♪ Bob and Brad ♪
♪ The two most famous ♪
♪ Physical therapists ♪
♪ On the internet ♪
- (clapping) Howdy, folks,
I'm Bob Schrupp, physical therapist.
- Brad Heineck, physical therapist.
- We the most famous physical therapists on the internet.
- In our opinion, of course, Bob.
- Hope they understood me when I said that.
I'm saying it so fast now.
- Yeah, you're talking very fast now.
- Okay. Five knee strengthening exercises
to help reduce pain and injury risk.
These are not, we're gonna show you also,
in addition to the five,
we're gonna show you a couple advanced ones.
- Sure. - A little bit beyond this.
But this is for the person,
you're having knee pain,
or maybe you're not having knee pain,
wanted to reduce your risk for knee pain,
but they're pretty basic.
We're not talking about anything that,
I'm talking pretty low level here.
This is not for the people that are high-end athletes.
- Right. They're the average person.
- Right. - Doesn't exercise a lot,
but they're doing their thing every day,
going to work, taking care of business.
- Well, I'm just trying to think of Yogi Bear.
What, I'm the average bear,
do you remember what he used to say about that?
The average bear? (laughs)
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All right, Brad's gonna go ahead,
and these are all exercises,
these five that we're gonna start off with,
you can all do it laying on the floor,
you can do it laying on,
we're gonna do it on the mat right now,
just so that, I mean on a bed.
- Sure. - Our plan.
So that you guys can see it real well.
But you can do it on a bed and you can do it on the floor.
Should we start, Bob? - Yeah. Why don't we start?
- Yeah. (laughs) Wouldn't that be grand, an early start.
Here we go.
Are you ready? - I'm laughing at the ball,
the ball's rolling around.
- Don't worry about that, it'll come back.
Okay.
- Yeah, well you wanted to, go ahead,
we're gonna start off with just a straight leg raise.
So you're really strengthening the knee isometrically
while you're doing thses. - Sure.
- I used to have people that would have trouble
with their patella femoral, Brad and I, young girls.
- Yep. - And I used to tell 'em,
she'd say, "How many should I do of these a day?"
I'd say, "A thousand."
And what I mean is, you could do a lot.
- Yeah.
- So what Brad's gonna do is he's got the other leg up,
it's gonna hold the pelvis back in the correct position.
- It makes a difference.
You can tell, if you do 'em this way and this way,
this feels better, you can get a better exercise.
- So we're strengthening the joint without moving the joint.
'Cause a lot of times it hurts when you move your joint,
so we're actually trying to strengthen
it without putting a lot of movement in it.
- So the quadricep right now, and when I lift it up,
the quadricep automatically kicks in,
and that's what he's talking about,
we're strengthening the quadriceps
which directly supports the knee.
- And Brad and I had a kinda in depth discussion
about this before the video.
'Cause I'm not sure he's a great believer in all this.
What I like to do is strengthen the hip
and the knee simultaneously.
'Cause very often if your knee is weak and painful,
your hip is also weak. - Sure.
- And I think if you strengthen both of 'em,
you're just gonna stabilize the whole leg a lot easier,
it's gonna be better for you.
You're gonna walk better.
You're not gonna be walking crooked
which can cause the knee pain, so.
- Yeah, yeah, the hip,
it's all part of the same chain.
- Right. - You can't ignore it.
So here we're getting quadricep and hip and some core.
My stomach muscles are working in here,
which is again, just more of the chain.
- So you're gonna go ahead and maybe do 10 to 12, Brad?
- Yep. Yeah, I can definitely,
my quads are starting to get tired
and I work my quads on a regular basis.
- It's surprising.
Okay. Next one is bridging, Brad.
- Oh yes, the bridge.
Cannot forget the bridge.
So here, here, and this works in bed
as long as your feet don't slip on the sheets.
And we're just gonna push up like this,
and usually you go up until you get even in line like this.
- So we're getting a hamstring
and the buttocks a little bit here.
The thing about this,
even though we're getting some bend to the knee,
it's very minimal.
So again, you should be able to tolerate this
without having increased pain.
If you're having increased pain,
I really don't want you doing it.
You could actually maybe move
the leg out a little bit further
if this is the painful one,
and see if it feels better that way.
- Sure.
- You can experiment with how much knee bend you have on it.
- On the other hand, if you feel it's too easy,
you could cross like this
and that emphasizes that right side,
or the painful side, more, it's a little more advanced.
- Sure, excellent Brad.
Okay. Next one, clamshells.
Now people are gonna wonder,
how am I even strengthening the knee on this?
And you really aren't.
What we're strengthening are
the external rotators of the hip.
And for a lot of people, what happens is,
their hip is weak and their knee starts going in like this,
and that puts extra stress on the knee.
So we're gonna strengthen the hip with the idea
that you're gonna put the knee in a better place
when you're walking and jumping
or running or doing anything.
Or just doing every day living.
- Right.
- This is another one, looks real easy, but.
- Right there, right there. - You feel it, don't you?
- My gluteus medias, posterior fibers, Bob,
they're going to town right now.
- Well the piriformis would be kicking in here too.
- Yeah, you don't isolate one muscle, almost ever.
You always get a few of 'em going together,
they all work together.
- So you can see, you can go from straight leg raise,
you can go bridging, you can do the clamshells,
and now we're gonna go ahead and do hip abduction, Brad,
so you're on your side.
Okay. And the same thing again here,
you're strengthening the hip,
and you're strengthening the knee a bit too.
- Right. You know, the abductors are connected,
the IT band directly connected through the knee.
- [Bob] Which goes across the knee.
- And watch my foot.
- [Bob] Yep.
- If I do that, it's not right.
We need to turn the toe towards the camera,
towards you, and work that.
And this is pretty aggressive.
- Again, if your hip is weak
and it's making you walk a little kittywampus,
a trendelenburg as we call it in the business,
it's gonna put more stress on that knee.
- All right.
I'm glad you kicked in there, Bob,
'cause my mind went completely blank. (laughs)
- Oh well, that happens.
Okay. Why don't you go ahead
and finish with doing extensions, Brad,
laying on your stomach.
- Okay. There we go.
- Now we're getting a little bit of isometric again
on the hamstring a little bit,
and you're getting a little bit on the buttock.
Again, all these are working together
to keep you nice and stable when you're walking
or doing your daily living activities,
and it'll help take some of the stress off the knee.
- There you go.
- So you can do these five rather rapidly
once you get 'em down,
and just do your set of 10 to 12,
and you just kind of, you're going in a circle basically.
- Right. You can do 'em all right from the same,
not the same position, but you know,
all in bed or on the floor, wherever you are.
- All right, these are the advanced ones now.
And this is the one actually
that I actually had my wife do, and that I do.
I love doing squats, shallow squats,
but I love using a ball.
I just think it's just a lot better way to do 'em.
- Oh yeah. - Being honest with you.
- It gives you good control
and you can advance the resistance very easily.
- One thing I wanna make sure
is that you got good grippy shoes on
so that you're not gonna go sliding out.
'Cause I actually have my feet out quite far from the wall.
I don't wanna be like this,
'cause when I go down, I got too much of an angle here.
Brad, you were gonna grab- - I'm looking for my-
- There's a pole right to your left.
- Oh here it is.
- Yeah. Brad will demonstrate
what we're trying to do here. - Sorry about that.
- So I'm gonna do it correctly first,
see I'm squatting down,
and then my knee never goes past the toe.
Now if I go like this,
and it's back too far, now look at that.
The knee's going past the toe and that hurts.
I can feel the stress on the knee.
- That's gonna make your knee worse.
- Yeah. So you go out like this,
and the other thing is,
I don't want your knees going in or out,
I want 'em right over the feet.
- Good alignment.
- I do these and I go down,
I don't squat real deep.
Yep, you can hold onto something if you have trouble.
- Yeah, when you first start,
and that's a good way to start some more stability.
- And you know, even if you're having a meniscus problem
or cartilage problem,
if you only go down this far,
you're really not putting a lot of stress on that either.
So even if you have arthritis,
most people can do these. - Right. Partial range.
- It's just a little more advanced.
What I like to do with these,
the way I do these Brad,
I just did 'em last night,
I go down like this and then I go like this,
and I squeeze my shoulder blades together.
I always like to get a double exercise in here.
- Yeah, that's right.
Two for the price of one.
- Good posture exercise. - It keeps you aware
of your posture. - Yep.
Okay. - Excellent.
- So now we're gonna go ahead and give the ball to Brad,
and he's gonna show how to strengthen the hamstrings
in kind of an advanced method here at home.
- I wanna dribble the ball, Bob, here,
you wanna hold onto that? - Yep, there we go.
- Okay. This is my favorite hamstring exercise, I think.
I'm not sure yet, but I think it is.
I really do like it 'cause it really isolates,
and I'm gonna bridge up like this,
and just roll the ball towards you.
Sometimes I'll have patients,
I say, "Can you roll the ball towards me?"
And they'll go like this.
Well that's not the way to do it,
it's just a simple, smooth roll.
- [Bob] You're digging your heels in.
- Yep. Now this will be pretty aggressive to start out with.
You may wanna just lift your butt up a inch,
or even just a little bit, and roll it towards you.
That will work the hamstrings,
and as you get stronger.
I just had a person with a ACL replacement.
And he started out like this,
and within a couple weeks, he was up like this.
- [Bob] I was gonna say, yeah,
you could even do it without lifting your buttock
at all, right Brad? And just push down into the ball?
- Yep, you can.
- [Bob] If you're really beginner.
- It's hard to see for the camera,
but right now my hamstrings are working.
Now this guy, he was in his thirties, he was a farmer,
and he needed to be doing a lot of aggressive work,
and he got to the point where he was doing just
the one-legged ones.
And his hamstrings are really coming along well.
- [Bob] This is a workout when you start doing it that way.
- That really works.
My leg there is tired from yesterday.
I had a good workout.
So I don't wanna do anymore, Bob.
- All right. - I just wanna quit.
- It's funny that you mentioned that
'cause I was having trouble with my hamstrings too,
'cause I'd been doing a lot of biking lately
and I'd been doing some kettlebell swings,
and yeah, my hamstrings are sore.
They're tight.
- It happens to us, even we get sore.
- Even Superman. (Brad laughs)
Our cape falls off once in a while.
All right, thanks everybody for watching.