- [Voiceover] Bob and Brad,
the two most famous physical therapists
on the internet.
(Bob clapping)
- Hi folks, I'm Bob Schrupp, physical therapist.
- Brad Heineck, physical therapist.
- We are the most famous physical therapists
on the internet.
- In our opinion, of course, Bob.
- Believe it or not, today we're going
to talk about pushups.
And he hated them until age 58.
And he how to ...
He's going to show it today, how to conquer them.
- Right, absolutely.
Actually like used to do them when I was in my 20s.
Kind of got away from it, never got back into it.
They're kind of hard to do, awkward,
they make my wrists hurt.
All those things I've taken care of,
and it's going to show you on this.
You know, pushups, there's a long history to pushups.
In the military, they talk about the history
of getting strong upper body and whatnot.
Great arms, shoulders, and core,
which is really advantageous.
- The other thing is they're very good for cardio.
- Yeah.
- In fact, we have done a video that showed that,
if you were able to do 40 pushups,
your likelihood of having a cardiac event
in the next 20, 30 years was like 0%,
because that was an indicator that you were in good shape.
- Exactly.
And, you know, 0%. I just kind of wonder about that.
But we know it improves it for sure.
- In the study. - Okay.
- 0% of people that had a heart problem ...
A heart attack.
- Excellent.
- 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,
and we upload it every day.
Also, talking about cardio.
If you want to improve yours, go to the giveaway section
of bobandbrad.com, and we're giving away
a stationary bike here that can be used at a desk.
It's awesome.
Brad, you got to show the one feature.
The one feature, how it rolls and it locks in place.
- Right now, it's locked because I have weight on it.
Now the weight's off, easily roll it away.
- [Bob] There's no ...
You don't have to lock a break or anything like that.
You go to Facebook, it'll all be ...
Also be pinned to the top of the page, the contests.
- That's right. - Twitter.
Twitter, Instagram, or Tiktok, if you want a 60 second
version of our program,
where we don't ramble on.
- Bob, I just wanted to say we're on podcasts.
- Yeah, that's right.
And also I did want to say, I was kind of stuck there
in my mind, looking like I didn't know
what I was talking about, which is pretty typical.
But we're going to show you a technique
on how to progress with pushups,
so you don't burn yourself out.
You don't get to that point where you get sore muscles,
sore arms, and you say, "I hate them."
We don't want that.
And we're going to show you how to do that.
- We're going to give you a lot of pearls of wisdom.
- Right, right, right.
And talking about the Russian exercise guru-
- Right. - Yeah, that's one of ...
But we're going to wait.
Okay, so pushups, Bob, as we talked about,
a great way to get in shape.
It's body weight, you can do them anywhere.
You can do them out at the lake, at the beach,
you can do them in the office, in your bedroom,
in the living room.
- You might use equipment, you might not.
- Right. Exactly right.
So, the biggest rule is too much, too soon.
- Right.
- Is you're going to take your time with it to get started.
Now myself started at 58.
My wrists are not as flexible as I used to be.
So, when I would do pushups,
I would be limited by wrist pain.
And it's no fun.
I want to exercise my muscles, not beat up my wrists-
- Wait, I want to mention something.
- Okay.
- You just did a video on wrist pain.
- Yeah.
- And I have seen so many positive comments about it.
And all the people that have had pain for years,
that are saying that it feels better.
- Yeah, there's- - I mean, I applaud you.
- Well, thank you.
There's some specific stretches on there that just ...
I don't know if I invented them or not.
- I think you invented them.
- Anyways, let's carry on.
What you do if you have wrist pain from hyperextension,
is you get yourself some dumbbells,
or this is what I use, and I really like these.
The perfect pushup.
- Right.
- And what that does is it keeps your wrist
in neutral position.
But before we get to there,
if you haven't done any pushups for a long time,
I'm going to advise doing a modified push-up first.
A countertop works the best.
- I'm going to sit on this, here, Brad.
- So, a solid surface, like a countertop.
You can use a chair if it's solid,
or if someone's sitting on it.
- You could use a wall.
- Yeah, you can use a wall.
I'm going to start here because, you know,
if you go to the wall-
- You're going to hit your head.
- [Brad] Well, not only that.
It's fairly easy, if you can't do a wall pushup.
So I'm going to assume-
- Can't slant that much on a wall,
because you're going to hit your head.
- This is a nice way to do it.
And we're just going to start out here.
And if you can do 10 pushups like this
without any problem at all, go on.
If you're having problems, you know,
it's difficult by the time you get to seven or eight,
work with these for a few days.
I would not do them day after day, either.
Do them Monday, Wednesday, Friday.
Get a day in between there, so your muscles can rebuild
if you get sore.
- And start thinking about form right away.
Start thinking about how you want to tighten your glutes,
your butt.
And you want to tighten your abdomen.
- Right.
- You don't want to sag like this.
- Or this one, you know? - Right.
You want to be a straight line.
You might have to look in a mirror.
You might have someone visually look at you-
- Right, exactly.
You know, you're ...
I think I'm straight here. How does that ...
That looks good. - Looks good to me.
- And I'm tight here. I'm really ...
I feel my core working when I do my pushups.
- Yeah.
Get that down before you go to the next one.
- Right.
- Make sure your form is perfect.
- Right.
When you can do them against the cupboard or a solid chair,
you know, then it may be time to go to the floor,
and we're going to go here.
Now when I get to the floor,
that's when I'm either going to use my dumbbells.
Where'd my perfect pushups go?
I'm going to show you the difference between these.
So this works good for a neutral wrist.
It'll eliminate that.
It's just more comfortable overall, I think.
Okay, so we're going to go down to the floor
to eliminate the wrist problem.
Keeping neutral.
Dumbbells, you just have to make sure the diameter here
is big enough.
You'll know, because your knuckles will hit stuff.
- [Bob] This is a great one, Brian,
if you have dumbbells already, to give it a try.
- Yeah.
- [Bob] Try to see if it works for you.
- Exactly.
The benefit of these is that the handle
is a little bit better.
- [Bob] It's the perfect pushup.
- But it allows rotation.
And we're going to talk about that a little bit later,
but for ...
Because I don't rotate a lot when I do them,
but I get a little bit, and I think that offers some relief
on my wrist joints and maybe my shoulders.
But there's-
- [Bob] I thought so, too. It's easier on the body.
- Yeah. They're not that expensive.
But again, this works well.
I'm going to continue with these, because that's what I do.
- [Bob] Right away, you want to think, "Tighten those abs,
tighten those glutes."
- Right. Now, if-
- [Bob] Keep that back straight.
- If 10 is your max, I want you to do five.
- [Bob] Right.
- That's big.
If you practice every time to do your max,
it's just counterproductive.
- [Bob] Yes.
- You're going to burn out,
and there's a good chance you'll burn out,
in other words, psychologically, you say, "I've had it."
- Pepel, who's a great strengthening, conditioning coach,
he would recommend it like doing, yeah,
40% or 50% of what you're able to do.
But do it throughout the day.
So in the end, you know,
first off you don't get to the point where you dread it,
because you're working yourself to the max every time.
- Yeah.
- But also if, you know, you find out ...
You spread it out throughout the day,
all of a sudden you have 20 reps in,
and it wasn't a big deal.
- Right.
- So you do five at a time.
- Exactly.
- So you may do ...
If your max is 10, you're going to do five,
and sometimes what I'll do, I'll break it up.
I'll do half of what I do.
I'm at ...
My max is 48 right now. Actually, I take that back.
I'm up a little bit.
So I'll do 20 to 25, and that took me six, eight months
to get into.
- That's very impressive, Brad.
- But it's my goal to do 59 pushups on my 59th birthday.
- You're kind of sounding like a braggart.
- I don't care. That's what I'm doing.
It's just the way it is.
But so ...
Yeah, so you're going to start out at five,
and you will get better,
if you do-
- Yeah, you will.
- There's no doubt about it, because I hated them,
you know, a year ago.
- Your muscles are not only getting stronger,
but your neurological system is learning
to be more efficient.
- Exactly.
- It's something that's so hard for people to understand.
- Yeah.
And this next point I want to bring up is
you have to learn how to relax while you do push-ups,
and you do that by breathing properly.
If you hold your breath,
which a lot of people aren't aware of,
it's going to greatly limit your endurance capacity.
- Yeah.
So I'll kind of ...
I don't know if you can hear this or not.
So I'm going down, and as I push up,
I breathe out.
Breathe in, breathe out. And my core is tight.
My shoulders and arm muscles are working as they need to,
but I try to keep my legs loose.
I know when I get to ...
If I do a max rep, my quads start to tighten up so bad,
because every ...
I'm just doing everything I can,
and I'm almost afraid of getting cramps in my quads,
which is weird.
So avoid that.
You know, you don't ever have to do max
if you don't want to.
If you just want to get in shape-
- You can do a max once every six months.
- Sure. - See where you're at.
- Yeah, just see.
And you'll be amazed that your max will get better,
even though you never do your max.
- Plus, you're going to enjoy it a lot more.
You don't want to get to the point
where you're just like dread,
"I'm going to be doing pushups now."
You want to be like, "I'm going to do my five,
or do my four.
That's good enough for me."
- Exactly. - Do a bunch of them.
- Yeah, and you'll find that things continually progress.
You're going to have the muscles toning up.
- I think we were going to mention Kelly Star.
- Sure.
- Kelly Star wrote the book, The Supple Leopard,
and he talks about ...
There is a lot of information in this book.
If you get older and want to get some more mobility,
it's great for that.
But he has ...
He goes over to the proper farm for pushups.
- He is an exercise guru, as of late.
You know, in the last, what, 10 years,
he's become very popular.
- Check out his channel too, because his ...
He would show how to do a correct pushup, I'm sure,
on his YouTube channel.
- Exactly. - So just-
- He does mention a few other little things that,
as you get into pushups more,
you may want to learn from another expert besides us.
- Brad, are you going to show resistance, too?
- Ooh, thank you, Bob.
Now, for those of you who really want to increase
your max and increase your strength,
or maybe just don't want to do as many reps,
but with real resistance, and you don't want to gain weight
to get that resistance.
- Right?
- You get yourself these loop bands.
And the way I work with these is you go over your back.
Oops.
Like this.
And so you're going to do ...
You know,
you can do pushups just like this. It doesn't work ...
- It's okay. - [Bob] It's a starter.
- Yeah, it's a starter.
But if you want to add resistance to your normal GI pushup,
this is how you can do that.
And actually, I'm going to go elbows around.
You do it however works best for you.
That works better for me.
- [Bob] Can you do these with the perfect pushup, Brad?
- Oh, I think so.
I'm going to use my thumbs in here.
And when you get these loop bands,
there's usually four or five different resistance levels,
so you can change it.
There we go.
- [Bob] You probably won't be able to get up
to the purple here.
That would be a monster.
- Oh, you ...
Oh, the purple.
Yeah, I thought you were thinking maybe the green one.
- [Bob] The green would be more.
- Oh my goodness.
- It's funny, you know.
We were kind of resistant to the loop bands
at first, I think,
but now we've really come to embrace them-
- Oh yeah. - And use them a lot
of different things.
- They're part of my workout.
And these are kind of fun, if you can ...
You go like this and they spin and they work like ...
I'm not going to do that.
Last time I did the old ...
Like it was a cardiac shock.
- Clear.
- I won't do it this time, Bob.
- All right, well Brad,
I can fix just about anything.
- Except for- - A broken heart.
- And this is part of that.
- But we really get- - (indistinct)
Yeah, it's not worth much, but take care.
- Get what you pay for.
(gentle music)