♪ Bob and Brad the two most famous. ♪
♪ Physical therapists on the internet. ♪
- Hi folks, you're talking
to Bob Schrupp, physical therapist.
- Brad Heineck, physical therapist.
- We are the most famous physical therapists
on the internet.
- In our opinion of course Bob.
- Now we just showed you a video on whether
or not your headache is coming from your neck.
(Brad hums in agreement)
If it is, these are...
We're gonna show you top seven exercises for neck pain
and headache or neck headaches, whatever you want to refer
to them--
- The headaches are from the neck,
typically the upper neck.
- Yeah, and it's called a cervicogenic headache meaning,
cervical meaning neck.
- That's right.
- And genic meaning that's where the origin is.
- Yeah.
- So it's caused by the nerves, the bones
or the muscles in your neck.
I'm not gonna get any more in detail than that,
but you feel in your head,
but it's coming from the neck.
- Right.
- It's referred.
So we got seven exercises.
Pick one or two that are helpful
and you can perform these as much as six
to eight times a day--
- Right.
And that's where you're gonna have more success,
and luckily, a lot of these you can do, you know,
through your workday if you're sitting in a chair even.
- Right, you don't have
to have a special Cedar go off into some unusual position.
- Brad, why don't you show chin tucks
from the side there and I'll show it from the front there.
So the first one is as Brad
and I have had mentioned a few million times
throughout our video life here.
We're gonna start with a chin tuck
and these can...
I've had people that use these alone
and it took away their headache.
- Yeah, me too.
- So basically you're gonna tuck your chin in.
You're moving your head back.
Brad's gonna be able to show it better.
- You have to make sure it's a firm chair,
upright back rest,
hand, armrests are optional.
Scooch your bottom back in, shoulders back
and get good posture before you start this,
and then tuck in so it's not down like this.
It's a common mistake or--
- Up like that yeah.
- It's straight back.
- Now Brad's got pretty good motion there already.
You may find that you have very little
and that's why you're having headaches.
So you know, if you only gonna have a slight bit
of motions, light bit of translation,
start with that little movement
and you can actually add some over pressure, right,
and that's number two.
This is the second exercise.
You can actually take your fingers
or you can take the web of your hand and thumb
and push it back like that.
Now,
with this case Brad,
quite often what helps with headaches is actually
to hold it for 30 to 45 seconds
and let that pressure on,
and if the pain gets worse, obviously you stop it,
and if it doesn't get worse, you can actually do that
for up to two minutes Brad.
You can actually hold it for two minutes.
- You'll know cause it's gonna continue to feel good.
- Yeah, it's gonna feel good like,
"oh' that's all I've been looking for.
- All right, so again, you're not gonna go on right away
and push really hard on this.
You know, you start out gentle and see how it responds.
If it feels better as you put more pressure on it,
then you can go a little more.
- Now, another thing quite often that we find,
and when we try to determine whether
or not your headache is coming from the neck,
we actually had you do a test
where you see what your rotation is like,
and quite often, a limitation in rotation can cause pain
in the neck.
So let's say, let's see,
I wanna figure out which way.
I'm gonna try this way.
Let's say I'm limiting it to the right,
I can go normal to left,
but to the right, I started,
"Oh, it hurts even when I go that direction".
What you're gonna do is take a towel
and ideally use one with salvage on it,
and that's the woven material on the end.
- The edge of the towel.
- They all have it, unless it's a torn one.
- And you're gonna try to get it up fairly high on the neck.
- Yeah.
- Right in the suboccipital area
or what we call "right at the base of the skull".
- [Both] Yep.
- And this one,
you should really have a longer towel Brad than this.
- Yeah, that's a little short.
- This one's a little short,
but what I would do is I actually,
I bring the towel edge up to my eyes almost.
They start at the base of my head,
at the base of my neck, I'm sorry.
I mean the base of my skull.
(Brad hums in agreement)
But they move up into...
Cause that's the hot orientation of the vertebrae.
- Sure.
- So I'm gonna switch hands here actually.
I'm gonna take and grab with this hand
and the other hand grabs the other side
and that gets pulled down, okay?
- I'm doing it with the towel roll.
- Yeah.
- Doesn't always work as good, but you know,
sometimes it helps.
- Yeah, you can do it, you can try that too.
- Yup and then you're gonna...
Yup, you do wanna make sure the shoulders go with you.
It's just, you're gonna bring it across like this.
Then you gonna cross the cheek up to the eyes
and you're gonna...
This should be by the way, completely pain-free.
If this makes your pain worse, you're not gonna do it.
And, but quite often we find with this support,
that it feels better and you're able
to actually move without the pain.
So this arm is pulling down,
it's not pulling across.
(Brad chuckles) - It's pulling down
and this one's--
- Yeah up high, if you go
below your chin you just choke yourself.
(Chuckles) - Yeah.
- So it's not a good idea.
- You can actually have someone give you
a little bit extra push to it.
- Oh, I thought you wanna do a high five.
- (Chuckles)
- Yeah.
- But that may be too advanced for you.
- Yeah that person may not be--
- Yeah, know what to do.
So give that a try.
You'd go the opposite direction.
You'd, you know, switch your hands and go that way.
I don't wanna do it cause I'm gonna hit my mic,
but you can give that a shot too yourself.
So five to 10 repetitions, see how it feels.
If it feels all right,
you can keep doing this throughout the day.
Also six to eight times a day.
All right, next one is,
sometimes you have tightness in there
so maybe a little bit of flexion with over pressure.
So you take both hands,
the back of the upper part of your head
and you use your fingertips
and gently pull forward like this.
I'm not always a big fan of this one Brad,
but McKenzie did mention this one so.
- You can try it.
If it makes things even worse,
we definitely stop.
- Stop right away, right, that's the key on that one.
Now another way to do flexion.
We're on number five I think Brad,
is you can actually take your fist.
I like to put it upside down like this.
The thumb point towards the floor
and you can put it under your chin
and you can pull forward that way,
and you got to do it gently,
'cause you can actually get quite a bit
of leverage that way.
(Brad hums in agreement)
You can actually...
But that's a different way to get a little more stretch.
That's a Mulligan technique.
- Your fist is actually between your jaw bone
and right on the top of the sternum
where you have that little hollow spot.
- It's just a leverage point
so that you're actually putting a little bit
of traction on that part stretching it.
- Brad, if you want to flip and face this way
and show how you can do circular massages
and splain massage.
- Yeah, I'm gonna take my mic off for just this part.
- Okay, I'll talk here.
So what Brad's doing
is you're gonna do first circles right,
where the neck meets the skull,
and this really can quite often find the side that's...
One, the side that's a lot more painful,
but it's amazing how you can really,
decrease the pain levels
and decrease the stress in the neck
and the muscles by doing just some simple self massage.
You wanna do a kind of a splain one too Brad?
- Yep. - So he's pulling...
Puts the figures together and he pulls them apart,
and you kinda do this one too Brad where you do it
on the neck too, don't you?
- Oh yeah, yeah down lower.
- Down lower yeah he pulled...
- [Brad] I don't know
if anybody's hearing me right now.
- Yeah. People are probably not hearing ,
but just experiment around with it.
You can't hurt things.
You just go ahead and give it a try
and see if it feels better.
The last one is just different way of doing the chin tucks.
I actually take two tennis balls
and put them in a sock like this and--
- Then throw it away?
- Then I throw it away. - (Brad laughs)
- If Brad, you don't mind moving a little bit?
- Oh no, I'll just get out of the way.
- So you put it right in that suboccipital area again,
and you can actually roll it a little bit.
- That actually works pretty good Brad.
- You can do a little massaging there.
- And then you can do it to chin tucks.
- Yup.
- Chin tucks while you're at it.
- But it feels good to roll at it Brad, I'm surprised.
- You can...
Bobby you act like you never did it before.
- I didn't. (Both laugh)
It's the first time I've done it,
but it actually feels quite good.
- Yeah, so the balls are close together.
Sometimes on a bed it's too soft.
You may have to do it like on a carpeted floor.
- Sure.
- It works out a little bit better.
- Yeah, I agree a hundred percent Brad.
So that's seven things, seven exercises.
Give the ones try that, if they are helping,
you continue to do them again as a bunch
of six to eight times a day.
I knew a girl that actually worked for me,
who would do the chin tucks in the car.
I think that's safe to do.
- Oh yeah.
- And she'd do them on the way to work
and she wouldn't have a headache so.
- I had someone at a talk I was giving
to a bunch of about 30 people,
and I talked about this getting rid of the headaches
and I had her come up and I said, try this,
and I was kind of rolling the dice.
- Yeah, you were rolling the dice.
- And it worked man.
She said, "Oh, my head feels so much better".
- Yeah. - Yeah.
That was kind of fun.
- By the way, if you're...
This video is a part of a series of videos on neck pain.
So if you wanna see the rest of the series,
go to Bobandbrad.com.
Go to the program section and look for neck pain,
and we got a whole series of videos, like 30 videos.
Were uploading them now so they might not all be there yet.
- You're right.
- And you can just watch the ones that pertain to you.
- Right, just pick the right title.
They're about 10 minutes long,
and the big benefit
that I don't think anybody else does this,
is we provide a printout, PDF print out, on paper
of a preview or a review
of the whole video with exercises on there
so you will have it for your memory.
- And how much do we charge it Brad?
- Well, Bob, we do ask for a smile.
- Yeah, that's right.
- It's all free.
- It's all free and we don't even ask for email.
- That's right.
- This is from our heart to yours.
- Wow Bob.
- I don't know.
- Valentine's is coming up.
- You must be getting ready to talk to your wife that way.
(Chuckles) - That's right.
I'm practicing.
(Upbeat music playing)