♪ Bob and Brad ♪
♪ The two most famous ♪
♪ Physical therapists ♪
♪ On the internet ♪
(Both clapping hands)
- Hi folks, I'm Bob Scrupp, physical therapist
- Brad Heineck, physical therapist.
- And we are the most famous physical therapists
on the internet.
- In our opinion of course, Bob.
- Got a cool video for you, you folks today,
true sciatica relief, at home treatment,
professionally proven success,
over many, many years I would say, right Brad.
- And we feel very adamant about this, this is...
I'm excited to let people know about this.
- Yeah, this is really good for people who are in pain
By the way, if you're new to our channel,
please take a second to subscribe to us.
We provide videos how to stay healthy, fit, pain free
and we upload every day.
Also, yes, you wanna go to our website, bobandbrad.com
because we're always giving something away.
Right now, we're giving away a bunch
of these Orthopedic Donut Pillows.
These are great for you if you have coccyx pain,
tailbone pain or if you have ischial bursitis.
- Right, as a matter of fact, we have one of our people
in the office, she uses one, and I don't even know
if she has those.
- She doesn't have any of those.
- She finds it comfortable.
- She's got a bony butt, I think.
So she just sits down on that.
I mean, it's more comfortable.
All right, you can also find it on Facebook.
And if you want a short version of
us go to Twitter, Instagram, 60 seconds
of Bob and Brad a day.
- Bob! - Brad take it away.
- That's right, so I'm thinking about this,
people on YouTube are coming to us
to see if they can help solve the problems
without seeing a doctor or the therapist.
Or else just get more knowledge
about the problem. - Or as adjunct.
- Right, that's a good term, adjunct.
So this all falls into place because the person
that we're talking about is renowned
and worldwide known in the therapy world,
in the medical field, for low back pain and sciatica.
His name is Robin McKenzie, physical therapist
out of New Zealand.
He started back in the 60s.
He actually started a system that's now worldwide.
- Yeah, it's in at least 36 countries.
- Right, and I think it's approaching 40.
- Yeah, and widely accepted.
- And even better yet, his whole approach
to medicine is to educate the patient how to take care
of themselves at home, which is exactly
fits our whole genre here.
- Yeah, that's what I liked about it right away,
why I was attracted to it,
because it doesn't make the patient dependent
upon the therapist.
You are in charge.
- Right, exactly, so how does this system work?
And how can it work for you?
We're gonna show you the whole concept and some steps to it,
and give you some guidance, so you can get through this.
- Where you can get more information.
- Right, exactly, so the first thing
that is a very interesting story
that Robin McKenzie tells,
I'm not gonna go through it exactly,
but in the clinic he found out that when you have...
What are you laughing at?
- Why it was a funny story.
- Eh, you wanna tell it?
- Well, just very quickly, so back when
he first started in the 60s,
it was considered like anathema--
- Let me show it, let me show it.
- It was terrible for anybody to lay in this position.
- Right, back at that time if you had sciatica,
everyone was doing flexion exercises.
And he told someone to go lay down on his plinth.
- And it was setup with an arch on it.
- So the guy lay down on it face first,
'cause he was gonna lay on his stomach.
And the plinth was up like this,
so he lay down,
and his back ended up being positioned like this.
- And Robin didn't know that,
at that time that was considered
the worst thing for your back - Taboo!
- So Robin told him to go in and lay down.
He lays down, Robin comes in and he sees this, "Oh, my God.
"What have I done?"
- This guy is not supposed to be laying like this.
And the guy had terrible leg pain when he walked in.
And the guy's laying there and he says,
"Mr. McKenzie, my leg pain is gone."
- And McKenzie says, "Of course it is."
(Both laughing)
- So anyways, long story short, I don't know if it's short,
but he realizes and develops this system
of centralizing the pain.
If you can get rid of the leg pain,
everything in sciatica starts to dissipate and go away.
- Right, it starts to improve.
- So that's called centralizations.
So when I say centralize, we're trying
to get rid of the numbness, tingling,
pain from the leg, and have it move up.
Okay,
why don't you turn around - Yeah, Bob wants...
Go ahead and show.
- So let's say Bob's a patient and he says,
oh, and the red lines represent where his pain is.
- [Bob] Oh, and it's going down.
- And it's going down the leg, it's the typical pattern,
all the way down to the ankle, it can go down to the foot.
So I'm gonna show Bob some specific exercises
after the evaluation, and then I'm gonna say,
"Go home, do these exercises."
I'm gonna tell him how to change his posture
to make things better.
He comes back the next day and he says,
"Oh, my back hurts a little bit,
"but the pain in my calf has gone away."
So I'm thinking to myself, "Beautiful".
'Cause I know the McKenzie system.
The patient's still upset because his back hurts
and it hurts down the leg.
I explain to the person, it's getting better
because the pain in the calf is gone.
- It might not even just be the pain,
it might be numbness-- - Right, perfect
- That was there and that's better.
Or it might be weakness, and that's better.
Sometimes the greater toe, the big toe,
I push on it, it just gives right away.
We do a few of these, I push on it, it holds a little bit,
after they've done it for a bit.
And that means, again, all these signs,
the burning pain is gone, whatever.
- Those are all symptoms of nerve pain
from the nerve being pinched from that herniated disc.
Okay so, this is good, and then
I go through some more exercises,
some specific exercises, change their posture,
maybe use a lumbar support.
Comes back three days later
and the pain goes away from there.
And now all we have is pain up in the lower back.
So now the pain has, what we call centralized,
to the lower back.
And that's great, we're gonna continue to work with it,
until this pain here goes away and the person,
at that point, is feeling much better.
And then we go onto core strengthening
and some body mechanics, so it doesn't happen again.
- Doesn't come back again.
- So now they're probably wondering,
well, what exercises do we do to get things to centralize.
We can't go through all of them
in one video-- - It's a lot.
- But we can go through the most common one.
- And plus, if you type in, go into our little search,
that little search thing, that circle,
and type in Bob and Brad, McKenzie, M-C-K-E-N-Z-I-E.
It will take you right to a bunch of videos
that we go into more detail.
- Right, we have a playlist,
with probably 30 videos on this.
Don't get overwhelmed with it,
'cause you can pick out specific ones.
So first thing that a lot of people don't think about,
and we address right away, is posture.
Seated posture.
Now, I got the...
Oh, there it is, I say I pulled out
my lumbar support somewhere.
Oftentimes, a herniated disc can be simply created
from poor posture over a period of years.
Or if you did it lifting or some other way,
it will maintain, or it won't get better
until you correct your seated posture.
So we're looking at the arch in the lumbar area.
And we wanna keep that arch maintained while we sit.
So if you sit like this.
That's gonna do nothing but irritate your posture.
As a matter of fact, McKenzie had a story he told where
he came in and he talked to his patient
about sitting properly.
And the person came in the waiting room like this.
And McKenzie came out and saw his patient sitting like this.
And he was like in his 60s at the time I guess.
And he was very upset with the patient
and let the patient know.
- I haven't heard that story.
- Oh, really? - No.
- No, one of the instructors told us that and he said,
"Why I would never do that line on a patient."
But maybe when you're as old as he was
and been doing it as long, you gotta let
the patient know. - You're fed up with them
- Yup, and they'll remember it.
And it's like a parent scolding your child.
So we use lumbar supports and it depends
on the size of the person and the chair
you're putting them in.
But that maintains that arch,
and that's gonna help hold the disc
from bulging and actually help centralize it
and get the pain centralized.
- Now you can imagine, like if Brad was a larger person,
with maybe a little more padding on the butt.
You might need a bigger support then.
'Cause it just won't do the job.
And a smaller person needs a smaller support.
- And we have a video dedicated strictly on lumbar supports
and how to make it fit you.
And you don't have to buy one,
you can actually make them out of towel rolls.
- Yup, you can certainly start with that
and then maybe eventually buy one.
- Right, yup, exactly.
Bob, you wanna show 'em, this is probably,
actually this is the exercise
that is known through McKenzie.
But there's a lot of times we modify this and change this.
- There's a huge amount of variations,
sometimes you can't even lie like this to start off with,
you might have to start with a couple
of pillows underneath you.
But if you're able to, if you can get down
into this position, you might lie this way
for a few minutes.
And then eventually maybe even just get up
onto your elbows.
Kind of a prone prop.
- So we're starting to extend the lower back
and that's gonna help centralize that pain,
like we mentioned earlier.
- And sometimes we have people
who rock back and forth like this, Brad, a little bit.
But eventually, what you're trying to hope to do,
is get your hands underneath your shoulders.
And you start to press up like this,
without bringing my pelvis up.
That's the key.
If your back is so tight,
that you're just coming up like this,
you gotta work in this little range right here
to start stretching the back out.
But eventually, what you wanna do,
is keep going further and further.
And again, this should not be increased pain,
this should be less pain.
And we're hoping again to see that pain go
out of the leg while you're doing this.
But eventually, you wanna get up all the way
up to this point.
And again, there's a whole bunch of variations
to this, we're not doing it justice today at all.
- But if you do have sciatica and you really want
to self-treat, you can look at our videos and our playlist.
If you buy this book from Robin McKenzie, he wrote it,
it's specifically written for patients,
it's a patient guideline.
And it's only $10.
And it's actually a best-seller on Amazon.
It's a popular book, because it's a good book.
- Yeah, look at the ratings on there,
you'll see a lot of, it helped a lot of people.
You know, it's funny I had one, a patient with neck pain,
and I went over stuff with her,
but all I did is give her the book, she got better.
I mean, she-- - Did she read it?
- She thought it was a miracle.
I mean, she really did, she was suffering
from pain for so long.
I mean, she thought it was literally a miracle.
- Oh, I know, yeah it's below in our,
the books that we love.
- Yeah, we'll have it, we'll have a link down below.
Again in the description.
Or if you're on Facebook it'll be...
You'll see it there under the description.
- The other thing that we are going to do is,
it's probably going to be in March of 2020,
we're gonna have a whole series of sciatica treatment
with details on how to go through this.
- Yeah, we're gonna have a whole program
that's gonna outline every step
you should do when you have sciatica.
- Right, we're gonna have printouts available.
- It is all gonna be on our website.
So if it's March of 2020,
you can go to our website, bobandbrad,
and look for the series of videos on sciatica.
- So we're December of 2019, so we're working on it.
- We're gonna be under pressure now.
We gotta get it done - I know.
All the work has gotta get done.
- All right, thanks for watching.