♪ Bob and Brad ♪
♪ The two most famous physical therapists ♪
♪ on the internet ♪
- Look good. I feel good.
Hi folks.
I'm Bob Schrupp, physical therapist.
- Brad Heineck, physical therapist.
And we are the most famous physical therapists
on the internet.
- In our opinion, of course, Bob.
- What exactly foam rolling does and why it works?
What are you doing?
Just relax.
- What is this?
- That's the title of it, right?
- Yeah. That's the title. - [Brad] Good.
- All right.
By the way, I'm just gonna start off with this,
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- Top one.
- That's the top one.
Oh yeah, @officialbobandbrad.
- [Brad] There you go.
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- Yeah. We got a lot of places to get like done,
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Okay, let's go on with-
- All right, let's go on with the show.
- [Brad] Foam Rolling, you know, we just did a video on it,
very popular video.
- The foam rollers, as we have here,
they can do wonders for muscles
and increase their pliability,
then how they work and how you feel.
You just feel better. - [Bob] Yeah.
But why do they do it?
And why do they work, can be a question?
This video is gonna show exactly why.
- Well, let me point out to Brad that a lot of athletes
have really looked at this now
as the key to their longevity and athletics.
- Sure.
- And the fact that they can perform at a higher level.
- Right. Right.
- So, I mean, we have Tom Brady
- Sure, with the football
Who's looking good at 41,
with the New England Patriots.
- He did throw an interception Sunday.
- I know, you know
- It happens every now and then,
- Well at 41, you know,
I'd probably need a wheelchair out there,
but I mean,
I mean, again, his whole book on this is all-
talks about muscle pliability.
- Right.
- And the difference, you know, between stopping
at a earlier age
and also feeling better. - [Brad] Right.
I mean the muscles are tight
and hurt on the people that don't.
- Yeah, we are-
We're not gonna show any foam rolling
on this video
because we're assuming you already
are familiar with how you roll, you know,
the muscle. - [Brad] If not,
you can go to one of our videos.
- Right, there is a lot of videos,
and of course we have the best ones on it, of course.
But, if you're gonna take the foam roller
and you're gonna work on a muscle, here we have a muscle.
This is the knee.
But here we've got actually some muscle,
a model. - They're quadriceps.
Yep.
Now, muscles are made of fibers.
Lots of fibers.
Very similar to this.
- Got a roll of spaghetti here.
- Spaghetti, yep.
So, here let's take a closer look at this.
Are you coming up?
Yeah, I was gonna come up just to see what you're saying.
All right.
So, here we have the muscle.
It's red, full of blood.
A lot of blood flow is needed for muscle to function.
And if you look in here,
at the cross section of it, you can see each little dot,
so to speak, is a muscle fiber running this way.
Just like if it was these spaghetti fibers going this way,
and these fibers, they contract and they get shorter,
and that's how the muscle works.
And as it relax, gets longer, now these muscles really need,
like I mentioned, there's a lot of blood in muscles.
That's because the blood supplies nutrients
and energy to make the muscle work.
- It brings nutrients in,
but it also takes waste products out.
- Exactly, good point.
- Both, both have to be done
in order for the muscle to feel good
and to be working at its optimal level.
- And what can happen,
there's two situations that are commonly happening.
Either a person is overworking,
working out really hard, and the muscles can get tight.
And there can be scar tissue
in between the fibers at a micro level,
and that can tighten up the muscles.
Or, if you're a really sedentary person, or maybe
in bedrest for an injury, and your muscles
then can become tightened up, just from inactivity.
- Sure.
- Because you hear why when people work out
you break muscle down in order to build it up.
- Right.
- And so that breaking down
can involve this, the scar tissue really.
And binding together.
- Exactly. And you'll, you know, you'll feel that
on your muscles, let's say in your quadricep, like here
if you massage your muscles, you can feel tight spots.
It's like, oh it's tight,
and it's usually a little sore.
And if you break it up and, and you know
that's what-
- Feels a lot better.
- Yep, gets that blood flow,
get those waste products out so that your body, you know
takes that waste products, and does what it does.
- I mean, you can see right now with this bundle, if there,
if you're not, don't have movement inside,
there's no way you're gonna get blood flow in there easily.
And there's no way you're gonna get lactic acid
and all that out.
- Exactly. So it's kind of like that sponge analogy.
We did a loose sponge absorbs and gets rid of the blood,
and just like this.
Now, there's connective tissue
that holds all these fibers together.
Now, what I've done is, I've taken a sock,
now that represents the connective tissue.
- It's like a fascia.
- Right, exactly.
- A tough, fibrous material.
- So here we've got a muscle
we've got the muscle fibers in there
and this muscle is tight.
You can see it doesn't have much flexibility,
just like spaghetti noodles.
- Sure.
- So what are we gonna do?
We're gonna- - We're gonna loosen it up.
Yeah. We're gonna loosen it up.
So, I'm not gonna take an actual foam roller,
but we're gonna take a bread roller.
- Sure.
- And you know,
actually some people on the extreme do use-
- Yeah for the, they use the roller stick.
- Right, a roller stick.
Just like this.
Actually, I have used a bread roller.
- Yeah. We did a video with that one time.
I hope you remember that.
- I have a patient,
it worked really well for him.
He was in his early seventies, had a knee surgery,
and he didn't have a roller, but he had one
of these at home and he liked it and it worked well.
So here we go.
We've got this tight muscle.
We've got scar tissue.
- He didn't bring any cookies,
or something, for you afterwards?
- No, Bob.
- I mean, I didn't want him using that
for making baking dinner too.
You know what I mean?
Come in making,
like giving you a pie and they're like-
- No, no, Bob.
He was grateful though.
- All right.
He was grateful.
So, oh, now I don't know
if they're gonna be able to hear the scar tissue break up.
Maybe I just get your head down there.
We got, we're gonna work on this.
- I can hear it, but-
- Can you hear it breaking up?
There we go.
- It's like a cracking, like cracking knuckles.
- It's- yep.
It's kind like breaking that, that scar tissue,
and this is how it works with your-
Oh, (spaghetti crackling) did you hear that?
And once you get
on that spot where things are feeling good,
or actually with the roller, it's gonna be a little painful,
but the more you do it,
it'll be like a hurt so good pain.
Oh yes.
We're breaking up that scar tissue.
- And by the way, that fascia that we're talking about,
that holds the muscles together.
That's throughout your whole body.
It also holds organs in place.
I just heard the analogy, Brad,
that if you took all the fascia outta your body,
that your organs would just all drop down.
And I believe it, don't you?
They're all like when you, you get old.
Well, no, if you took it all, if you took it all out.
- Oh, I understand, that's that connective tissue.
- Yeah Yep.
- That thing's cracking away.
- Oh, that's too bad they can't hear it.
There we go.
- Now, before you- don't, don't take it out yet,
by the way.
- Oh, no, no.
- I wanna compare it to this one.
- Oh yeah, sure.
And now this is about the same amount
of time you work on your muscle,
usually about 60 seconds.
You go a little more than that, if you'd like to.
You can foam roll, you know,
you're not gonna do it for 20, 30 minutes on one muscle,
but usually a few, couple minutes, maybe a minute.
- All right.
- There, when it quits cracking, and on your body, it's,
you know, you don't hear that cracking necessarily,
but you certainly can feel things
loosen up
- All right, Brad people are falling asleep here.
(Brad groans)
- So let's compare here.
Now, this one
stiff, rigid.
Look at that one.
- Yeah. This one's this one's-
- Supple.
- Yeah.
- This one moves.
See, see there there's pieces coming out there
now we've got the connective tissues breaking out,
and I could actually go a little bit longer
and get these down to little pieces,
I did it at home for an experiment.
- Sure.
- It worked out really well,
but again we don't wanna bore our viewers,
- So yeah, we got muscle pliability now,
you're gonna be, gonna give yourself longevity
in athletics.
You're gonna feel better.
Even if you don't do athletics, you're gonna perform better.
You're gonna have less problems with your joints even,
because the muscles aren't pulling on those joints,
and tightening up,
and holding them together.
- Again, it all, it relates to-
- Knee joint, hip pain, shoulder pain, everything.
- There you go.
So, roll away, and now you got that good visualization.
You can take one of these at home and, you know,
show one of your relatives, have a little party.
- Oh, there you go.
Bob! Why Bob?
- Thanks for watching.