♪ Bob and Brad, ♪
♪ the two most famous physical therapists on the internet ♪
- Hi, folks.
I'm Bob Schrupp, physical therapist.
- Brad Heineck, physical therapist.
- We are the most famous physical therapists
on the internet.
- In our opinion, of course, Bob.
- Today this video is called What to Do About Back Spasms.
This video is a part of a series of videos on back pain
and sciatica. - Right.
- So if you want to check out the entire series,
go to bobandbrad.com and look for series.
All right.
So if there's a good thing about back spasms, Brad,
is that it's actually a good opportunity to learn
that you are in control.
- Right.
- You can control the pain.
So when you get a spasm,
we want you to go ahead and lie on your back.
- There you go, Bob.
It's important we get our English and grammar correct.
- So, Brad, if you will lie on your back?
- Sure.
- And obviously --
- Oop!
I've gotta take my shoes off.
- Well that and you probably wanna do it
in the correct posit--
- Right.
Let me get my mic-wears adjusted.
- So we're gonna tighten up--
- Tighten up the core just like you have a cast
around your trunk and we're gonna come down here.
You know, you're gonna do this carefully.
It all depends on how bad your back is but really try and--
- Usually if it's spasming, it's bad.
- Yeah, and you're gonna log roll.
So as if that whole cast around your trunk stays there
and everything goes together
and then you slowly work yourself in position.
- And someone nice gives you a pillow.
- Yes.
There is another way to get here
but this oftentimes will work.
- Yeah, we maybe will show that at the end.
So this is the position we want you to get
into the hookline position
and what you're gonna do in this position,
I want you to go ahead and tighten up your abdomen
and you can tell you're tightening up your abdomen
by just pushing your fingers in.
- Right.
- We don't want you to suck it in.
We just want you to tighten it.
And while it's tightening, I want you to go ahead,
lift one foot ever so slightly
and see what that does to your spasms.
If there's more pain,
then I want you to try shifting the arch in your back,
adjusting the arch in your back.
- So we're gonna make it go up towards the ceiling?
- Yeah.
Right now, Brad has more arch
and I can get my hand under there.
How about show less arch, Brad?
So now he's tightened up and flattened his abdomen there
and made less arch.
Find the position that calms the back spasms down.
That's what we're trying to show you here.
You're in control
and you can often control whether the pain goes on or off.
- So if you look at my pelvis,
I can
arch my back up,
my butt actually goes into the table,
the back goes up or we could--
- He does a pelvic tilt, they call it.
- Yeah.
We'll do a posterior.
There's the anterior, the posterior
and oftentimes, you'll find a certain position
where the pain will drop and you want to try
and hold that there.
Sometimes if it's up,
then you may put a pillow
or some kind of support there so you don't have to
hold it and so you can relax with that position.
- And it would feel even better.
Right.
So then in this position, you're gonna raise one leg up
and then raise the other leg up,
alternate back and forth.
And Brad and I hypothesized
why this works.
We think a lot of times
we're going to antagonist action here
where when you tighten up this muscle,
the muscles on the other side of the body relax.
- Right.
That's just automatically happens
without you thinking about it.
- Right.
So we're trying to get it to relax
so you can just go back and forth.
And again, if this doesn't work, you gotta adjust things.
- Right.
- And try to get it to the point where it does.
- Sometimes you can shift right to left just a little bit
and that can make that pain go from here to here.
And do that along with this.
- It's all about experimentation.
- Right.
- All right.
For an easy answer to back spasms,
what you wanna do is we're gonna go ahead
and have you put your feet,
now you can put them up on a stool
or you could put them up on a chair
or a coffee table if you're on the floor
and if you like to you could purchase one of these wedges
which you have one at home, right, Brad?
- Oh yeah.
I don't know where I'd be without one.
- Brad uses it a lot.
- Well, in this position, like if you're on a carpeted floor
and just go up to your couch or some soft furniture,
I've had a lot of patients have success with that.
- I've done that.
Okay, great.
And here's the alternative, using a wedge in the bed
and along with that, you may want to use an ice pack.
It's a great way to calm spasms down.
- Yeah.
I've done this many times when
I've irritated my back doing silly things
and it is helpful if you're really sore, you know,
it's not so easy just to get up like this
but having a second person like Bob was there
and never put the cold pack directly on your skin.
You need to have, you know,
a towel or a nice thicker shirt will be helpful.
- Yeah, you just had a patient
that came in with a little frost bite on their--
- Well, yeah, actually he had it before me so he was like,
I don't know if I wanna use a cold pack.
So I talked to him about, you know, making sure--
- So they can have a layer of protection.
So this, you know, if you can lie like this for 20 minutes,
that's gonna calm your spasms down too.
And then once they've calmed down,
you can go ahead and head off to one of
our other videos to try some of those exercises.
We do have
on the
company printout for this video,
we do have the recipe for the ice pack.
So that you can make one of your own.
- Yeah, you can make them with some rubbing alcohol
and water, probably 50 cents
and you've got one made or less, you know?
And they work quite well.
- They cover quite a large area, so.
All right.
Go ahead and check out the next video.