♪ Bob and Brad ♪
♪ The two most famous physical therapists ♪
♪ On the internet ♪
- (claps) Hi folks.
I'm Bob Schrupp, physical therapist.
- Brad Heineck, physical therapist.
- Together we are the most famous physical therapists
on the internet. - In our opinion
of course, Bob.
- Today we have seven exercises
to kill chronic foot, knee, and hip pain.
- Bob seven, your number seven's complete.
It's always nice to have seven answers for something.
So.
- And if you want your life to be complete,
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We provide videos on how to stay, healthy, fit, pain-free,
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- There you go.
- To make your day.
- Good segue, Bob.
It was smooth. - Yeah, thanks.
Appreciate that.
- Unrehearsed as well.
- All right.
So what are we doing, Brad today?
- Well, Bob, as you know, chronic pain,
pain that's been lingering on for, you know,
oftentimes for years, you know?
- Right.
- In the leg and ankle, knee and hip.
And that's what therapists deal with a lot.
You know, sometimes OT gets the upper, you know
the hands and the arms. - Occupational therapy.
- Yep.
So anyways I wanted to dedicate this
from the hips down.
So we got three major joints, all weight-bearing joints.
Joints that can oftentimes become once they get irritated
because you walk on it-- - It stays irritated.
- Right.
- It's hard to calm 'em down.
- Right and by the time you get after it
sometimes it's not too late, but it's like
how do you deal with it?
- Right. - So that's what
we're gonna show you here.
We're gonna start out with the ankle.
Then we're gonna go to the knee and go to the hip.
- So really the same philosophy that we're applying
to each joint is gonna carry over, right?
- Right.
- We're lookin'
at restrictions. - Range.
Right, range. - And range?
- Range of motion and loss of range of motion
'cause when a joint starts to hurt,
you don't use it as much.
It's just natural and then you start losing range of motion.
- And then it hurts even more.
- Right.
- Because you're wearing it out in a shorter range.
- Right it compounds.
- Yeah.
- And oftentimes if you can regain that range of motion
the pain-- - You can knock the pain down.
- Right.
So that's what we're gonna go through.
First we're gonna show you how to assess the joint,
the ankle, the knee and the hip and then how to treat it.
- Well, let's start with the ankle, Brad.
- The ankle, did I mention that?
- Yeah.
- Liz, did I say the ankle?
- Yeah.
- Okay.
- I said, let's start off with the ankle.
- We concur.
- Okay.
- All right, here we go.
So the ankle, can you come down here, Liz?
I'm going to, first of all
let's say your right ankle is more painful
than your left and I bet you, if that's the case,
and you put your ankles together like this
and you pull 'em both up this way and down this way
you may find that one goes up this far
and the other one is restricted in range of motion.
- Yeah.
- Almost always that is the painful side
or the more painful side.
- Right.
- So if we can get this ankle to come up to here
where the other one is the less painful
more than likely the pain is gonna reduce.
Now you're not gonna this in one treatment session.
- No.
- This is gonna take a period
of days or oftentimes weeks of constant stretching.
But we're gonna show you the stretches.
There's two.
There's a lot of ways to do this
but I'm gonna show you the two ways
that are probably the most effective for many people.
- Fastest and easiest.
- Yep, precisely.
So why don't you come over this way?
See you Bob.
- [Bob] All right.
See you later, Brad.
- It's all me.
Okay.
Let's say my left ankle is the one
that's restricted at dorsal flexion or pulling up.
I'm gonna use the wall
and this is nothing more than the wall stretch.
So the key on this is,
is instead of having my toe this way
it should be pointed directly towards the wall.
And you may start here depending on how tight your ankle is.
And then you just lean forward.
This foot here is not getting stretched.
It's just there for balance
and I'm gonna gently lean forward.
- But he's tryin' to keep the heel
on the ground, by the way.
- Yep, yeah.
- He's not allowing it to come up.
- Good point, Bob.
Thank you.
So that I'm gonna keep it down
and you can also keep the knees straight
and bend it slightly and get it a little different stretch
on the muscles the soleus versus the gastroc.
You don't need to know that, but that's what's happening.
- [Bob] So we'd recommend you doing it both ways, right?
With the knee straight and the knee bend.
- Yep.
I'm gonna say, do you know
five to 10 of these stretches depending
on how it feels and just go pressure on, pressure off.
- I would even go so far to say Brad
that if you're having pain there
you might do this throughout the day.
- Sure, right.
Yep. - You might.
- I would start out at three times a day.
- Sure.
- You know, unless it flared up really bad
'cause you hadn't stretched it before
and it needs a break for the next day.
- Every time you go by the wall
just give it a little stretch.
- Exactly.
That's the wall stretch.
We got a lot of walls.
Now the incline board is more aggressive
but when you get to the point, it's really nice.
It's probably the best way to stretch your ankle
in my opinion.
What do you say Bob?
- I agree.
I concur.
- He concurs.
Now you can buy one of these.
We have 'em in our favorite products or you know
you can make one, we actually have a video just Google Bob
and Brad incline board.
And if you're handy
you've got some tools you can make one for next to nothin'.
If you got a few scrap pieces.
Now this one put your foot on there
and just put some weight gently on there.
It's nice to have somethin' to hold
onto a wall or furniture.
And again, stretching it the same way.
Pressure on, pressure off.
You can bend the knee pressure on, pressure off.
If you did like five of 'em with a straight knee,
five of 'em with your knee bent,
that would clear everything.
- I'm gonna add it to this Brad too.
In order to help you with the stretch
and actually to help you with the pain
you might want to heat up the joint too.
- Sure.
- Because you're gonna find quite often that you know
with chronic pain a lot
of times if you can get more blood flow to it
and along with the stretch,
you actually maybe can really almost knock that pain out.
- Sure.
- We really like the Thermotex.
We've mentioned this many times.
It's infrared heat.
Heat that penetrates much deeper than regular heat.
- Right.
- Regular heat just goes a few millimeters.
This goes up to 60 millimeters, which is...
- 2.36.
It's gonna get into the joint.
- Yeah.
- And the muscle it's gonna be a deep heat.
- So they have a whole bunch of different types.
We'll put the link down below
but they have the platinum model
which you can use, you know, on your hip and your knee.
And you can even use it on your ankle.
This one was made specifically for feet and ankles.
So you can just slip your feet in there.
It's called I don't know the big shoe
or the big foot or something that.
- Right. - The big slipper
I think it's called.
- There you go.
One way or another, it looks
like this is the only thing they have that looks like this.
- So you could slide your feet in there.
And this'll actually, because it goes 2.36 inches on the top
and on the bottom
it's going all the way through the joint.
- Sure, you're getting a complete heat.
- So just wanted to put in a little plug for that.
'Cause I really like this
for my back and I use it all the time.
- Yep.
- It's one you'd have to drag
from my dead cold hands or whatever they say
before I'd give it up.
- So this would be good
for either stretch on the ankle.
Now, if you check your range
of motion and it's the same going up
but you notice pointing down one goes all the way down
and this one doesn't well then we need to stretch this one.
We call it plantar flexion or in that direction.
So you can do it just by your hand
and give it some gentle stretching there.
If that's not enough and you need a little more pressure,
the easiest way to do it, if you can tolerate,
is do what Bob's doing right now.
- Yeah, there's a reason I'm getting
up on the table and looking like this.
So I'm just kind of gently rocking back on it.
So I'm really pressure on.
- So right here's the stretch.
- Pressure off.
- You know he's stretchin'
the knees-- - Pressure on.
- And the hips as well. - Pressure off.
Yep.
- This is what we're looking for.
- Pressure on, pressure off. - For this particular joint.
Okay.
- Let's go to the knees right?
- The knee.
So if you look at the knee, we want full extension.
In other words, straight and fully to bend it.
So you can pull your foot up like this.
This is the one way to stretch it.
You could do the same thing laying down in your bed.
So straighten it out.
Bob, why don't you lay down
and we'll just show both ways.
If you're in a chair, if this knee goes fully straight
and this one doesn't, you can see there's a difference here.
There's a height difference.
Probably this is the knee that that's more painful
and we're going to stretch it like this.
Now in bed Bob-- - I would probably have it
up on something wouldn't you?
- Yeah, you could do that.
You're so tall.
Your foot goes off.
We got a short pillow, but yeah
you could put a pillow here
and see if that knee is straight.
- Right.
- So you're testing it that way.
And then for the bend, just bring your knee to your chest.
- Yep, and I'd be working on it.
I can do pressure on, pressure off like this.
So pressure on, pressure off.
- To assess one side or the other, you just pull that in.
- Oh right.
So I'd pull this up and then I'd compare it to this side.
- Right.
- And maybe even both together
but you you're gonna be able to tell by feel even.
- Sure.
- Oh, this one feels really tight.
- Yep.
- And this one feels really loose.
- Right, right.
So again, you can do it seated or laying down.
That's a nice thing about this.
And like Bob said
we're gonna stretch it here.
Where you place your hands
down by your ankle or up here can make a difference too.
You're gonna do whichever one feels better
and gives you more range of motion.
Five to 10 reps of that as well
and then for the straightening one
usually put your hands above the knee
above the kneecap and pressure on, pressure off.
Again this isn't gonna clear it in one treatment session.
This is gonna take days or sometimes weeks.
- It's an investment of time. - Right.
- So you could use a knee glide too.
- Oh yeah.
- You wanna mention it, Brad? - Yep, sure.
This is one of those things that we really like
just to get your knee.
If your knee is a problem,
you can get it warmed up by working it back
and forth like this
and for stretching it it's nice
'cause it actually moves and you get more freedom
and it just works out as a nicer stretch.
This is also in our favorite products list
below the video. - Probably because
we invented it.
- But it works well.
- It does work well.
- I mean, that's why we made it
'cause there wasn't-- - Nothing else on the market.
- Right, right.
We needed something to make that work.
Now, should we do the hip?
- Let's go to the hip.
And you know, one thing
about the hip is you can check the hip flexion just
like you did with knee flexion.
- Yep.
- You can go ahead and pull it up like this.
- So that's this right here.
- Yeah, that's bending the hip.
If I pull this one up and this one goes all the way
then I pull this one up and it only goes this far,
you know that you have a tight hip
and hip flexion. - Sure.
- And you're gonna wanna work on that direction then.
Again, really amazing.
I've found Brad with a lot of patients
that just by little improvements
a lot of times the pain starts to go down.
- Yeah.
- It really is shocking too sometimes.
- So the way to stretch the hip
is the same way to do the knee.
- Right.
- Now, if you wanna focus on the hip and not the knee,
don't grab over the top of the knee, grab here.
Right below the knee on the hamstrings
and then your knee is not getting involved
and your focusing more on that hip joint.
And then...
- I was just gonna show Brad that sometimes people
you know, if they have trouble.
- Oh sure.
- You know, if you're a little short arms and
you can't reach down to the legs,
you can put a sheet like this.
- Yep.
- And pull it up like this. - Sure.
- You can also do the knee by pulling up like this here.
- Right it is very common
that people have a hard time reaching around.
- Yeah, quite often I've seen that.
- So why don't you lay down Bob
and we'll show the hip stretch off the edge of the bed.
- This one you're talkin' about?
- Yep, there you go.
This is a nice way just right in bed.
You can leave that one hip go off.
- And then you pull up on this one.
- Right.
- And then you're stretching this one.
I really stretch this a lot.
So you can see it's coming down.
For someone who's tight,
it's gonna be sittin' up like this.
- Right and you can use a towel roll
or whatever to hold this
if you can't grab it. - Right.
- And just relax, and let gravity work.
I think this is probably one of the best ways to do it.
- Yep, let gravity.
- It's a lot easier doing the knee on the floor.
So we're not even gonna go there, Bob.
- Sounds good.
I agree.
Yeah.
- You concur?
- I concur. - Another concurrence.
- All right hip external rotation.
I like this one, Brad,
'cause it's very easy to do.
- And it's number seven.
- It makes it complete.
- So again, what you're gonna do
is you're gonna put your ankle up
on your knee opposite knee.
And I want you to see how high
that knee is up compared to, you know
do the one side then you do the opposite side.
This one's tighter on me.
So this is one I'm gonna work on.
Very easy to do.
- Right.
- You can just go ahead.
Pressure on. - Yep.
- Pressure off.
I had one lady who had...
And she had chronic pain.
She was to the point where she couldn't even walk anymore.
Not that very old.
She was only in her 50s.
When you're in your 50s
you gotta say that, right?
- Right. (chuckles)
- And she did this one exercise
and it took away her pain.
Took it away.
Not made it better.
Took it away.
- Abolished it.
- Yeah, that's right.
- So I just had a 74-year-old woman yesterday
I was working with.
One thing I wanna precaution.
If you've had a hip replacement--
- Yeah, you don't be doing this.
- Then you don't do this
and that's what she had.
She had one that was replaced and it was very tight.
And then I talked to her about it.
She says, "Oh, I had this replaced, you know,
"about 10 years ago."
I said, "Oh, well we'll just skip it on that leg."
- Right.
- So she did the other leg
but she was able to do some of the other stretches.
- Sure. - Yeah.
Caution if you have replacements
on these joints be very cautious.
If there's any pain at all, then you're not gonna do it.
- Well, the knee joint
you could go ahead and do those stretches on.
- Yeah, that's true.
That's true.
- And you don't see ankle replacements very often, but okay.
We're way over time.
So...
- Oh, sorry about that.
- Thanks for watchin'.