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 Brad you wanted to
Talk about best posture possible with seven easy scapula or shoulder blade exercises
The shoulder blade
Behind here plays a large role in posture doesn't it? I think it's the key you know
You're talking about posture from from here up the scapula
to the shoulder blades, lead the whole image, they lead the whole posture things
I wanted to get in and explain that a little bit first
Do a nice demonstration, we have a guest coming in and then show the exercises and we should be done in about ten minutes
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Do we want Alex to come in now or what are we gonna do? No not yet, not yet Alex
We want to talk about the scapula a little bit more just to give some idea of how this is
Everything revolves around this when it comes to shoulder posture, again we're talking about the shoulder blade, the scapula so here we're gonna look at
The shoulder blade right here we'll get Gumby out of the way for a second
But as on this model the shoulder blade or the scapula, they have it mounted right to the rib cage
It could be farther from the truth in a real human body, that way so it doesn't fall down but this
scapula has to rotate
quite a bit actually, a flight along on the rib cage, exactly it floats right along on the rib cage and there's quite a
Complex muscle group surrounding it that helps stabilize it, keep it where it belongs and that's
What we're gonna show you how to get those shoulder blades back because when they come back the shoulders come back producing good posture
The only other thing you have to worry about is where your head is
We're gonna cover the shoulders first, the head does kind of follow it as well, do you have anything else to say? No I
Would just say this yeah when you have bad posture these are coming forward and there are also a lot of times wing
When you have that what we call the winging scapula it's
If you're wondering why are my shoulder blades sticking out?
Some people may think it's because they're becoming an angel but that's probably not the case
All right do we want Alex now? Yes. Alex! Come on down.
I'll keep an eye on your patient right now
Call me back when I can come back
Facebook Live Alex, okay okay Bob's out now we can start talking about him
Just kidding
What's he doing some upper torso area so we can demonstrate and
Here's a scapula, his left scapula
You can try this at home but I do not recommend this by any means, this is something a therapist should do
Now Alex he's a weight lifter
He's kind of beefy,
There we're gonna lean that way, here's a shoulder blade can you relax Alex? Take a deep breath
He must be nervous in front of the thousands of people watching, maybe millions today but I'm just gonna show you how
Shoulder blades relax, any pain with this one Alex? No. It feels good. So I'm getting
Literally I'm sticking my fingers up to the second knuckle underneath his shoulder blade
And I'm pulling up and I'm stretching out and I can actually massage the muscle
the subscapularis and this can be a treatment some therapists may do
We're gonna Work that and pull it up and up
It's just up there
You probably don't need to try this at home.
You better put your shirt on before you go back out there
See that scapular motion, he's all revved up now he's got a good tan! How do you get a tan? Farm life
Farm life? It should be a farmer's tan then, I don't think he works, no matter what he says okay
The next thing we need to do is loosen up those muscles around that scapula Bob, do you want to do the roll?
These muscles right between the shoulder blades
Bob does have a true winging scapula, right here and I can almost put my finger up there without even working on it because
His wings out
But we want to loosen these muscles up and work on the spine to get it to extend so we get that
I can do it if you want, yep go ahead, just foam roller on the mid-back? Yep j just roll it
Bob you do this every day right? Yep I do this every day
We like this foam roller, it's a little bit softer, it's a little less dense and if you go to our
YouTube description we will have it in the description there
but I just
Lift my butt up like this and I roll over onto this here and I did it this morning already so my back actually is
Not gonna crack because I've already done it but
It works out really good, you can go a little bit further too like this
You can see he's got his hips up and that's something you do as long as you'd like to usually
30 seconds a minute if you want to go more you certainly can
It feels good there should be no pain, if there is there's an issue and you probably shouldn't do it but
I always do that right before I go biking
You know I'm gonna be kind of bent over so I always do it
Compensate for that posture, all right the next thing we want to do is we want
To get the subscapularis I talked about with Alex where I had my fingers underneath the scapula I was actually
massaging the subscapularis, you probably grossed people out when you showed that
Well we should get a little feedback and find out, but this one you're gonna lean up against the wall
Okay so now i'm gonna straighten my elbows out we have to keep the elbows locked, that's important, elbows locked
And then I'm gonna push forward and back, now this is a subtle move, yeah it is real subtle you
don't realize he's actually moving t he scapulas here
But this actually is a good one to do
What you think I'm just making something up Bob? I don't know I can't always say that what you say is worthwhile but
this one's worthwhile
I have seen this done too Brad where people
They take a bunch of heavy bands and they go like this
That's a great way to do it and the key is that the elbows stay locked
Elbows stay locked and all the movements happening in the shoulder blade, but you need some pretty heavy bands for that (Like Metallica)
Because it's a pretty powerful muscle
All right where are we at now Brad? The old standby scapular retraction
This is one you can do anytime you can do it while you're watching us right now, go ahead
As a matter of fact I want everyone to start doing this one
Back and right here think about those shoulder blades coming down and into your back pockets and
That's gonna help get those lower traps
going so that we get that
proper posture as opposed to going up like this, we want it back and down a little twist to it is if you want to
go this way and then go like this way, yeah like you're doing the hitchhiker
Hit the road Jack and back hit the road Jack so all right where we at now
repetitions what kind of
repetitions, on all these you can do 10 to 15 repetitions you can do a little more if you want but it can do high reps
on these because they are
Postural Muscles, you can do 30 reps if you want. Sure if you want to go up that high
But I always say a little bit of something is better, that's right 10 to 15 up to 30 okay next one Bob
Okay so here we're gonna do the same thing but we're gonna have some resistance and i'm gonna bring my hands down to here
Not up like this
Although you could but I like here because it helps influence the lower traps a little more and
Again that same motion but now we got some resistance going like that okay
All right Bob you want to go
The next one it just takes a couple pillows here and
Anybody can do this cuz everybody's got pillows right Brad? Right so you're gonna lay on the pillows and
Usually It's nice to have something for my head maybe just a towel
I'm gonna go like this and now you want
to talk Brad but I can go a lot different ways I can go Y I can go across
I can go reverse Y
But I can work all the muscles here of the scapula
okay now do this on a
carpeted floor is best okay on your bed is usually it's too soft and it won't
It won't see again so floor works pretty good unless you happen to have a bench press where you have a narrow Bench and slide
But again Bob do the Ys so if you're looking at Bob from the back and you're gonna put your thumbs up
So he's doing this but he's laying down
Okay and then out to the side
How you doing Bob? i'm doing good and then down low
And that covers all the muscles around that scapula to get it where you want, Here 1 pounder, add some weight
or you can take soup cans, you don't have to go out and buy weights and you can
Get a good workout and you do not need much weight Bob would you agree? Right, one pound is I'm working already
I'm working a lot harder now, yeah he's gonna be perspiring, and these muscles back here just going to town working like crazy
They're starting to fatigue
I believe it, although this looks really pathetic but it doesn't take much on those
If you do them properly
Not much weight even on a great big hefty guy like Alex, wouldn't need much weight, so then we're back to the foam roller
Well I really like this one Bob, if you do have
a band at home with the handles and you got it attached to
something you can do the same thing, it's a very similar exercise than what's going on there but we're gonna do it standing
and I'm gonna think about going back and pull my shoulders down and it's really
The Same exercise and out to the side, this way squeezing those shoulder blades together and then down once again like we did earlier
I like this one it's like
touchdown! Yeah the Packers made a touchdown
And now the foam roller we're back to that right? Yes
Now this is the fun part of the whole deal, man I'm having a rough time
I'm afraid I'll fall off the table, I think the way things have been going today you probably would
Simply a relaxation postural exercise for the spine the head the neck and
Stretch out here, yeah i'll get you off to the side so you can just
You just relax, don't fall off that roller
I'm working a little bit on balance, a little bit on getting a stretch,
It's realigning everything, there's people that actually probably can't even lay this way
Because they're like this, this won't go down, as a matter of fact someone is asking about back pain with arthritis and actually
Depending on how severe it is
This could Be used
But if you have too much arthritis in your neck you may have to
Put something like that, you could use a pillow
So that you're comfortable because you know Bob and I both know we've had a lot of patients that
They would never be able to reach up like that because they got too much arthritis or their upper back may be
Too rounded to start off, right so right But was she asking
Generally about back pain in arthritis or right yep some exercises with those well I'll tell you with with arthritis
We always want to try to keep things moving as much as possible so one of the exercises
This is the go-to exercise for back pain and arthritis
Is you're gonna want to do this one, you're gonna want
To lay down on your back with a pillow and
Every morning when you wake up you bring your knees up like this and you just rotate your legs back and forth
There you go, now if if it hurts in one direction, let's say it hurts this way, then just work the other way and
Start off With small oscillations and then work into larger ones here and
Sometimes you even get to this point where you give it a little stretch here, over the edge like this
And a little bit over the edge like this
If you have arthritis too you can do like a knees to chest like this and
Even work to a double knees to chest and give a little bit of stretching to the back here, that's gonna work that low back, yep that's not good for a disc problem or
Bulging disc but it's good for arthritis, sure so another question Brad?
Someone was asking about getting some of those where do we get some of those tubes and we're gonna have some that Information
Not yet but we're getting that
Because we're looking for a good source that we can recommend on that
There are if you just look up exercise tubing you'll see lots of sources there's lots of them on Amazon if you look
Brad looks really confused like somebody stumped him, always whispering
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Remember folks if you haven't subscribed make sure this is a good time to do it while Brad is trying to do this
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Okay we're winding up here Brad, we're winding up, all right get under that
Thanks everybody for watching, remember we can fix just about anything except for that broken heart
Exactly, but we're working on it, or am I supposed to say precisely, precisely
you