♪ Bob and Brad ♪
♪ The two most famous ♪
♪ Physical therapists ♪
♪ On the internet ♪
(Clapping loudly)
- Hi folks.
I'm Bob Schrupp, physical therapist.
- Brad Heineck, physical therapists.
Together we are the most famous physical therapists
on the internet.
- In our opinion, of course, Bob.
- So do you have knee arthritis?
We put together our seven best exercises.
Actually, it's not our exercises.
We looked the world over for the best exercises
that we think are the best.
And these are our compilation.
From Robin McKenzie, Brian Mulligan,
Kelly Starrett, Shirley Sahrmann.
Men and women who are way smarter than we are.
- Right.
- But we have found out, these are the exercises that
we think work the best.
So you're going to want to stick
around and see all seven of them
because one of them might work for you and others may not.
- Right.
- So find out, you know, look at all seven,
try them all and see which one works.
- Wow, you did that very well, Bob.
- Thank you.
- You almost look like you read it right off it.
(laughs loudly)
- By the way, if you're new to our channel,
please take a second to subscribe to us.
We provide videos how to stay healthy, fit, pain-free,
we upload every day.
Also go to bobandbrad.com.
Go to the giveaway section.
I'm gonna close my eyes. - Oh yeah.
- You can see, I'm not reading it.
And you'll find out, we're always giving something away
but just not today, it starts again tomorrow.
- This is not a future one.
No, Saturday.
- Oh, this is a future one, oh.
- Saturday. - Oh, this is Saturday one.
- S-A-T-U-R-D-A-Y
- Night!
So, go to Facebook.
It won't be giving anything away today
but tomorrow it will be there.
- 9:00 PM.
- Also, go Twitter, Instagram, or TikTok,
if you want a 60 second version of our program
and what else do we have now Brad?
- We have podcasts. - Yeah!
Check out the podcast.
We do interviews with leaders
like Kelly Starrett. - Exactly.
Hopefully we'll get them all, well,
except for the dead ones.
- Yeah.
(laughs loudly)
- Wow. All right.
Let's start off with these exercises.
Segue away from that.
Okay, number one.
You're going to want to work
on making sure your knee completely straightens.
Let's say you have a painful knee.
I'm going to say it's my right one.
And I'm going to compare it to my left one.
All you have to do is put your both legs up
on a stool like this.
And what you may see...
And Brad's gonna be at a better angle.
Is that one of them straightens all the way
and the other one bends.
There's a slight bend to it,
it won't straighten all the way.
- Kneecaps aren't even.
- It could be very subtle, by the way.
I mean, I could check it on a mat here.
- Yes.
- And you should be able to raise your toe.
Yeah, you should be able to raise the heel up off the bed.
If it doesn't or if you compare and one goes higher,
that's the subtle differences
that'll be corrected. - Sure.
- So what you're going to do is you're going to work on
knee extension by putting your foot up,
you can actually do it on the floor even,
but usually, it still works the best.
Brad's got a roller stool, works even better.
And you're going to push on right above the knee,
not on the knee, above the knee like on the quadricep
and pressure on, pressure off.
You say the words 'cause that tells you how long to do it.
- Wow, it's a good system. - Pressure on, pressure off.
This is Robin McKenzie.
Now, you can do 10 of these,
but the key to this is you can do it throughout the day.
You can do it every hour, if you'd like.
This worked for my wife, like a charm.
But she did a little rotation along with it too.
For some people, straight on is not going to be the best.
These should be pain free, by the way.
- Right.
- And the first day, I only want you to do 10.
- Don't get too aggressive.
If it's painful, stop. - Yeah.
Next day you can do multiple sets of 10.
- Sure.
- If it feels right.
But you can also try external rotation,
you turn the foot out and now you push down.
That's the one that worked for my wife.
And for some of you, maybe it's going to be turning in
and pressured on, pressure off.
- I had the same with some patients where outwards...
I think if you took a overall,
probably outward works better. - Outward works better.
- But not always.
- I agree.
All right, so that's working on extension.
We're gonna work on it, hopefully till it's pain free
or the extension's almost, nearly recovered.
- Yep, straight.
- All right, the bend is the same thing.
You want to check out your knees,
does one bend better than the other?
And it might just be a feeling, you know,
you can look at them, oh, they look the same,
but this one just doesn't feel like it goes as far.
- Yeah.
- So same thing with that.
If you're lacking knee flexion,
you're gonna want to do it throughout the day,
maybe 10 repetitions.
I'm going to show you a little trick
that's going to move this along a little quicker though.
- Okay then.
- So you're going to do is take a towel.
You can just need a small one like this,
and you're going to put it underneath the knee like this,
and then you're gonna squeeze.
- Ah.
- Pressure on, pressure off. - It changes the pressure
a little bit.
It helps it gap a little more.
- Yep, yep.
- Pressure on, pressure off.
Yep, throughout the day.
- And you get that gap in there,
that can be also beneficial for that arthritic problem.
You get some synovial fluid,
a little easier. - Right.
All right, this next one is a Mulligan one.
Now, we're gonna work on bend
but people don't realize your lower bone here
actually rotates a little bit.
- The tibia.
- It's not just a hinge, there's actually some turning.
- You're going to show us Sam.
- Oh, I'll just show real quickly.
- Sure, why not?
- See this bone right here rotates.
When you're straight, it rotates out,
when you go in or when you bend, it rotates in like that.
- Screw hole mechanisms.
- Screw hole mechanism.
- Is that accurate? Very good Brad.
- I learned that in school 22 years ago.
25 years ago. - Now you can do it
onto a chair or stool, I'm doing it really quite high here
because I am tall and I can get away with it.
- Sure.
But what you're going to do is,
you're going to turn the lower bone towards the other leg.
So my other leg would be right here.
I'm turning it in.
It'd be clockwise on the left leg and counter-clockwise
on the right leg.
Clockwise on the left leg.
- I think they get it Bob.
- Okay, so I'm going to hold it the whole time.
I gotta turn the whole time while I'm bending the knee.
- Sure.
- The whole time.
I've had a lot of people, some people love this thing.
And some people say it does nothing for them
but I've had people that have kind of,
almost seems like it remobilized the area
where it moved things back into place and stuff.
- And that's the whole concept of Mulligan.
- Right.
- You could do this into a stairwell
and you have multiple levels.
- Sure.
- And then hold onto a handrail.
So there's options.
- The next one is you can actually take
like a lacrosse ball.
And what we're going to do is,
you got a lot of muscles above the knee
and below the knee that actually cross the knee
and put pressure on it.
So if these muscles are tight,
they actually can cause increased pain at the knee.
So, we want to hit the quadricep,
and the hamstring, and the calf muscle.
Now you can roll on it, but what's easier we found,
and you can certainly try that, is to use a massage gun.
Brad's got some there.
I got the mother of all massage guns here.
- Whoa.
- This baby will knock your socks off.
- That one even comes with a metal head.
- A metal head, you have this one.
This is the big mama.
- And then we've got the little one
which is probably good for 80% of the people.
- Yeah, that's what I use actually.
- And then the medium one,
this is the one I have, but I like this one,
it's much easier to hold and
it's got plenty of power for 90%.
Well, 82% of the people.
- What you want to do is you find tender spots
and you want to work them until
they either decrease or go away.
And so sometimes you might work a spot a long time.
If you heal, no pain, no tightness when you're doing this,
you don't need to do it.
I mean, there's no reason to do it.
- Sure.
- Only work the muscles that need it.
Now the calf muscle also crosses the knee,
people don't always realize that.
- Oh yes.
I'm going to use a small one on that
'cause I got tender calves.
- That means you need to work it
and you can work the hamstrings too.
This is the whole concept by
Kelly Starrett in the Supple Leopard,
if you ever read his book.
Working upstream and downstream from the problem.
In other words, working above it and below it.
And you're affecting all the muscles
that are affecting the knee.
- What about the hamstrings?
- Yeah, hamstrings.
- Oh, did you mention that one already?
- Yeah, I did.
- Oh good.
- Way ahead of you Brad.
Alright, so next I'm gonna show some strengthening, Brad.
What happened to my pillow?
- I don't know, but I'm still working my hamstrings.
- Oh, here it is.
- I'll go off this while you do that.
- So, studies have shown that the number one muscle
that gets weak in the knee, and often with a painful knee,
is the quadricep.
So a simple way to strengthen the quadricep is
you just get a pillow, you put it underneath the knee,
like this and you're going to squish the pillow down.
And that tightens up this muscle.
Hold it for 10 seconds and repeat like 10 times.
- And your heel can come off there, that's just fine.
- It's just, it's really simple to do.
It almost seems isometric,
but this is the one they recommended.
- Yeah, you said they've done studies.
- Yeah, they did studies on it
and you'd be surprised if you do this, you know,
a couple of times a day, maybe every other day,
or every third day, how much stronger they get.
So next one, you also want to make sure the hip is strong
because if the hip is weak
and you tend to start internally rotating,
the knees aren't going to track right.
- Sure.
- And it's going to cause you pain
maybe in the patella,
the kneecap, yep. - The kneecap.
So for hip strengthening,
all we're going to recommend is clamshells.
So basically, you put your top leg on the lower leg
lining it up, and you got it slightly bent here
and I'm doing clamshells.
Now you're going to start off with no resistance whatsoever.
And then you can, yeah, Brad was bringing a band there.
You can actually throw some resistance in there.
- These little loop bands, they work well.
I was looking for our better ones, but this works too.
- Yeah, this'll work.
And we got better ones than this,
but this is fine.
- Notice his pivot point is at the feet.
- And I'm keeping them together.
But this is a great one to do.
It works the buttock and it works the external rotators.
And it'll help track your knee correctly.
- All right, those external rotators are small muscles
in your hip that are really critical
for getting those knees where they belong,
as far as the line.
- Don't overdo this by the way,
because I've told the story many times but...
- Oh yeah (laughs loudly)
Go ahead, tell it again Bob.
- Yeah, you never tire of it, Brad.
So I did it with a black band right away--
- Which is really aggressive.
- Yep, I did like three sets of 10
and I did it like every day.
- And he got sore.
- I got very sore
to the point where - Very sore.
- I couldn't even do anything with my hips for weeks.
- Well, you should've had your wife massage
your gluteus muscles.
- This is a family show, Brad.
All right, last one, exercise.
I want to get some movement in that knee
because it helps promote the synovial fluid,
which is like an oil for it.
- Yeah.
- So you can just go and swing the leg back and forth
like this throughout the day.
If you want do something
a little more commercialized.
- Yeah, and actually it works well.
- Yeah, we've got the Knee Glide.
What were you gonna say Brad?
- Well, we got this from Kelly Starrett,
- Yeah, keeping things moving.
- Right, but it's like that flossing.
- Oh, sure, yep, yep.
And if you're going to have a knee replacement, by the way,
make sure you have access to one of these.
This is the Knee Glide, it's a single one.
But if you want to get the double one,
so you can keep up with fitness afterwards.
The nice thing about this you can actually do it in bed too.
- Oh, absolutely.
- I mean, both of these you can do in bed.
- We've got some videos on that but...
Ooh, you almost laid on the Booyah Stik, Bob.
- But you can work on the knee, in bed,
after surgery and it can get things going right away.
- If your knee arthritis is so bad, it hurts to walk on it,
that would be a good way to loosen it up as well,
it's all seated position.
But what's nice about these is they're so lightweight.
- Yeah, they are.
- That one's less than five pounds, isn't it?
Or five pounds.
It's just like 5.1, or 5.2 and that's 3.1 pounds.
- Yeah, I can do curls with my fingers.
- Very good.
- All right, that's it.
All seven, check 'em out.
Find out which ones work for you and do those.
And you can forget about the rest
and you can forget about us.
- Right? Good luck with that knee pain,
because we can live without it.
- Yeah, all right, good.