- Well,
let's go to,
I really want to clear up the point
that oftentimes people think,
Mackenzie means that's all you do is press-ups.
And that takes care of the problem, which is not the case.
If you're fortunate and it's that simple, that's very good.
And a lot of times it is,
but there is going to be a certain percentage.
I don't know.
I'm guessing maybe less than 50%,
between 25 and 50%
that are going to be difficult back problems
that you're not just going to lay down and do press-ups.
- Right.
- So,
and this is where you may have to,
instead of doing our sciatic videos,
that we've get a lot of comments back,
where people successfully treat themselves.
But if you got a tough one,
you may have to get,
go to a therapist, a Mackenzie trained therapist
and let them help you out.
- Right, so at the very end of this video,
I'm going to have a video on how to find one
of those therapists.
You go to their site,
and they have them,
again there's a good chance there's one in your country,
even if you're from a different country.
- Right, you bet.
- They have a lot of countries.
So just follow the video, it'll direct you to get somebody.
- Right, yeah.
40 different countries throughout the world.
And Mackenzie himself was from New Zealand
and he's well known.
He's got awards.
He got 10 different awards, not just from New Zealand,
but from United States, from United Kingdom
and around the world.
- Can I make one other point, Brad?
- Sure.
- Just to interject this right now,
if you're getting pain down your leg, like to your knee.
- Yep.
- That does not mean sciatica always.
- That's true.
- And that's why sometimes when you see a therapist,
they might even have you do flexion.
Maybe it's,
it's just as simple as,
as arthritis. - Right.
And the flexion might even feel better on that.
- Sure.
- So don't think just because you,
the pain goes down to the knee,
quite often any regular back pain can go down to the knee.
- SI pain - SI pain, yeah.
- Sacroiliac. - Sacroiliac pain.
- Usually doesn't go below the knee,
but oftentimes can go to the knee.
- Right.
- I had one person had pain all the way down the leg,
we were doing press-ups, all these types of things.
She ended up having a hip replacement.
- Yeah?
- That was the problem. (Brad chuckles)
- Yeah, it's amazing what can send pain down the leg,
- So, this can be tricky. - Yeah, so.
Why don't you just lay down quick Bob?
I'm going to show a couple-
- Which way? - On your stomach, please.
- Okay.
So, you know, as a therapist,
they may, a therapist might come in
and actually do some manual therapy,
where we're holding support here
and we might be going in different directions.
This is a skilled thing,
you're not going to do this by yourself.
And this is where a therapist will get you the gains
that you need, or the progress.
You might be shifting your pelvis over one direction.
You might be doing the road kill, Bob.
(alarm beeping)
There like that.
Oh.
- Yep.
- Beeper's going. - Yeah.
Bob, we got to finish up. (Brad chuckles)
- Well, I'll tell you the other thing, Brad,
again, I'll put our playlist at the end.
- Yeah.
- Of sciatica. - Right.
- And it's got all sorts of videos,
on how to do the actual Mackenzie technique.
- Right.
- Give those a try, you get stuck, find a therapist.
- Exactly.
- Let's leave at that. - Okay.
- And remember, we can fix just about anything, Brad.
- Yeah, but we're working on that...
- Broken heart. - Broken heart.
- We can't fix a broken heart.
- We're going to get it though, Bob.
- Yeah, I know we are. (Brad chuckles)
- Thanks.