♪ Bob and Brad ♪
♪ the two most famous ♪
♪ physical therapists on the internet ♪
- Hi folks. I'm Bob Schrupp, physical therapist.
- And I am Brad Heineck, physical therapist.
- Together we're the most famous
physical therapists on internet.
- We are? Oh, I mean, in our opinion, of course Bob.
- It's our opinion, believe me.
Today we're talking about advanced knee stretches
and mobilizations.
Why don't you start Brad?
Let's start with Brian Mulligan.
- Yeah well we should say something about mobilizations.
That just means we're gonna get in there
a little more aggressively.
- Really deep into the tissues, right.
- To free that joint up.
And you'll see what we're talking about.
First we're gonna start with, Mulligan is a famous PT.
- Brian, yeah. - We think he's still alive.
He's up there though. - Yeah out of New Zealand.
- He's really done a lot with PT over his lifetime.
So on a chair like this,
we wanna get that knee to flex all the way.
And what-
- The knee actually internally rotates,
the lower bone does, when you bend the knee.
- Yeah so we're gonna- - You gotta help it.
- I'm gonna grab it.
No, you gotta, you know your skin,
you gotta kind of grab through your skin,
grab deep and put a little rotation on that tibia
or that calf and then bend forward.
If you find that, oh, it bends farther
with less pain when I do this,
then you're gonna continue this.
- Right, if it doesn't, don't.
And you are always turning towards the opposite knee.
So if you have the other knee up there,
you're gonna turn toward the right knee.
- Yep, this way. That's the screw-home mechanism.
No that's in extension the screw-home.
That's just a, you don't have to worry about that.
I'm just babbling. - All right, next one.
You actually just take a towel,
and you put it underneath your knee like this
and then you work on trying to get more flexion,
and it kind of gaps the knee and you'll see, it works.
If it's not a big enough towel,
double it up and then try it.
So you get a little more of a gap.
- So these are the mobilization aspects
of the stretching we're talking about.
- Now you can do it a little more aggressively.
You can do it like Brad.
- Yep, so I'm gonna get that up
right in the crux of the knee and go,
if your towel is too thick it might create some pain,
and if it's got sharp pain it's not desirable.
It's too aggressive, don't do it.
There we go, oh!
- You got a crack! - Whoa!
- All right, so this is what I do every morning.
Believe it or not the 60 year old guy, 61 year old guy.
I flatten my heels, I mean, I flatten my feet
like this and I sit back on my heels
and it really puts big stretch on the knee.
Yeah. Plus you get a nice stretch on the ankle.
- Yep, so it's a double header.
- You can put a pillow underneath your knees if you like.
- Oh yeah.
- But there's a great aggress stretch.
Again, this is not for sissies.
(both laughing)
All right, Brad, how about we just start showing you?
You could take balls, massage guns,
Booyah Stiks, foam rollers.
And you can do different things
to try to work the muscles above and below the knee.
- Right 'cause if the muscles,
the quads, the hamstrings, or the calves are tight
that's gonna limit your knee range of motion.
- I'll start with this one, Brad.
So you can, on a surface, like a seated surface,
you can actually take a ball under the hamstring,
you find the tender spot, you might even go back
and forth working that tender spot over,
and then you're gonna work on straightening
and bending the knee while that's in place.
- Yeah we call that flossing, yep.
And that's a real-
we just, I just learned that from Bob
who learned it from Kelly Star.
He's very noted in this whole field.
- Again, you wanna find tender spots.
If it's not tender, it probably doesn't need it.
- You know, if it feels good, I'll still do it though.
Just because it feels good. - Good for you, Brad.
- I'm one of those kind of guys.
- He's gonna show the foam roller.
It's nice about the foam roll that you can do it fast.
You get both legs at once if you want,
or you can do one leg at once.
- So if I'm just doing my right hamstring,
I'll usually cross over to emphasize
and you'll feel it much more aggressively there.
If you do both at the same time, that works as well.
Rolling and rolling and rolling, pulling.
- You mind flipping around
and doing the quadriceps too Brad?
- Oh, sure. So I'm gonna go like this.
I'd do this on my forearms and roll.
And again I'll kind of go
and look for that tender spot, tight spot.
Doing the inside of the quadriceps
is a little more difficult.
- Now if you have a foam roller that's knobby,
it's gonna be a little more aggressive.
- Yep.
- Now you can go,
these massage guns work really well for this.
I'll give you yours, Brad.
- Oh, goodie. - And I'll take one.
And the thing is you can really find the tender spots
and you really can focus in on 'em.
So again, if your quad or hamstring is tight
it is gonna affect your knee.
If your calf is tight, it's gonna affect your knee.
So you wanna work on those areas,
find the tender spots and work 'em out.
And you will find over time, your knee feels better.
- Yep, and play with which head you want to use
with your massage gun.
Sometimes a round one or the air one
is ones I'll use on the quads.
And a really nice little trick that we found out is,
especially with the round head,
Instead of going directly in,
'cause if that's too aggressive,
and it feels like it's hitting your femur,
turn the gun sideways and you can vary the intensity
of the massage just by the angle of the gun.
Especially if you have the round head on.
- Now, this one, the Flathead works nice
because you can go directly into the quadriceps.
And you can, don't worry about it bouncing off.
It's like go right onto it and slide along.
- If you go on the side and you work that IT band
where my white stripe is,
that one probably is not gonna work very well.
It's pretty aggressive
'cause there's not a lot of muscle there.
I'll go sideways on the IT band.
You'll learn very quickly what to do and what not to do.
- And again, if you don't have a gun,
just use a ball, use the lacrosse ball,
your tennis ball, softball,
I mean, anything you can roll on it.
Hit the calf, hit the quad, hit the hamstring.
You can even use the Booyah Stik, right Brad?
- Sure, you know, you may spend,
when you're massaging these muscles
with whatever alternative,
you may be doing it for a few minutes.
It's not just a 20, 30 second adventure.
- And again, you find the tender spots.
That's what you work on.
- Yeah and if you got a smooth stick
that slides on your clothing,
that works quite well as opposed to trying to roll it.
- And they have those massage sticks, too.
- Yup, they got balls on 'em and they roll
and you can see them.
We don't use those very often.
- No, they're nice. - Yep, they work.
- There's no magic cure, folks,
you know just work on the area, get it loose,
and it's gonna generally help your knee pain.
- Yes, if it doesn't help your knee pain,
it'll help your leg.
- What does that mean?
- I don't know, I didn't know what else to say-
- Thanks for watching.
(both laughing)
(slow upbeat music)