♪ Bob and Brad ♪
♪ the two most famous ♪
♪ physical therapists ♪
♪ on the internet ♪
- Hi, I'm Bob Schrupp, physical therapist.
- Brad Heineck, physical therapist
- And together, we are the most famous physical therapists
on the internet.
- In our opinion, Bob.
- All right, Brad, are your shoulders uneven?
Is one higher?
Come on, gimme a yeah, is one higher than the other?
Why would that be and how do you fix it?
- Sure.
- So first off, it could be structural.
And if it's structural there's nothing much
you can do about it.
By structural, I mean,
let's say one of your legs is longer than the other.
And the way we measure legs to tell
whether or not one leg is longer than the other,
you're gonna stick your hand right here above your pelvis.
- Yeah, let's get Leopold out.
- I don't know where Leopold came from.
It's Napoleon Bone-aparte. - Napoleon.
- So what I'm doing is I'm putting my hands
right here on my pelvis.
I'm sticking 'em in here.
If one is higher,
one, it could be, the pelvis could be rotated.
- Sure.
- But two, the leg could be longer.
- Yep.
- On that side.
So, if it's higher on one side
that's gonna make your shoulder
higher on one side. - Sure.
- The other thing is if you actually have a scoliosis.
So if you have a curved spine,
and we say curved, we mean curved from the side
and off to the side like this.
- All right. Yep.
- That's gonna make one shoulder higher than the other.
- Yeah.
- So, I would guess that most of you know
if you have a scoliosis or not.
They do the testing in school.
- Right. Sure.
- So, it's not any of those things,
this is what you're gonna wanna do instead.
If your dominant shoulder is higher,
so if you're right-handed and it's higher,
it's more than likely that your trapezius
and maybe your levator scapulae,
two muscles here, have gotten tightened.
And that's maybe from overuse.
If you carry a bag all the time,
which I do on my right side, all day long,
that muscle might
tighten up on you. - Right.
- If you use your phone
on the right side all the time and you're like this,
or if you, old style phones
and hold it there. - Yeah. You get better.
- Back in the olden days.
So, any of this can cause this muscle to tighten up.
Sometimes it just gets a little over tense.
- Sure.
- So, and with those you can just do
squeeze up and then relax.
- Yeah.
- Squeeze up and then relax.
But can you show a stretch for the trap?
- Sure.
You can put your hand there and just lean over here.
If you have something to hold onto down here,
you can just gently lean this way
and you'll get a little more of a stretch.
And you can work that muscle too.
- Yeah, while you're
in that position. - And get a little massage.
That feels kind of good.
- Actually, that's a good idea, Brad.
- Yeah, I'm gonna see if my wife will do this for me.
- And sometimes you can actually do it,
just a little bit of a pull.
- Yeah.
- Don't get aggressive. - Not too aggressive.
- Because it's, again,
you could actually tear that muscle
if you get too aggressive with it, so.
- One thing that I wanted to bring up,
we talked about this before,
is I remember when I was in school we talked about a study
that they looked at people's shoulders, levels,
and the vast majority of people,
if the dominant side, if you're right handed,
chances are that shoulder is usually a little lower.
- And that's what we're gonna talk about next.
This is what we think is the more common thing
you're gonna find,
is that your dominant shoulder is lower.
And why is that?
Well, there could be two reasons, predominant reasons.
One is that's the shoulder you use a mouse with.
And the second thing, it's the arm that you write with.
And when you write and you work
and you're always using that right arm,
now this, I'm gonna see if you can see this or not Brad,
what happens over time is the muscles
that hold the shoulder blade back,
can get stretched out.
- Right.
- So what happens, they start to collapse
and you can actually get this winging
in your back. - Wow, look at that,
Bob's got a good shoulder wing.
You can really see that wing.
- Yeah.
- That is neat, Bob. That doesn't hurt, does it?
- No, that's not a good thing to have actually.
- Right.
- And after a while,
if that shoulder blade is not holding the shoulder up
like it should be,
you can get impingement, you can get shoulder pain.
- Right.
- So this is not a good thing.
- Right.
You wanna correct this if this is happening.
One thing is, if you're using a mouse,
and I'll show it from this angle,
you don't wanna have the mouse forward like this
where you have to reach forward.
You wanna have this shoulder completely vertical.
- They call it a neutral position.
- Yeah, so the mouse is way down here.
Sometimes people even put it on a chair right next to 'em.
- Sure.
- Or on a lap tray right by 'em.
- Right.
- Or something, so that the mouse can be here.
Same with writing.
You don't wanna be writing way forward like this.
You want to go ahead and put it back in the right position.
- It's all about posture.
- Simple exercise you can do,
is you can do shoulder squeezes.
You can just go ahead and squeeze
those shoulder blades together.
We even talk about having,
when you squeeze 'em together, try to picture,
you're trying to put 'em down in your pockets.
- Your scapula, shoulder blade,
is going down into your back pockets.
- Okay.
Now what's nice about this one, Brad,
you can do this every hour.
- Sure.
- I mean, every time you think about it,
it's gonna put you in better posture
and it's gonna start strengthening that shoulder blade.
- Starting to form habits.
- Right.
If you wanna get a little more aggressive
and actually we do a lot of these,
this is very common.
You're gonna get a theratubing
or some type of stretch tubing here.
You're gonna hook it up onto a door.
Are you holding on
really well there? - I will Bob.
I'm supposed to be the door.
- So I'm gonna go ahead and just,
I'm squeezing my shoulder blades together
as I'm bringing my hands back like this.
Works out really well.
You can do some, I do a whole routine where I go up,
I go down, and then I even do these.
- Sure.
- We've done these on many videos,
but again works well
on posture. - Go down again once, Bob.
- Like this?
- Yeah. Shall I let go?
(they laugh)
- That would get me speaking a little higher tones, I guess,
but, all right.
So get rid of that shoulder, especially if it's lower,
you wanna get rid of that
so that you're not having shoulder problems in the future.
- Right.
It's all about that shoulder girdle and that posture.
- Okay. - Thank you.
- Thanks for watching. Comment below.