♪ Bob and Brad ♪
♪ The two most famous physical therapists ♪
♪ On the Internet ♪
(Bob applauding)
- 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.
- Today we're gonna talk about the big lie
about flat feet and custom arch supports.
This is an updated video.
We did this before, but we're gonna do
it a little bit better this time.
- Yep, we're gonna update and get things ready to go.
Here we go. - By the way,
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a couple of these Stretch Easy,
what would you call that?
Like, an aide, right?
A stretch aide. - That's for stretching out
your heel core, and I'll show you,
hold onto that once, Bob.
- I'll hold onto that, Brad's gonna show,
really cool device, actually - it's really, it is.
- Really good for stretching hamstrings.
If you look back, we did a video on
how to use this for stretching your
entire lower extremity, so. - Right, yep.
- Alright, you can find that also on
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Alright, Brad, let's start- let's get started.
- Okay, flat feet. Everyone hears the term
and they get, "Oh you've gotta get custom arches,
"go get fitted," you know, "You can go to this doctor
"or this store, they have them."
You know, $300-500 later, sometimes they work.
And, you know, we're talking about our experience
as well as the research we've done scientifically.
- It's a lot of money for a guess.
Whether or not it's gonna work or not.
You know what I mean? - Right, exactly.
- So we'd rather have you try the cheaper
or less expensive option first.
- Yeah, you know if you got $300-500 you don't really
- Yeah you just like to throw your money away
and burn it. - Right. You just don't know,
because we have people, Bob and I have both
had people come in, they've had their custom arches,
their $300-500 ones. And they're in the closet
because they don't work. - Yeah.
- And then we try and correct the things.
- We try and do other things instead.
The only thing I would say, Brad,
is maybe if you try an off-the-shelf pair,
and they work really well, and then
you wanna have something permanent,
then you might spend the money.
Would you agree with that?
- I would. I remember I had custom arches made
by a chiropractor when I was in my twenties
before I knew anything about this,
and I had a back problem. And he said,
"Oh, well, your back problem was from your feet."
Which, I know now it wasn't, I was just
lifting something really heavy with really bad
back mechanics. But, he sold them,
my insurance paid for it, I'm sure there was
some influencing there, - Sure.
- why they were made.
Anyways, I wore them for a while.
- Then you got rid of them.
- Yeah (laughs). Okay, let's carry on.
Flat feet. Let's show some people
the difference between someone with a normal
or a high arch versus a flat foot.
- Alright, we'll do mine first.
- Bob happens to be...
- I've got high arches. So if you point things
out, Brad? You're looking for your pen, aren't ya?
- [Brad] Yeah. So we're gonna look right here.
Right here. Look at this, I can put my whole hand
in that tall arch right there. - And there's no weight
on it yet, but I'll go ahead and put weight on it.
- [Brad] Right. And it doesn't really move.
He's got a pretty rigid foot, we'd call it.
- [Bob] I got a rigid foot.
- [Brad] And that's a whole different story.
- [Bob] So I don't need an arch support. By any means.
- [Brad] You might need something to cushion, possibly.
- [Bob] That's exactly right.
I need a cushioned shoe.
- So, now we have a volunteer from the audience.
Come on in, Ryan. - (laughs) From the audience.
- He happens to have...
- This happens to be Brad's nephew, Ryan.
- Right, say hi, Ryan.
- Hello.
- And Ryan, what's today? What's so
special about today?
- Oh, it's my birthday today.
- That's right, 15 years old.
- My brother-in-law's birthday, too.
- Oh really? Maybe we should call them up
and they can chat.
- Yeah, there we go.
- Let's get on. Now, look at Ryan's foot.
Big difference from Bob's. If you look in here,
there's a gap there. He's got some arch.
But now put some weight on there, Ryan.
And look how it flattens out.
And now I can't even get my finger in there,
so that's a real key to a diagnosing of flat foot,
is non-weight-bearing versus weight-bearing.
How much does it flatten? Now, the thing is,
go ahead and put some weight to there again.
The tendons- we got the Achilles tendon,
the posterior tib, we've got another of
our other structures that get stressed
with that flatten. So every time that Ryan runs
or puts weight through there, those tendons can be
irritated over many repetitions.
If you're gonna go run five miles or whatever,
and that can develop problems anywhere from
tendonitis, hip... Oh, we forgot about the rotation.
- [Bob] Yeah, turn the knees.
- Yeah, go ahead, put weight through there.
The tibia rotates this direction,
which can throw the kneecap, the whole knee joint
can be thrown off as well as the hip.
And you can get hip or knee pain,
or, like we mentioned, back pain,
all because of this.
- [Bob] Yeah, all starts from there.
You have to have a good base. - It does need to,
you know, often times it needs to be addressed.
But, do you need to get custom?
- Right.
- This is our options. Oh, wait!
But there's more, Bob!
- Okay, tell us, Brad!
- (laughs) So, I did mention we did some research.
I did find a couple- more than a couple articles.
I picked out two of them, one was
The British Journal of Sports Med in 2015.
They took 140 subjects. Half of them had
custom orthotics, the other half had sham or
non-custom. And they found out there was
no notable difference with the custom versus
the sham or the non-custom orthotics.
There was another study by The Journal of
Athletic Training in 2011.
They concluded there was no difference in
the results, if you had custom or
across-the-counter orthotics. - And I've done,
I've done the research on this in the past, too,
Brad, and pretty much they all said the same thing.
- Right. It's all...
- They will last longer,
generally, a custom one. - Sure, oh yeah, right.
- And so... But if it's not helping,
who cares that something's gonna last long?
- If they're sitting in the closet.
- Yeah, if they're sitting in the closet, yeah.
- So we can look at, wanna bring your foot
up there again? There's three options
that we have here. There's more than that,
but three common options. You can,
if you go to the store or you go online,
and you look you'll just see one of these that's
relatively flat, but they're nice and squishy.
Let's put your foot on there, Ryan.
And there really is no support here in the arch.
- [Bob] This is more just a cushion.
This would be maybe something for me,
'cause this would cushion my shoe.
- For example, if you work on a concrete floor
all day long, and you need some cushion,
this is the kind of insert. - But you can see,
he can flatten out here.
It really doesn't help at all. Look at that,
just flattens right out again.
So it's not doing the job.
- Right. So that wouldn't be good for that
flat foot. They make half of, this is just
a half an insert, it doesn't go into
the forefoot, which may be good,
if we put Ryan's foot on there,
and we look, it does offer some support.
Put some weight through there.
- [Bob] Very little, yeah.
He's kind of, it's still not correcting it.
- Right. So even though...
- This one doesn't pass what we call
the squish test. So if you can squish it down
like this, it's not providing you enough support.
- Right. And you know, I guess it might.
If you wear it and it feels really good,
and maybe your arch is different than Ryan's,
it might be good for you. That's why
you really have to try these out.
Then the next option, and this is one I often
look for with myself and my patients,
is called a semi-rigid. It's not hard,
although it's stiff in there and there's
a plastic support. But you can bend it,
and it flexes, so it's semi-rigid.
Now put your foot up on there, Ryan.
So right now I can put my finger under there.
Put some weight through there, Ryan.
And it's semi-rigid, so it does flatten,
but do you feel the difference on that, Ryan?
- [Ryan] Yeah, yeah.
- [Bob] You can see it's still providing
some support.
- [Brad] And this may not be rigid enough yet.
It depends on, I always say put them in,
walk around with them, if it feels like
good support, it's good support.
If it feels like there's a big bump
and it's pushing into your foot,
I would say no.
- Yeah, and what you want, it should feel good
immediately. This isn't something that you
work into, that eventually it's gonna
feel better. No, it should feel better
the day you are at the store.
- Right. I was at a shoe store once
with my daughter, she was in high school,
and she's flat-footed just like Ryan.
And we're putting on shoes and we had,
this was the cushion- not the cushion shoe,
but the shoe made for flat-footed person.
- Sure.
- And she put it on, she goes,
"It just feels uncomfortable right in there."
And the salesperson said, "Well, yeah,
"that's how it'll feel at first,
"but it'll get better over time."
- No, no, no, no, no.
- I said, "No." I'm not gonna spend money
on these and then two weeks later,
I'm sure she would say, "It's still..."
I mean, 'cause she was running.
It was an impact thing - It might even be worse.
- Right.
- It might get worse over time.
So no, it should definitely feel good
at the time, right away.
- It was the motion control shoe.
- Motion control.
- Which have, there's research on that
that the motion control shoe, which is
supposedly made for a flat foot,
oftentimes aren't what they're put up to be.
So again, try them on, and they should feel good.
- Yeah, it should be a personal experiment.
I mean, it has to work for you
just because someone said it should work for you.
Don't agree with that. Try it on.
- So I highly advise going to a good shoe store
and actually trying them on, walking around.
And you're gonna be there for a while.
It's just not that you go in, buy, and leave.
So, take care of your feet and take
some time with them. - If you're a runner,
I always like to run around the store a little bit.
Some of them have treadmills.
- Yeah, yeah. I've always, they should
always have a treadmill.
I was at one store once, it was a
bigger place up in the mall, up in the cities,
in that Minnesota land. - Yeah?
- Yeah, they had a little track.
You could run around, it was kind of neat!
- Yeah, that's what you should have.
- I wish that I was in the market for shoes
that day, but I wasn't.
- Alright, Ryan, you have anything else to say?
- Yeah, Ryan. Say happy birthday!
- Yeah, happy birthday to myself.
- Thank you, thank you.
- We were talking on the way up this morning.
We're gonna open up a restaurant.
- Okay.
- Ryan and Brad's...
- Eat'n'Barf.
- Eat'n'Barf!
- Yeah, we'll provide your own barf bags.
- That'll probably be accurate.
- This are things you talk about with your
15-year-old nephew and you're getting
bored on the road, but it was funny at the time.
- Alright, it's not funny now.
Thanks for watching.
(laughing)