♪ Bob and Brad ♪
♪ The two most famous physical therapists ♪
♪ On the internet ♪
- Hi folks.
I'm Bob Schrupp, physical therapist.
- And I'm Brad Heineck, physical therapist.
- Together we are the most famous physical therapists
on the internet.
- Well, in our opinion, of course, Bob.
- You astound me sometimes Brad. You astound me.
Okay, so today we're talking about
how to massage your own low back pain.
And we're gonna use the, a lot of devices here.
But we're gonna start off with your own hands.
So you just take your hands
and I know you gotta have some shoulder motion.
And Brad just has a shot,
a cortisone shot into that left shoulder so--
- And the doctor says be nice to it.
Don't do any, no stretching out for three days.
So anyways, I can't do it
but I do a little bit with this hand.
- [Bob] So yeah. I can handle this one too.
If you wanna sit this one out, Brad
but you can use your knuckles and now first off,
you don't go right on the spine itself.
You go on the paraspinal.
- [Brad] There you go.
- The muscles on the side of the spine.
So you can use your knuckles like that.
You can do circles or across the muscle.
I think we should mention that important quadratus lumborum
that kind of fans out near the, down onto the
pelvis area. - Yeah, that's underneath
the paraspinals.
- Yeah, you gotta get in deep with that
but we'll show you some options for that too.
- Yeah, now the one that Brad reminded me of is
is you actually,
you can hold onto the fist and really push on the other one.
- So the fist, if you get your knuckles in there
like it's hard to see
but he's getting the knuckles right here.
Oh, listen to that, man.
He's having incredible pleasure.
- [Bob] Wow. I didn't know hurt on this side.
Wow. - Oh, I see.
You've got some knots in there, Bob.
- [Bob] Wow.
- Wow is right. Holy cow.
Your shirt's coming out.
Bob, turn around, we don't need to see anymore.
- Okay. All right.
Moving on to number two, Brad.
Ho about, you can use a tennis ball.
You could use a softball, that's a softball, right?
- Yeah. Yeah, I know that Bob.
I played before.
- Here's two tennis balls in a sock.
- And that's in the sock for a reason.
- Lacrosse ball.
- Yep, or just a, you know, this or a tennis ball, whatever.
We'll show you.
- But again, you're gonna stay off the spine.
You're gonna go on the pair of spinals.
And you're gonna roll.
I'm gonna, Brad, you wanna take this?
- Yes I do.
- And I'm gonna take this softball because you can,
if you have a softball, you can actually do it,
you could do it in a bed, I believe.
- Yeah, it all depends how aggressive you need,
you tolerate, you know?
If you need more aggressive
you can need to go on the floor, on a carpeted floor
works a little better.
- But you could hit the spot there
and because the bed gives way a bit,
you can actually tolerate using the softball.
Maybe.
- Yeah, it's individual. - (indistinct)
- He's working that spot, lumbar area.
- Yep. I always find right above the pelvis I hit the spot.
It seems to be tender there.
- Yeah. That old ileum.
So Bob, can I show them on the floor a little bit?
- Sure. Why don't you?
- So I, I may get down like this.
Let's say I got this or a tennis ball
and I'm gonna gonna go right there on the side,
right about where Bob was.
And oh yeah.
That's a, and I'm adjusting the pressure by my hips.
If I lift my hips up a little bit and go down,
let me try that.
- [Bob] You wanna try the softball?
- Oh, oh, oh, I've got the spot right there.
That's a nice, and it is right over that paraspinal area.
Now, if I do this.
- [Bob] Too much.
- Yeah, then you need a towel
if that's all you got is a softball.
- [Bob] I thought you're tapping out.
Like I give, I give, I give.
- Like yeah, I'm done.
And yeah, that's much better.
And so that's an option.
If that's all you have is
you know, a softball. - This is really good for the
fascia of the back.
That's fibrous material that surrounds the muscles and such.
- Two tennis balls in a sock.
What you do is you bridge and your spine goes right here
and I'm gonna put that in there
and you get both sides at the same time.
And those softballs or tennis balls are squishy
and it's much more tolerable.
And it, while you there, I mean, we're talking
about the lower back, but you can go up into the--
- [Bob] Sure. Mid back.
- Mid back as well.
Okay, enough of that.
- All right. Number, let's see what are we at?
Number three foam roller on the wall.
We don't like using a foam roller
on the floor in the low back.
It really jams the facets together.
It's not comfortable, but you can do it
on a wall because you can control the amount
of pressure on the, on your back.
So it's like this and you know, and again,
this if you wanna go up into the right thoracic spine,
that's okay but we're talking about the lower back.
And then this, I do like to come in
at a angle to get in there a little bit and there,
and I'm gonna go the other side.
- This is one where I think a nobby foam roller
would almost work better.
- Yeah.
- I mean a little more aggressive.
- Right, we try this and you know,
if you need a little more aggressive and you,
you wanna get a nobby foam roller.
I don't know if you could make one out of this.
If you're really talented.
- All right, this next one is a little bit of self promotion
about we're gonna talk about C2 massage gun.
And this thing works really well.
So this is where you can hit that quadratus lumborum, Brad.
You can actually go, you push away the,
the paraspinal muscle.
Yep. Ban the muscle right there.
And you try to aim for underneath it.
You do need some, I'm vibrating my voice.
You do need some range of motion in your shoulders
to do this one.
- [Brad] Now you're gonna find that you,
it's really important to stay away from the bony
transverse processes or down by the
if you're getting down by the
sacrum. - Or the spinal processes.
- Now I use the airhead, which is the softest head
and this is considered the lower back.
And I'm very happy when I do this on my SI joints.
It's usually just below the belt line on the right
or the left side, get a little bit of the glutes.
And I work that SI joint.
It's a little bony there.
That's why you have to have the soft one.
And boy, that really helped that out.
That area loosened it up.
Yeah, the there's, you know, five different heads that come
with the massage gun and the, you like the airhead.
You like the round one too, right?
- Yeah, and you really need to play with them a little bit
and experiment, you'll find out which ones you like.
And there's different methods on how to use them--
- The flathead works well over clothing.
It glides along really well.
Now, ideally, you're really nice to your partner or friend
or somebody, a family member, and they will do it for you.
- Oh yeah.
- Because then they can really get in there.
- Right. And then you can, so you do have to be careful.
If you're doing it, you don't have any experience.
If you don't know the anatomy
and you use one of these hard heads
and you go over that bone-- - Right over the spine.
- They're gonna say bad things at you.
You know?
So be, be careful and listen to what we say.
- All right, the final one is actually,
there's different types of devices out there like this.
We don't really promote one over the other.
They're all fine.
I know Sarah Cane is one.
But it's got, you know, some are different shaped
and you got knobs here
and you can really work the spine with this too.
You can get it in there.
You can crank on it.
- Oh, you're gonna go through that again?
- Yes! This side, I tell ya!
This left side is really--
- It gets embarrassing.
Why Bob? This is a why Bob, why situation.
But no, you can really get--
- It hurts so good, Brad.
- Yeah, absolutely, I would know.
- Oh geez. Mother mercy.
All right, I'm done, I'm done.
Good, try it.
- Yeah. But yeah, this is not a Sarah can.
This is some other brand, but it's oh, it is.
They're all pretty similar.
Right. You know, you, you can get up and here.
Go around. - That one actually,
splits apart, doesn't it?
- Nope, this is not that one.
That's a different one.
Ooh, yeah. I see what you're talking about, Bob.
Turn that camera off. I gotta get to work on that.
I'm not gonna put myself into that situation,
but yeah, no.
- All right, there you go.
It can really make a difference in your back pain.
Again, a lot quite often, fascia is a problem
and you have two layers of fascia
in your back and they can get bound down.
And it helps to massage them out.
- If people aren't familiar with fascia
they don't know what you're talking about.
But we have some videos that go into fascia.
You can look it up.
See it online. - That's right.
- So yeah, it's definitely there.
- All right.
Remember Brad and I can fix just about anything--
- Except for, oh yeah, a broken heart.
And these things are not gonna work on it.
We're out of luck here. - We'll work on it though.
(bouncy music)