♪ 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.
- I agree.
Today we're gonna talk about
how to strengthen a painful hip.
Very simple
idea. (Brad laughs)
What we're gonna do...
Our goal is to strengthen, actually, the glute muscles.
And I'm going to show you in a minute
why they're so important.
We've got the glute minimus,
the gluteus medius, and gluteus maximus.
In addition to the strengthening, by the way,
if you're just coming upon this video,
you also want to stretch the hip.
So you should watch our video, and it's entitled
"Bob and Brad Stretching Program for Hip Pain
Based on McKenzie Approach."
- Right. You do-
- If they want to do both.
You don't want to just strengthen the hip.
You want to stretch it out too.
- Yeah, you should have your range of motion fairly normal
before you start getting into any aggressive strengthening.
- Right. So all three gluteus muscles, they all help
move the hip, but they also help stabilize the hip.
So your hip is made up of a ball and a socket
and they work very well together to help hold that ball
right in the center of the socket like where it should be.
If they're not working right, especially the glute max,
it's maybe not working as much as it should be,
that ball can slide forward in the socket.
And why that's a problem,
you can actually get some pinching of structures here.
- [Brad] Right. - [Bob] Soft tissue.
Like you have the labrum,
which is a round piece of cartilage here,
circular, that you can actually pinch
and actually wear it out. So it's kinda like impingement
of the shoulder. - [Brad] Right.
- [Bob] But it's happening at the hip.
I could see a lot of people saying, Brad,
"Why are you strengthening the butt muscle
when I'm having trouble with the hip?"
That's why. That's the most important muscles
that are going to help you.
- And they connect directly to the greater trochanter
which is right there at the hip joint.
- Right. And like I said, they do move the hip too,
so it's not like we're doing something that is not needed.
All right. We're going to start off
with the beginner exercises.
Brad, you were going to do that on the floor.
- [Brad] Oh, sure.
So the glute-
- [Bob] The bridging, yeah.
- So bridging, therapists have been using this
for hip, glute strengthening for years.
Some little tricks that we we've learned,
if you put your feet up against the wall
and you think about pushing your toes into the wall
as you lift up your hips and squeeze your buttocks,
think about squeezing those glutes together,
and then come back down,
pushing up against the wall helps isolate the glutes,
- [Bob] Yeah. It kicks in, if you want the term,
reciprocal inhibition.
The quads fire, so the hamstrings turn off.
- Right.
- So you're going to get more focus on the gluteus maximus.
- If you put your hands over your waist,
it's a little harder, as opposed to here.
And if you want to put some weight on here-
- You certainly could do weight
and you could also do one leg at a time
if you really want to start adding to it.
- This works best with some shoes on.
You could do without. - Right.
- But shoes definitely work better on this.
- And that cue that Brad gave about
always focusing on the butt,
tightening it up, that should be done
with all six of these exercises.
- I was just thinking about squeezing
those butt muscles together.
- All right. Next one is the clamshell.
So what you're gonna do is you're gonna
put your ankles together.
Then you put your knees together
and you're just going to open up like a clamshell.
- [Brad] The feet stay touching,
and it's like a pivot point at that point.
- Right. Now, with these, you can do,
what would you say, Brad?
- [Brad] Well, I'll go 10 to 15,
and do 'em slow with good control.
- And these are not very big muscles on the side here,
so they're gonna get fatigued
and you can actually overdo it.
I know personally, 'cause I overdid it once.
But you can also take a band.
Do we have a band?
- [Brad] Yeah. Bob also mentioned
that you should do it both sides,
right side and left side. - Right, absolutely.
And so I'm going to put a band around me here.
- These are just looped bands that you can purchase.
They're relatively inexpensive and add resistance.
- So if it's down the hip further, it's going to be harder.
If you move it up further,
it's going to be a little less stress.
But I like these because they don't fold up on ya.
- The latex ones, they fold up and they roll
and they're uncomfortable.
These are really comfortable, offer good resistance.
- Yeah. These are nice when you're standing.
Even if you want to do some squats.
- [Brad] There's absolutely no doubt about that.
- All right. Next one, Brad,
is the gluteal pumps and I'll show that, Brad.
- Good.
- So we're going to go ahead. You can do these two ways.
You can lie right on your stomach
and you're going to bend your knee
to a right angle or 90 degrees.
And you're just going to lift a foot up towards the ceiling.
And that's really isolating that glute maximus.
- This is one thing that, for some people,
it's kind of hard to tell where your knee is
if they can't see it-
- Right, or you're out like this, or out...
It is.
The position senses can be off.
So you want to do both sides.
Now, you can also do it in the quadruped position.
Little more difficult.
You're actually going to get in this position
and you're going to work the core a little bit too, then.
- You're going to tighten up those stomach muscles
that are on the back so this stays stable.
So you're getting more benefits than just glute,
so it's a good situation if you feel comfortable with it.
- There you go. All right.
Those are the beginner exercises.
Now, you may never advance beyond those.
You may stick with those or you might add weight to it.
- If you're not an athletic person or you're a little older
and your goals are just to get up and move around
for daily activities, that's probably enough.
- Right. So now the next one,
we're going to show you some advanced ones.
This is the one that just came on the scene,
I don't know, six, seven years ago, maybe.
Maybe it's been longer.
But this guy who wrote the "Glute Bible," wasn't it?
Or no, the...
(laughing)
- [Brad] Where is it? That book.
- [Bob] Yeah, that book.
- [Brad] He spent a lot of time thinking about
the glutes. - [Bob] Yeah, he's got
a full book on the glutes.
He supposedly invented this,
and he said, based on EMG studies,
this was the best one for strengthening the glutes.
The glute maximus.
So I'm going to show it.
There's a couple of ways you can do this.
With people I know who are serious weightlifters,
large people,
they actually use a barbell that's padded,
and they'll actually have quite a bit of weight on there.
My son does these.
I mean, he's got hundreds of pounds on there
when he does these. So I-
- He strong like bull.
- Yeah, he's strong like bull.
So if you are just starting these,
first you could actually start them
without any weight at all, Brad.
You could just...
And you're going to need a bench that's up against the wall
so that it's stable,
and you're gonna place your feet at a...
My knees are at a right angle again.
And I'm going down like this and lifting up like this.
- Now, if you have a painful hip and it's getting better
but this kinda hurts a little bit,
you can kinda put the weight to the good hip
and take some weight off of the bad one
if that alleviates the pain.
- It really does focus on...
Oh, I'm going to lift this up.
So you can actually add some weight to it too,
just the kettlebell. - Yep.
- That does make a huge difference, Brad.
- Sure. - Maybe my muscles
are getting tired already from that-
- Was that a five-pounder?
- This is more than a five-pounder.
This is 30 pounds. - 30 pounds!
Yeah, those kettlebells really...
(Bob groaning)
It doesn't look like that much weight, but it is, for sure.
- I actually was able to do these on my bed too.
- Oh, okay.
- It just seems like it actually cushioned me-
- Your bed didn't slide away?
- My bed didn't slide away. It worked out good.
- You gotta be careful that way.
- All right, Brad, the next one
is goblet squats.
So that's basically - Oh, yeah.
- squats with weight.
You can do squats without weight.
- Right.
- But if you're trying to do advanced,
I'm using the squat, so I'm holding on
and I'm gonna bend down like this.
- [Brad] Good body mechanics in the back.
And again, you're thinking about squeezing the buttocks.
- Especially on the way up.
- And right at the very end,
you're pushing out a little bit there
to get that final squeeze.
- All right.
(laughing)
Brad.
- As a family show, Bob- - Yep, I know.
(laughing)
All right. Brad's going to show two methods here
of using the bands
for doing something similar to the hip thrust.
It actually is the hip thrust.
I think this works really well.
These are the ones that I do at home.
- [Brad] If you got bands...
I thought about doing this standing on it
but you don't really get the right angle.
You need it kind of behind you.
So if you've got something to hook your bands onto,
we use the wall anchor on the low level.
Works very well.
Here we go.
So I'm going to grab here- - Grab with both hands.
- And they're going to...
My forearms up against my upper thighs by my pelvis.
And I'm going to pull up and do that squeeze right there,
squeeze the butt together.
- You're really not using your arms.
They're just holding it.
You're actually doing all the movement
with the hip and the buttock, hopefully.
And you'll feel this.
Brad's making this look easy, but these are difficult.
- I just stepped farther out and it's clearly much harder.
And also you can change the color or the number.
We have two bands on here.
You can get three.
If you're using the black or the darker color,
you may need less.
So there's a lot of variance and options with that.
If you happen to have the loop bands,
which have come out
in the last couple three years-
- Sure. - Becoming very popular.
And in my mind, I really like them.
They also hook onto the wall anchor
and the advantage of this, it's comfortable.
And I can do everything the same,
and I don't need to grab and have that.
If you have some hand issues for grabbing...
And I can just do this.
- And as far as I know, Brad invented this.
He just came up with it this morning.
I thought it was a great idea.
I'm going to give it a try myself.
But of course, maybe somebody's going to come onboard
and say, "We've been doing those for years."
- Exactly. But don't think about that. It's right here.
- Yeah, it's- (laughing)
Brad, inventor extraordinaire.
By the way, if you just stumbled upon this video,
it's actually a series of videos on treating hip pain.
Painful hips. - Right.
- So you go to bobandbrad.com, our website,
and go to the program section,
look for the videos on hip pain,
and you'll see a whole bunch of them there.
Read the titles, pick out the ones that are good for you.
- Right. You'll see the title pertains to your problem.
You may not have pain, you just mean to strengthen it.
Do we have them in there?
- We also have a printout- - Yes, a PDF printout.
- So you don't have to keep watching the video.
You can print it out.
It's a nice sheet that can tell you
exactly what we did here.
- A preview.
- All right, thanks for watching everybody.
(upbeat mellow music)