♪ 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 own opinion, of course, Bob.
- Today we're gonna show you
how to walk correctly with hip pin without using a gait aid.
- So without a walker, a cane.
- Right. We're gonna do a video
in which you do use a walker, cane or four wheel walker.
But in this one we're gonna show you...
The ideal thing that you wanna do,
is you wanna make sure you're engaging
or you're firing off the glute muscles.
- Right. - Especially the glute max,
that's the big muscle that makes up your butt.
We're gonna show you how, but first
if you are really limping,
or experiencing significant pain when you walk,
you really probably should use a cane.
Because you're just making things worse.
And a lot of times... we're not saying
that you have to use it forever,
- Right. - We're saying use it
until the pain calms down.
And maybe also if you're actually
at a higher risk from falling
because you're not using a cane or a walker.
- Sure. - you should definitely then,
because if you fall obviously
your hip pain's gonna get worse.
But also you need to strengthen your hip
in order to improve your balance.
- Right. If you don't know why your hip is hurting,
or you fell, make sure you go to the doctor
and get things squared away first, you know,
to make sure that you're not overlooking a problem.
- Yeah, if you wanna strengthen your hip
watch our video "how to strengthen a painful hip",
and we'll talk about that at the end, how to get to that.
Okay, so the gluteus maximus
again, butt muscles.
How to tell if they're firing when you're walking.
So, there's a simple way to do this, Brad,
you just walk with your hands on your butt,
probably in the privacy of your own home.
- (laughing) yeah. - And when you take a step
and hit the ground, you should feel it firing.
- In other words, feel it contract
- Yeah, - and feel that muscle...
- And if it feels mushy and it's not doing anything,
you probably haven't been using your glutes like you should.
And the thing about the glutes
is they actually help hold the hip in the socket,
in place. - Stabilizes it, yep.
- Yeah, if not it can slide forward
and pinch on structures, and it can make it painful.
- Causes pain, you know.
Arthritic changes, things like that.
- It can cause things to wear out a lot quicker.
So it's really important,
it's probably the biggest change
you can make to your walking,
besides using a gait aid, - Sure.
- Is to strengthen those glutes
or to actually walk in the ways we're going to mention.
So check that out.
Now one of the first ways
people tend to help fire off their glutes
is if you actually take shorter steps.
If I take long steps like this,
and one, I'm gonna, ground reaction force here
coming right up through the hip,
it's putting more stress on my hip.
But I'm using more the hamstrings,
and you don't wanna use the hamstrings,
that can actually make your hip worse.
So you're gonna wanna just shorten your stride
and the thing is, right when you step down
you should not try to hit heel to toe like this,
you should try to hit right onto your arch.
So you're kind of spreading out the force
between the front foot and the back foot at the same time.
So when you step, I'm hitting
right at the same time, both ends of it.
The front and the back.
- [Brad] So you're shoring up your step,
I always think about the whole foot
kind of lands flat on the ground,
it's a way to think about it.
- This is a hard thing to understand,
and people really have trouble picking it up,
but it really makes a big difference.
Brad and I changed our running patterns.
- Right. - We used to do the same thing
with running, we'd hit heel like this
and now we're hitting more our forefoot
or arch, and it just takes the stress off your legs.
They become more like shock absorbers.
- Right, exactly.
- So that's the other thing, you can slightly bend
your knees when you step on them.
Don't be straightening your knee out.
If you have it slightly bent
then you're also doing it right.
But the final thing is actually
you're gonna feel like you're pushing off at the back leg.
You might even exaggerate it to start off with,
you know what I mean? Push off the back leg.
- Yeah, you really need to think about this.
- Yes, you do. - It's one of those things,
it's not gonna happen just like that.
- Some people feel like they're almost
falling forward, because they're pushing off.
- Right, so... - And that's actually
is the feeling that you wanna get.
- Within reason! - Within reason, right.
- We don't want you falling forward!
- So give that a try, and like we said,
don't feel that you can't use a cane
or a walker for a while, it's not permanent
we're just gonna do the things to get you strong
and get the pain calmed down,
- Exactly. - So that you can
walk without it. - Sure.
- This video is part of a series of videos
on hip pain, so like we mentioned
that you wanna watch our video
on how to strengthen a painful hip.
That's in this series.
So when you go to bobandbrad.com,
go to the programs section and look for hip pain.
And it's got, I don't know, like 30 videos
on how to treat hip pain.
Watch the ones that pertain to you.
- Yep, just look at the title,
it's pretty self-explanatory.
They're all about 10 minutes long or so.
If you want a pdf printout, something on paper,
that's available as well.
Print it out, and it gives you a review of the video,
it shows you the exercises.
It makes everything work so much easier
and there's no charge, no email.
Nothing, it's completely free.
- Yep, it's our gift to you.
Thanks for watching, there you go.
(upbeat music)