♪ Bob and Brad ♪
♪ The two most famous physical therapists ♪
♪ On the internet ♪
- Hi folks.
I'm Bob Schrupp, physical therapists
- Brad Heineck, physical therapists
- Together we are the most famous physical therapists
on the internet.
- In our opinion, of course, Bob.
- Today we're gonna show you
the five stretches you should do for knee cap pain
or patellofemoral pain syndrome.
If you haven't done so already,
you may want to watch our video
on "What is causing your knee pain?"
Question mark.
"Patellofemoral pain syndrome or kneecap pain?
"How to tell."
- That's all part of the title.
- Yeah. How to tell.
'cause it'll help you with this one.
Maybe understand a little bit
why we're having you do these things.
Let's get right to it, Brad.
These are five stretches.
And you know there's other things you can do
for this type of knee pain
and we'll talk about that in another video,
but these are the stretches you should do.
So the five stretches.
The first one is a hamstring stretch.
Now you can do, I'm gonna, boy my voice cracked,
(Brad growling)
- [Brad] You're supposed to be going through
that crackly voice stuff when you're a teenager.
Not when you're 60. - Yeah, I know.
(laughing) or 61.
- Oh, sorry.
- I'm almost 61.
- Oh, that doesn't count.
- I'm stretching the hamstring.
- Yep.
- So you can actually use one stretch out strap
which we have or you can actually do it.
Just bring the leg up and pull back, like this.
It's a good way to stretch it.
- If you're very able, active and steady on your feet,
you can do a hamstring stretch like this.
- Right. But keep good posture.
- Yep. Straight back.
Don't look round over.
We wanna just stretch the hamstrings
and it makes a significant difference
when you do it this way,
you can feel it isolate those muscles better.
Remind me Brad, at the end of the video,
we're going to show them the massage gun
because the massage gun
does such a great job with these muscles.
To me, it's really superior.
- Right.
- Than just stretching.
- It makes life easier and it feels better too.
- Right.
So, three times 30 seconds for the hamstrings.
And then we're gonna do the iliotibial band.
That's the band that runs
all the way from right by the hip
all the way down and crosses the knee.
- Right.
- We wanna make sure that's nice and loose,
well we can't really loosen the band,
but it might be adhesed down a little bit.
Or we can surely stretch a tensor fasciae latae.
- My name is Brad and not Shirley.
(both laughing )
Yeah. So we're gonna show them that stretch.
- Yeah. Which one do you want to show them.
- For the TFL tensor.
- Yeah.
- Okay.
- Yeah. Which one do you wanna do?
- There's a little TFL, one on each side, right?
- Well you can do this one.
- Oh, I see the figure four, sure.
- Right and pull up like that. - Yep.
- I like that one myself.
- I do too.
- It gets a hip really well, as well.
- You can do the one against the wall, you know that one?
- Okay, sure. We'll get Sam out of the way.
Yeah. The one up against the wall is nice
because you don't have to lay down.
It's very, you know, just find a wall.
I'm gonna stretch this one right here.
- Right.
- So I'm gonna, I like to cross my leg over.
- Same with me.
- And then, with this hip, drop in
and you feel a stretch there.
Like Bob was referring to,
I've always, as a therapist,
thought this is a really hard tissue to stretch
because that tendon is very-
- Very thick. - Thick and it's-
- Caliginous?
- You can stretch the muscle up here, that's gonna stretch.
But is that band actually going to stretch?
There's controversy over that
and I think more now, so-
- No, I don't think you can stretch it,
but it can be adhesed down.
The the body or the fasciae
and that's where a massage gun would help.
- Yeah.
- I think cause you can stretch it all day long
and you're not gonna make any changes in that band.
So all right.
Next one, quadriceps stretch.
This is just a simple way of doing it.
You can actually pull back like this.
- And you can do that on a chair.
If you have armrests they kind of get in the way,
'cause you need to turn sideways on the chair.
- You can go like this.
And you can actually get a band
or I mean, a stretch out strap
and pull on it like that.
- Yeah. You can use a belt and put it around your ankle.
You can just stand up. - Stand and pull it.
- If you're pretty fit and able
and not are at risk for a fall and do this.
But make sure you're upright, tall with posture
bring the knee back
and that'll really get out those quads.
You'll feel it, clearly.
- Yup and then we're gonna do a calf stretch.
You want to just show, against the wall.
- Yeah, the old go-to, easy.
Grab a wall and we're looking at this one right here.
The one in front is, is just there.
Not getting stretched.
Make sure your toe is pointed towards the wall.
Knee straight, stretch and hold
and then knee bent, stretch and hold,
so you get the soleus and the gastrocnemius muscle.
And it's nice to hold those for longer periods of time,
15 to 30 seconds.
- Yeah, if the calf muscle is really tight,
your foot might react by pronating more or flatting more.
And when your foot flattens
that puts the knee at a more of a knock kneed
and that puts more stress
on the patellofemoral pain syndrome.
- Not good.
- Yeah. So the final one,
is actually gonna stretch the kneecap itself.
And now you're not going to do this
if you're really loose ligament-ed or hyper-mobile.
- Some people say double jointed.
- Yeah. Like if you can take your hand
and put it down to your wrist.
- Yep. The thumb touches there.
- Or elbow almost bends the other way.
- Yeah. If you go back like this and your knee
actually bends a little bit the other direction,
hyper extension.
- Yeah. Generally, you know it, if you have loose ligaments.
So what I don't want you to do is push the kneecap around
and make a dislocate, which is unlikely,
but it could happen on someone who is very, very loose.
So you're gonna make sure the quadricep is nice and relaxed
because if it's tight
you're not gonna be able to move that kneecap around.
But quite often in people have patellofemoral pain syndrome.
They are tight in one direction of the kneecap
or possibly in all directions.
- [Brad] Sure.
- [Bob] Probably one of the most common directions
where it's tight is when you push it this way.
- [Brad] Yep.
- [Bob] In fact, Brad mentioned in the last video,
that's why they often have a surgery
where they actually released the tissues on this side.
So that the kneecap can travel back to where it should be.
In that groove.
- [Brad] I believe they call it a lateral release.
- [Bob] Release, yup.
And you can move up and down the kneecap.
This is the easy one to do.
You can do while you're sitting in school
or sitting at work.
- [Brad] You pretty much gotta put your leg out straight.
You can't do it with a bent knee at all.
The knee has to be... this actually works really good
on a ball, but you could put a chair in front of you
or ottoman or whatever's available.
- Or if you can reach down like this
just keeping the leg straight.
So let's show the massage gun now, Brad.
- Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- I'm gonna grab the monster.
This is for athletes.
This is the Bob and Brad Massage Gun.
I'm sorry to give it a plug,
but we have very high standards.
- Yeah. They're nice guns. - These are nice guns.
- They're a good price and we're very happy with them.
- Yeah, very happy with them.
So this baby, it's got this metal head
and this baby will penetrate.
So if you wanna work that IT band
and there's any adhesions on that.
You'll work through it.
- But don't get Bob wrong.
You don't have to beat the hell out of your legs
to do this, make them sore.
You know, if you got a lot of muscle, you know
and you're just a guy that wants to (growling)
(both laughing)
- Well, a lot of times, I mean, to be honest, Brad.
if you are a more muscular guy with big legs and stuff
you do need something like this.
- That's true.
- Cause you're gonna want to-
- If you're not, if you're average or you know
older person or a thin person, I like this round head.
'Cause then this is pretty aggressive
but you can just change how aggressive it is
by changing the angle, which is pretty handy.
Are we gonna talk about, if you get by the kneecap?
- Sure.
- Then, 'cause these come with five heads
and this head works really good
when you come close to a bone
and you want to get those tendons where they connect
to the bone.
It's cushioned, it's an air cushion
and a boy these pop on and off extremely easy.
Little interference right there.
And we'll get that one going here.
- And that's the thing.
This thing you can actually, pretty much use anywhere
because you can go right over the bone.
It won't hurt.
- Yup. I was using this one this morning on my pec muscle.
That's the thing.
If you do have a massage gun,
you're gonna find you use it on every part of your body.
- Especially when you start getting up in the later years.
- Yeah. If you're really active
and you're straining and muscles all the time
or you're a little older
and you're straining things all the time.
- Well, I think it's great prior to an athletic event
it's better than stretching in my mind, way better.
- Well, I like to do it
and then I'll stretch right afterwards.
- Sure.
- Kind of like a heat gun, but it just feels good.
- I use it every morning before I run.
- Oh you do?
- On my calves.
- On your calves?
- Yup.
So, there we go.
By the way, this video is a part of a series of videos
on knee pain.
If you want to see the entire series,
go to bobandbrad.com and go to the program section
and you'll find we have a number of programs there,
on sciatica and hip pain and stuff.
But we have one on knee pain.
You look at it, we'll have like 30 videos
and you can watch the ones that pertain to you.
- Yeah. You don't have to watch all of them.
There's a big bonus, is there's a PDF printout.
It has a review, you can print it out,
of the exercises and the information on the video.
There's no charge for this.
Not even your email, if by chance it says not up yet.
It means because we're still downloading the PDFs
and everything for you
- Uploading right?
- Oh, sorry.
(Brad sputtering)
Download, upload,
it's they're still coming in from wherever.
So anyways, be patient and come back and check it out later.
- Yep. Thanks for watching.
(upbeat music)