♪ Bob and Brad, ♪
♪ The two most famous physical therapists ♪
♪ on the internet. ♪
- 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.
- Best ankle re-ho-bil-(laughing)
- That's a mouthful, isn't it, Bob?
- Best ankle rehabilitation exercises
for those recovering from ankle injury.
- There you go.
- So we're gonna do a seven step process.
We're gonna take you from when you first injure
the ankle, all the way to advanced
and these all can be done at home.
Um, relatively simple,
most of them don't even need equipment.
- Right.
- But a lot-
- Not, nothing expensive.
- Yeah, nothing expensive.
- And take note,
seven.
- Seven.
- The number seven is complete Bob-
- Your favorite number.
- You cannot go wrong with the number seven.
So seven steps will get you there.
- All right, very good.
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Bob and Brad,
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- There you go.
- It's a cool thing.
- And a better ankle.
- and a better ankle, yeah. All right.
So what are we gonna start off with Brad?
We just hurt our ankle.
- Well the ankle, as we know,
is one of the most injured joints in the human body,
in the United States.
- Right.
- And it's probably that way across the world.
- Very common, I've injured mine.
I'm sure you've injured yours
- Yeah, how many people have not sprained their ankle
by the time you're 10 years old or at least 15?
So anyways, the first thing you're gonna do,
and this is not part of the seven,
is get a cold pack on it and be nice to it, you know?
- Yeah. You gotta get it to calm down,
get the swelling down.
You may wanna wrap it.
- Right.
- But once you're on that phase-
- You wanna get it moving as soon as possible.
- Yes, you do.
- Even if it's swollen,
what you can do without putting any weight through it,
we're gonna do, this is one of my favorite things,
is the ABCs.
- Right.
- It's the beginning of the alphabet,
the beginning of an ankle rehab.
So you pretend like,
Bob's gonna pretend he's
got a piece of chalk on the end of his toe,
and then there's a blackboard,
you know younger people just,
you know, think of digital things here.
But he's gonna make an A, with a-.
- Capital A, though.
- Yeah. Capitals work better.
And then he crossed it.
- And then I go, B.
- B.
- Then you go to the up-
- C.
- Now you'll find, you can keep going, Bob,
by the time, if it's still sore,
you may only get to C your D and that maybe hurting
and, and then it's time to stop.
- Right.
- But then the next day,
as it feels a little bit better,
you might get to the letter D or E,
and you know, you're gonna do this until you can go on,
you know, if you can get the whole, whole alphabet done,
you know, you're ready probably to stand on it
and go to step number two.
- Well, I would say, wouldn't you wanna do this
a couple times a day, Brad?
- Sure. Yeah.
- I wouldn't do it just once a day, I would-
- And actually, possibly, three times.
You know, stagger it out.
- Right. I would, I would go ahead
and, and get, you wanna get movement in there,
so, I mean, you could even do it five times a day,
I would say.
- Sure. Yeah, but not 10.
- Not 10.
- No, not and not seven, but that's the title of this song.
- Okay.
- All right.
We're off to the next one, Brad.
- Then once this starts feeling good with the ABCs
and you can start to put a little weight through it,
it's feeling better, then we wanna strengthen it
and we're gonna use it.
This is still no weight bearing,
we're gonna go to that phase yet.
And you do need a little stretch band.
Now, if you only have like this ribbon type of stretch band
you're gonna wanna tie it into a loop,
so you gotta continuous loop.
I'm not gonna do that.
I'm just gonna, you can get these, these are-
- These are really inexpensive, yeah.
- Right.
And you know, so one way or another,
you, you need a loop type stretch band-
- And we're gonna, you're gonna be able to use this
for more than one exercise-
- Yeah.
- Which we'll show you later, so it might be,
it might pay to get one of these.
We'll have it down in our preferred products.
- Right.
- It's it's down there, I believe.
- So.
- I hope.
- Now this is done best with a shoe on,
you could do it with the shoe off, but the,
the sole of your shoe actually helps
grab into the, the stretch band.
And we're just gonna simply do plantar flexion.
Just like that.
And you know, you do about 10 of 'em.
If you want, 10 to 15 and you can, you know,
as, as long as you can do the ABCs,
you're probably ready for this.
If you need to get a little bit more resistance
'cause it's too easy,
pull on the stretch band.
The darker the color of the stretch band,
typically, the more resistance.
This is orange, this is kind of in the me-
- Middle, yeah.
- Middle, early range.
Now, we wanna get all four directions.
Now, that's one of the most important ones.
The second most important one,
maybe the most important, would be this one.
- Right.
- You just take your healthy foot,
go over there, and see that motion?
In the therapy world,
we call that eversion, E-V-E, eversion.
And that's more than likely, the tissues that you tore
when you sprained it.
There's a 90% likelihood of that, statistically.
And 10 to 15 of those.
And if it's too hard, you know, start out with baby ones,
tighten it up and get bigger.
And then, the next two motions to get the,
in motion, what I found works good, if you're by yourself
and you have nobody,
actually you don't even have to lift it up, Bob.
- Oh, you need something stable though,
something that's not gonna move,
so you're gonna have to put it,
probably on a couch or something.
- Yeah. If you got a big, heavy dining room table
or in my case, I'm just having Bob sit on this-
- Right
- So it doesn't move.
- Okay.
- So I'll do the motion in this way.
Oh, you're gonna be able to show 'em that one.
- Yeah, I, I will but,
so now, I'm gonna go inward,
now even on a healthy ankle, like mine-
- It works, isn't it?
- It works, but this is not as strong naturally,
it doesn't have as many muscles supporting it,
but again, 10 to 15 repetitions that way.
And then you can leave it right there.
You just have to move your chair a little bit.
and we're gonna pull the toe upward, dorsiflexion.
"Dorsi" meaning the top, right?
Like on a, the dorsal fin of a fish?
- Oh, that's right. Yeah.
- Yeah.
- That's how I remembered it.
- Dorsal, Dor-sal. That's how, right.
- Okay. So you're gonna do 10 to 15 of those,
and again, two to three times a day,
you know, morning, afternoon
evening.
- Very good.
- If it does swell up after that a little bit,
gets sore, put a cold pack on it.
- And then apparently we're gonna go to weight bearing, huh?
- Yep. Now it's feeling better, you can walk on it,
but it's, it's still uneasy but it's feeling better,
and we wanna progress it with weight.
So, shall we do that, Bob?
- Sure.
- I can't remember what we're gonna do.
- We're gonna do heel to toes.
- Oh, okay, good.
- Ups.
- I'm gonna, you can use something,
you can have a chair to hold onto.
I'm gonna use this, the Booyah Stik
because this actually works a little bit better
but you can go with, you know, a cupboard or whatever.
There you go.
You ready, Bob?
- Yep. I'm ready.
So, simply up on your toes,
go back.
- So, right now, you see he's using both legs.
- Right.
- Even though he only injured one ankle,
he's doing it on both.
- Yep.
And again, 10 to 15 of these.
When this, if you only can start out
and do four, five and it starts to hurt,
then it's just time to stop.
You know, wait till the next session in the afternoon,
and see how it goes.
- And then we're gonna go to one.
- Yep.
- And this is where you definitely,
probably need to hold onto something
'cause I need to hold onto something right now.
- Yep. So if the right ankle's a sore one,
and that's the one you're going up and down on,
usually the cane or the stick is gonna be in the left hand-
- Or if you're hanging onto something, right.
- Yep, like the back of it chair, that works.
- Or countertop.
- Yep. There you go.
Again, once you get to 10 to 15 of these,
it's feeling pretty good,
you're, you're ready to get going,
we need the strength in the ankle, in other directions.
- Right.
- So, this is one of my favorites,
I call it the ziggy-zaggy.
- Yep.
- Okay. This is one Bob, Bob taught me
a number of years ago.
- I invented it, but you named it.
(laughing)
- So, and I've used this on many, many patients.
- Sure.
- And people like it
because you don't need anything but a floor.
- Right.
- And you should have some shoes on,
and you simply do this
and this works a lotta-
- (singing) Come on, baby.
- little intrinsic muscles
in the ankles and it's working balance,
and you know
you get some music going, you can, you know. (finger snaps)
- (signing) Let's do the twist.
- Yeah, yeah, get someone singing in the house,
like Bob and then you'll get better, ha.
Now when this, you know,
I usually have people go about five or 10 feet one way
and then go back the other way.
When it starts to get tired, you stop.
If it starts to hurt, then you give it a break.
- Yeah. You'll find out, it gets tired fairly rapidly.
- Right.
- 'Cause mine's tired already.
- Yeah. Once you get done
and you can do two or three lengths
of that distance and it's like, oh, I'm feeling pretty good.
That's when you need something to hold onto,
a cane.
- Right.
- The stick.
And we're gonna stay, do this on one leg.
- Oh yeah.
- This is quite a big difference.
- Oh geez.
- Even with healthy ankles.
- Even with healthy ankles, its tough.
- You might even want to have two sticks.
(bob chuckles)
There you go.
And take your time with this,
but this is really good for gettin' those outer,
the, the muscles on the side-
- Inversion, eversion and all the, all the-
- And those are key to a, ankle sprain, to get it better.
Okay. Next one,
We're just gonna do simple lunges forward.
Make sure you go right foot and left foot.
Even though you only sprained to one ankle, do both.
- Now one thing, when we're doing these,
we're going out like this and we're dipping down,
the knee should not go beyond the toe.
- Right. Do it, do it incorrectly once, Bob.
Yeah. So, we don't want that knee to go past the toe.
- Right, you wanna stay above it.
- Yeah. So, actually you go out
and then you think about going down
as opposed to way forward.
Okay? And then also go backwards.
It's good to step backwards.
It's just another direction, works different muscles.
Do 10 of those, again, the same rules,
if you can, if you fatigue before 10,
wait for the next round.
- And then we're gonna go sideways.
This is really important
because it really strengthens those outer muscles,
protecting the ankle.
Okay?
- (singing) Da, da-da, da-da.
- He didn't even see that.
What happened?
- Nothing. Nothing.
- He's playing game than me, isn't he?
- No, nah, we're fine.
- I'll give you more.
- Booyah.
- Than you deserve.
Okay.
- Hip four direction with band, Brad.
You skipped that one.
- Forgot about that,
but you can do these about the same time.
Now, you can use the loop
or I'm gonna use, this works really good.
If you happen to have a band
and you can connect the band to the wall somehow.
- Our wall anchor unit, this is a great one to do,
'cause you can do a lot of exercises with it but...
- And we have our wall anchors here
and our favorite exercise thing below the video.
And we're gonna do,
if my right leg is the one that's injured,
you can start with the right leg,
10 to 15 reps like this.
- So, I'm doing it with the band.
- Now, yeah, you cannot see the band very well
but he's got it wrapped around his, his cute shorts.
- You can see-
- Well, you know, it's covered by your, your shorts.
- I don't think you should be called 'em cute shorts.
- Well, you know, I don't know what they are.
- It's not very manly.
- Yeah, I know, (grunting) you got the shorts.
(Bob chuckles)
- And you see you go all four directions,
and you not only do it
with the resistance on one leg,
but then you switch.
I'm not gonna do it right now, but I would take this
off and put it on this leg and do it, the other leg.
So both legs experience weight bearing.
- People may be wondering,
why are we strengthening the hips
after the ankle's been hurt?
- Ah, it's a good question.
The hip abductor,
and they've done studies on this,
always gets weak after a sprained ankle.
- Sure.
- Or even an knee injury, that hip and that,
that muscle is critical for stabilization
with walking and particularly right-
- You don't wanna re-sprain your ankle.
- Yeah.
- So this is to help stop that.
- The whole leg needs to be rehabbed.
- Hey, what's number seven, Brad.
- Well, then you're ready.
This is going up to high impact,
you're ready to start running,
but you don't know.
- And you want to get prepared, maybe going to,
back into athletics.
- Right. You simply, get, I always go 15 seconds.
So we're just gonna start some low impact,
hopping up and down,
equal weight on both ankles.
- (singing) Da, di-da.
- For 15 seconds.
And if you can,
most people can do about 30, 33 of these in 15 seconds.
Okay? Then here's a line on the floor,
you don't need a line, but I like a line, a visual.
You're gonna hop forward and backwards
and then you're gonna count.
Now, when I count,
I go, 1, 2,
3, 4.
I don't go back and forth as one.
And usually about 30 to high 20s to most people
high school age will do that.
And then we go right to left.
If you can do this and get
about 30 repetitions in 15 seconds,
you're in, you're in the normal range.
- Sure.
- Now this is the big test.
Once you get done with that, you go on your good leg.
This is my good leg.
And you should be able to do this without a stick.
- Right.
- But if you need a stick fine,
you do the same test, up and down, 15 seconds.
Then forward and backwards,
then right to left, 15 seconds each.
And you count on your good leg
how many you have.
Now you test the sore leg.
This is the one that tells you
if you can go out and run again.
Okay, on the sore ankle,
up and down, 15 seconds.
And you count, if you did 30 on this leg,
you should be able to 26, 27, at least on this one.
- Right. So you're comparing.
- Right.
- And if the left one did, like you said, 30.
- Yep.
- You wanna be close to it.
- Right.
Without pain.
- Right.
- If it hurts, eh, you're not ready.
- Yeah. If you, it hurts in any direction
you're not ready.
- Up and down is the easiest one
but you have to do the forward and backwards one as well.
And then the right,
and this one's usually the hardest, 15 seconds.
And if you pass all those tests,
you've gone through the lucky number seven,
you'll be able to get out there and start running around
and having a good time without your sprained ankle.
(Booyah Stik drops)
- Oh, and Bob-
- I'm just gonna shoot Liz.
- Bob's gonna play.
There we go, all right.
- Once again, we've wasted another 13 minutes of your day.
We're just kidding, Bob.
(Brad laughs)
- All right.
But we're thankful for wa- for you watching.
Thanks a lot.
- Right. Good luck with that ankle.