♪ Bob and Brad ♪
♪ The two most famous ♪
♪ physical therapist ♪
♪ 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, Bob.
- Science says this is the best quad strengthening exercise.
You must see this.
- Right.
- We demand it.
- Well, because it's a little surprising to us
as therapists because of what--
- We've been taught in the past
and now we're finding out what science
is actually telling us is different
than what we were thinking.
- Right, but before we go any further.
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So quad strengthening, Bob.
Really wanna, oftentimes, get those quads as strong
as possible for athletes,
but as far as just everyday because it's important
for simple activities like going up and down steps,
good for your balance,
getting out of a chair,
you really need strengthening quads.
So from all aspects.
- Actually protects your back, in a way,
if your quads are strong
because you can take a lot more stress on your legs
if you're doing it correctly
and you take it off your back.
Also, you want your legs to look good, right?
You wanna be able to have that definitely, right?
- So, we're thinking,
what's gonna be the best quad strengthening exercise?
Naturally, I'm thinking, well we got squats,
we got lunges and--
- Yeah, all these, what we call closed chain.
- Right.
- Okay.
I think you could've gone across the board
and ask most therapists you know,
what is the best quad strengthening exercise?
And they're gonna say, one of those.
- Right, unless we're way behind, I don't know Bob.
- Yeah, maybe we are. - We could be.
But the studies that we're looking at are from
Tergison, Morrissey and Anderson.
These are all studies that related to ACL rehab
because after an ACL surgery,
quadricep strength really goes down,
and you really need it to go up to have a successful rehab.
So they put a lot of effort into it
with this particular surgery.
Believe it or not, what they did is they're EMG studies
which you put electrodes to the muscle
and you hook it up and it's done on a computer
and they actually can tell what the percentage of fibers
are firing in that quadricep.
And the exercise that got the highest efficiency
- Drumroll
- Of quadricep strengthening is
the knee extension machine.
- Now this may not be shocking to all of you,
but it was shocking to us.
- Right
- This is considered open chain because
- So you sit in a device, a machine
and you've seen these at at any fitness gym they have them
you sit down and then there's a pad
that goes across your ankle
and you simply go up and down like this
and it's true it's all quadricep work.
But the big thing as therapists is like
oh wow that works the quads but it's open chain
so it's not functional to daily life
and it puts a lot of stress on the patellofemoral joint
- On the kneecap itself.
- Right and so right after they mention this part about
the EMG studies then they said
what degree of range of motion
and this is another from another scientific study
I learned this from a Stanford someone that--
- Did a study at Stanford
- Well actually he works at Stanford he's a physical therapy
he's doing a continuing ed and everyone in the class is like
well, no one said anything
he said between zero and 30 degrees which I thought
it was gonna be more in the flexion range.
- So the question was, Brad you kind of jumped over this
the question is where is the most stress on the kneecap?
Where is the foot at
when the most stress is felt on the kneecap.
- Sure.
- And both Brad and I thought would be in this range
right here, but it's actually in the final 30 degrees.
- Right
- Where it is.
- So we gotta respect science and these people are
the leading edge right now.
- But they're saying go ahead and do the quad extensions
and the knee extensions and don't worry about that final 30.
- As long as you're not having pain.
If you have arthritis or some issues it's getting it worse
but if you have a healthy knee, it's pain free,
work with it and also do the closed.
Do your squats and actually they compared this
EMG study with squats, leg press and quad sets
everything that we--
- Normally do
- And we thought were good, and they are good exercises
you need to do those but
- This is the best
- Right if we're just working on that
- If you want to strengthen your quad this is the best.
- And I'm going to suggest to do these
and then work your squats as well as your lunges
because that's going to incorporate balance
and the closed chain benefits.
So if you're at home and you don't happen to have
a knee extension machine where you sit
and have the pads and the weights
- Sometimes they have them on the end of a bench
but they never fit me because I'm tall
- We'll a good one's pretty expensive
- Exactly
- And you need to go to a fitness center.
What you can do at home you need a relatively firm chair
where your legs go down so your knees at a 90 degree angle
and you can simply put weights on your ankle
you know you can have ankle weights like this.
Now I gotta be honest with you, if you're fairly fit already
you're gonna need some pretty big ankle weights.
If you're recovering or you're just starting lifting,
You know I put a two pounder on it's too small for me
I've never done these I've probably at 20 to 30 pounders
I'm not sure it's not real practical
but again if you do and you're gonna do probably 10 to 15
in a set, for strength even 10 at the most.
But make sure you do a good control
and full extension of the knee,
back down until you get
to the 90 degree bend in the knee
and out, and about a range like this
so you're not doing this for sure.
- Right.
There's little strengthening going on there.
- No benefits, kind of a waste of time
- You're going on momentum.
- So it's here and down, and you could do both legs at once
it depends on how much you got to hold onto
if you got a chair with armrests that might be good.
Good posture, make sure you're not slouched
and I would probably do one leg at a time
it's going to give you the best benefits
You can put more weights on as needed
you know they make these ankle weights up to 15 pounds
I think I seen them higher than that actually
- And you can double them up obviously
- I think the next best option is actually get some bands
but you need to hook 'em to something behind you.
You can hook 'em to the leg of the chair
We've got ours hooked up to the wall anchor
you can see down there, we've got em at different levels
they work excellent for all kinds of exercises
- Yeah then you can work your whole body
- Right
- Especially if you're rehabbing from something,
it's nice to have this band option too.
So he's hooking 'em up
- Yeah so I've got two bands we could hook up
the three on one anchor
- You can get pretty good resistance on one of those.
- So I'm gonna hook two bands up there so I get
a little more resistance, works well and then you simply
do the same mechanics, same slow motion with the bands
and if you need to get more resistance,
simply move the chair out or in this case the table
and you get more resistance.
Now, if you happen to have ankle weights and bands,
this is actually the best you can do is work 'em together
put the band on, put the ankle weight on and the band
- And we've done this in some other videos
where you get the benefit of the weight
and also the benefit of continuous resistance throughout.
- And there's some information and studies on
the benefits of combining,
so you get a really good quality exercise.
And again, three sets of 10 and that's assuming
by the time you get to the 10th one,
those quads are starting to burn a little bit
and they're breaking down so that they can strengthen
as they heal over the next couple days.
- We generally recommend you know there's 24 to 48 hours
in between sets so they have time for the muscle to recover.
- Right, between days
- Not between sets, between working out.
- It's a technicality, give us a break
- You were correct to correct that so.
- Okay so there ya go Bob
I think this is a little surprising to you and I
- It was a surprising to us in our world,
this is the things that excite us.
(laughs loudly)
- But ya know, those people out there
you wanna have that nice looking quad,
the VMO looking good, or just get stronger
so you can run faster,
or get up the stairs faster.
- Perform better.
- By the way if you're new to our
not by the way if you're new to our channel,
we can fix just about anything
- Except for
- A broken heart.
- There ya go.
- Well we're working on it. And I'm gonna get that speech
language to a pathologist too.
- Yeah we gotta get a speech thing going on too.
- Thanks for watching.