♪ 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.
- Today we're gonna talk about three simple stretches
you can do to your upper mid back,
that's the thoracic spine.
This is a, if you wouldn't mind turning around Brad.
This is an area that bother a lot of people.
I have a, this is a troublesome area for me, even.
You know, C seven is right there,
that's the base of your neck
so the thoracic spine runs from right below C seven
all the way down to T 12 where your rib cage ends.
So it's below the shoulder blades
running right in here in this section.
How do you stretch that out?
That's what we're gonna show you today.
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Also, we're doing the big giveaway again, Brad.
- A big one, oh, yes.
(choir harmonizing)
- Just started this afternoon
with the SleepOvation mattress.
Wonderful mattress.
Go to bob and brad dot com
and go under the giveaway section
or it's always pinned to the top of our page on Facebook.
- There you go, yeah.
- Bob and Brad also.
- Sign up and we've given away about four or five
of these so far, haven't we over the year?
- I think more than that.
- Yeah, I love mine.
- This year alone we've given away four or five.
Yeah, we love them.
- [Brad] Just carry on Bob.
- All right, next one, let's start,
let's talk about the top three here.
So the first one is, this is an interesting one.
You can do this on the wall
or you can do it on,
we're gonna show you how to do it on a chair first.
- Sure.
- So basically, Brad, do you wanna do it on that side,
I'll do it on this side or should I just do it?
- I thought we were gonna do it on a chair.
- I'm gonna pretend this is a chair.
- Oh, I get it.
- You know what I mean
or you can do it on a mattress.
Win the SleepOvation mattress.
- Yeah, I think on a mattress would be even
a chair would be fine,
mattress might be a little more comfortable.
- So basically you're gonna put your elbows on it
like this, you're gonna grab behind your head
and then you're gonna stretch down like this.
It really gets into that area.
- [Brad] Yeah, it might be kinda hard to see
but he's putting a lot of extension
through this part of the back
the part we are treating as he mentioned.
How you feeling Bob?
- Yeah, feel, I don't know if you helped my
back crack a couple times there
but what's nice about this is, yeah,
you could do it against a wall, too,
so I'm gonna go ahead and pretend this is the wall
and I'm gonna put 'em like this
and I'm gonna bend forward like this.
You can't stretch as much as you can on a chair
but you still can get a fair amount of stretch.
For most people this might be enough, even, for ya.
- [Brad] I'm gonna give it a go, Bob.
- All right.
- So, yeah,
yeah, this is nice 'cause you get gravity
is helping ya out here.
- [Bob] Yeah, it really stretches that area there
so, I mean, I'm not exaggerating here.
It works out quite well.
- Oh, yeah.
- Once you invest in, we mention this many times
on some of our other videos.
I want you to invest in buying a little ball
from one of the big box stores
and if it's a little flatter, that's even better.
- Sometimes at the neighborhood park
they're, the kids forget 'em
and those are good ones to get.
Clean 'em off, though.
- So you steal them, huh?
- Well, no, they forgot 'em.
- All right, so anyway, what's nice about this
is you can actually move it up and down
to get different spots of the mid back
or the thoracic area.
I love this stretch.
This was invented by one of our physical therapist
assistants and--
- Right.
- He came up the idea.
I think it's one of the best ideas.
- Can you see it?
- Oh, yeah, am I angled right?
- And actually, a ball that's a little flat
like this one, they work better.
Or you can use a firm Nerf ball that has squish
to it but not too much.
- Yeah, I'm just
I worked my way down.
What's nice about this, it's so convenient,
like if you're working at your desk,
just pull the ball out, do a couple of these
and then you're done.
I've had, I've literally had some patients
that that's all I had them do.
- Yep.
- I had a school teacher that was having trouble
and it took away her pain.
I mean, it's just amazing what just
that one simple stretch can do.
- She probably took it from one of her students.
- Yeah, she probably did.
She's a nice teacher.
She wouldn't do that.
- Well, of course she is.
- Okay, you wanna show the last one Brad?
I like Brad showing this one because he's tight
on one side and you can see the difference
when somebody's who's,
so this is a good way to get thoracic rotation
and a little bit of strengthening, too, so.
- So, we're on all fours like this
and we're gonna take one hand,
keep your knees and other hand on the floor
and we're gonna go up and stretch like this.
- So we're getting rotation and a little bit
of strengthening of the mid back, too.
- [Brad] And I'm there.
Can you see a difference?
- I think you look bad on both sides.
- Well, but I am a little tight, let's see.
- Yeah, I was gonna say go this way so they could see.
- There we go.
So if I go up this way.
See how high that hand goes
now does this hand, is it about the same?
- [Bob] Yeah, your just, is it a little higher?
- Little higher on the left?
Yeah, my right side feels tighter for sure.
You know, I'm right-handed.
I've had a couple more injuries on my right shoulder.
- All right, step aside once Brad,
because I wanna show what a normal person
should look like.
- [Brad] You're the last thing from normal.
- Look at this, I'm up here, not here.
- Yeah but you were a gymnast.
- I felt like a gymnast.
- Yeah, you really have a lot more flexibility
than I do.
- I've actually been working on it
because of golf so I have an excuse.
- Oh, see, well he's been working on it.
- It makes a big difference if you
if you stretch out, you know, once a day.
- Yeah.
- You can quickly regain anything that you might have lsot.
- Sure, well, I can work on that.
- All right, thanks a lot for watching.
We wanted to do a quick one today.
There, we did.
(gentle music)