♪ Bob and Brad the two most famous ♪
♪ Physical therapists on the internet ♪
- All right.
Hi folks.
I'm Bob schrupp, physical therapists,
- Brad Heineck, physical therapists.
We have the most famous physical therapist
on the internet.
- In our opinion, of course Bob.
- Today were gonna talking
about how to walk and stand correctly,
and pain free, if you have neck pain.
or a pinched nerve in the neck.
- Oh, good.
- Now this might seem like minor stuff
but if you walk or stand for a living,
if you had to stand all day long,
- Sure.
- Your neck pain get worse just,
from doing some of the wrong things.
So we wanna make sure we cover everything.
- Let's just find this out then.
- All right.
Let's start off with walking, Brad.
Walking is believe it or not
great for the spine
and including the neck.
It helps lubricate it
actually acts as like
kind of nature's natural bomb.
- Bomb.
- You know I mean what bomb (laughs).
- I understand, that word always kinda
catches my ear
- Throws you off a little bit.
- (Brad laughing heartily)
So, you really...
It's good if you can walk
for at least 20 minutes
because that helps increasing
the blood flow and oxygen to the neck.
And when you walk,
you wanna walk with axial,
a little faster speed,
cause that unloads the spine a little bit.
- Sure.
- And you wanna swing your arms too, naturally.
but you don't want to walk like this,
because by moving the arms,
you actually do get a little bit more oxygen.
- And I think that's the whole idea
with the spine here
gently the spine as is rotating,
is experiencing subtle movements
that you really can't see,
but it's happening.
And when you get that subtle movement,
it's not aggressive
but it's still increasing
like you said, the circulation.
- Now this too is probably
very evident to everybody,
but you should start off incrementally.
start off a small distance
where you don't increase the pain
and move up to eventually,
you get to 20 minutes in.
- Sure.
- So you might start off with just going
to the door and back.
I don't know if you don't walk.
- I think it's gonna depend
on your history,
your recent history
if you've been sedentary and hardly
walk at all,
then yeah, you're gonna start
with those short two to three minute
walks or whatever,
and then build up
as you tolerate without getting
sore the next day.
- Speaking of short
you actually may wanna shorten your stride.
If you have a long stride length,
and you hit the heal like this,
that sends a force right
up through the leg,
into the spine,
up into the neck.
And so sometimes the shorter
stride hitting on the forefoot,
can take some of the shock absorption.
- And I think like when I walk faster
cause you mentioned to walk faster,
when I think about walking faster,
I think about reaching out further.
I have to strike on my heel
just to maintain balance.
And that's when you get that force
you're talking about.
- Just more strides, shorter strides.
- Yeah. A little faster,
which is challenging,
and you have to think about it
but it gives us something to think
about while you're walking.
- The other thing is we're always concerned
about breathing correctly.
And if you wanna try to do
some relaxing breathing,
we like the four-square.
This is the one that
the army uses I believe,
Special Forces.
- Special Forces
- Special Forces, yeah.
So to calm them down.
Four Square, very simple.
You breathe inhale for four.
- For a count of four.
- Count of four. Or you can do three or six.
And you know.
- I think it depends on how fast
you're counting.
- Yeah.
- Your volume and your lung capacity.
How much you're...
If you have a breathing issue,
CLPD it's gonna be a little faster
there than someone who's
a marathon runner for example.
- But I want you to do breathing
through the nose.
And the thing is,
you can breathe in for four steps.
- Oh, sure.
- If you want it four steps,
then you hold for four steps,
and then you exhale for four steps
and then he holds again.
So it makes the square.
So it's just, when you breathe,
a lot of times people
who are in chronic pain,
start to do that
when they're holding their breath too often.
Cause it's painful,
- Right. Yap.
- And breathing,
Brad and I are reading up on this
more and more,
how important it is in
pain control and stress.
And (murmurs)
- I think the other thing is in the
or they're holding their breath because
they're waiting for it to hurt
and is painful or get shallow,
get shallow breathing
which is another extreme
which can be problematic
for pain. - For pain.
Yes. So,
so the other thing you can do is actually
when you walk is actually lock your arms
behind you for a short distance,
is this correct Posture?
What I like about it,
- Sure
- Let's see, you're walking along,
and you grab like this and do a chin tuck,
while you're walking,
you can actually make sure
you're in good posture.
And then you can on your head on your way.
- Right.
So you may only do that for a few seconds.
But it reminds you
it gives you a little stretch,
gets you back in it
kind of resets the posture so to speak.
- Very good.
All right.
Also decrease any pain makers.
I have one that comes to mind is
if you're trying to walk
a dog on a leash,
and you have neck pain,
this could be a problem.
Cause it's yanking on your arm.
Or if it is,
if it's a good dog,
you don't you know, well trained.
- But you know,
even a good dog,
a bigger dog,
they see that squirrel.
- Yeah
- I've had patients saw a squirrel
- Yeah
- and jerk man.
And there's a stress
on the shoulder
and the neck.
The the neck and the shoulder,
they're connected directly
through musculature
and other tissues.
- When we're trying to get your neck better
you've got to really watch out for things like this.
You may have to have somebody else walk the dog.
You certainly wanna compare
walking the dog,
to not walking the dog
and see if you have a lot less pain
when you're walking-
- Sure that's good point
- All right.
How about with standing breathe?
The big thing was standing breathe.
I don't want people to settle in.
- Settle in.
- They settle in,
they lock their knees,
they everything...
- Gravity,
- Gravity they just started.
It's an inactive stand,
they're not activating the muscles.
So don't lock your knees,
it often helps to place one foot
in front of the other.
- Sure.
- It's more of an active position
- Yep. You wanna stagger.
- Yeah, you lean forward a little bit,
you don't lean back.
Cause as soon as you lean back
that's when you start doing
that posture thing. So,
- It's not a big lean forward,
- Yeah, just a slight.
- You can feel the weight more towards,
than on your heels,
- Yep,
and I like the butterfly exercise
for this one Brad is you take your hands,
- Yep.
- And put it behind,
and again this is to reposition your posture
and also do a chin tuck
while you're doing
- Sure.
So emphasize you're not pulling
your head forward
- Yeah
I got fingertips on my back of the neck.
Yeah, good point.
- And it's again getting stretches
out the chest,
squeezes, the shoulder blades together.
And when you're done,
you're in good position.
- It's a good time to do one
of those before calm breathing as well.
- Sure
- It helps to relax.
So you're stretching is easier,
your brings out the chest,
the diaphragm opens.
- You can also do the arms behind,
- Oh, sure
- like this and do the chin tuck too.
And I guess this is probably more
of a low back one is,
putting your foot
up on a stool or something
- Oh, sure.
- For a period of time.
- But still if the low back is correct,
it's gonna go right
up the spine and help the neck.
- Exactly.
- Directly, the old backbone's
connected to the neck bone,
- Everything's connected Brad all play.
And as a therapist,
you see that even more true
than you might be for the lay person.
- Right.
We're thinking about it probably a little more.
(laughs softly)
- Yeah. All right.
That's how we spend our days.
If you...
This video by the way,
is a part of a series
of videos on neck pain,
go to BOBANDBRAD.COM go to the
the program section,
look for the one on neck pain.
And you'll see a whole series
of videos on neck pain.
Watch it.
- You gonna click on it.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- You can scroll down,
there you'll see the Thumbnail,
the title, look for the title
that fits your needs.
You don't have to look at all the videos.
You'll probably find two or three
of them that fit your needs are
about 10 minutes long.
I interrupted, do you wanna continue?
- No!
You're doing great.
- And the beauty of this program series is
that you find the one that you want
and you realize,
Oh, yeah, those exercises are good.
You click on the PDF printout.
It is a review, preview,
a review of the whole thing.
And it has exercise on there.
Print printed out.
And there you go.
Wallah!
And the beauty part Bob.
- This is the real beauty part.
- We ask nothing in return,
not even an email, its completely free.
And there you go.
- What we just want
good vibes coming back from you.
- We want you to get better,
feel better, and be pain free.
- All right, go check it out.
(Smooth up beat music)