♪ Bob and Brad ♪
♪ The two most famous ♪
♪ Physical therapists ♪
♪ On the internet ♪
- Howdy folks I'm Bob Schrupp, physical therapist.
- Brad Heineck, physical therapist.
- And together we are the most famous
physical therapists on the internet.
- In our opinion of course, Bob.
- What are we gonna talk about today, Brad?
- Well Bob, we're gonna go back in history a little bit.
Talk about a little geometry.
We're gonna talk about the...
- Rhomboid.
- Rhombus!
- Oh rhombus!
- The rhombus which is one of these.
They have to have to two parallel sides
and they can shape it around any way you want.
Oftentimes they're shown like this.
- Four sides, but kinda kittywampus.
- Well yeah, but they have to have parallel sides.
- Oh I gotcha.
- That's just a technical thing.
- That's the shape of a muscle called the rhomboid.
- And that's why they call it the rhomboid
because of the shape and it's right here.
There's two rhomboid muscles, the major and the minor.
They're actually right close next to each other.
They connect to the spine and to the scapular.
And there's one on each side.
- The shoulder blade.
- Yup.
- And why we care about this is because
there's often pain in that muscle.
- That muscle can knot up and get that
aww man, I gotta get rid of that.
- Very irritating.
- So this is actually--
- Kinda like the person.
- Yeah!
I fit that irritating--
- Yeah, they should call you Brad Rhomboid.
- Ask my wife as well.
But one thing I wanna mention Bob,
this muscle is a deeper muscle.
- Sure.
- The middle trap and the lower trap cover this up,
so we need to get into that muscle
if we want to loosen it up.
That's something we must keep in mind.
- The knots that occur in this muscle
often occur because you have poor posture.
- Right, right.
- Your neck is forward and you're surrounded.
You wanna show them, Brad, on me?
The upper back.
So you wanna get some leverage on it.
- You have this curve here.
The blades are rounded this way.
That rhomboid is--
- Under stress.
- Trying to, it's pulling it, it's stressing it.
The spine, it's a big mess is what you get.
- Right.
We're gonna show you some simple treatments for it.
- Sam.
We have taken care of you--
- We're done with you.
- Look at this, if I sit here you got,
your head up there about at eight feet,
Sam here at six and I'm down here at four.
- Eight feet?
- Well that's what some people say.
I'm not kidding ya, I read a comment once.
- I'm 6'6.
- Yeah, and they thought I was 4'8 or something.
Anyways.
- A troll.
- Okay, so here we go, how are we gonna get rid of this?
First of all, you gotta work on
your posture on a daily basis.
- Right.
- That's gonna be a big start.
But when you got that pain,
just straightening your posture's
probably not gonna eliminate it like that.
- Yeah.
- We're gonna get into that muscle, it's a deep muscle.
The first thing we're gonna show you,
if you happen to have a six inch roller...
No, let's save that for later though.
- Well I'm thinking you really should
stretch it first and then strengthen.
- Okay, let's do it that way.
- Okay?
- How are you gonna stretch it?
- Well with the roller and with the balls.
- And then strengthen it.
- Yes.
- So we'll save the Ws for last.
We're gonna change my order.
So if you happen to have a roller these work very well.
I'm gonna put it on the floor.
It doesn't have to be a three foot one,
it can be the shorter one, and that's what I use.
I use the short one 'cause it's a little easier,
but there's some options with this.
- [Bob] You can buy a three footer, cut it in half,
and give the other half to someone you like.
- Right, or if you don't like them.
Just try to get to know them better.
So go back and forth like this.
And I'm right on the rhomboids right here.
just because I know my anatomy and, ooh,
I just had my cavitation crack.
There we go.
- Just as a point of interest, we prefer that you
don't roll all the way into your lower back.
- Yeah, not down here.
- That will not feel good.
So just stay to the mid back and the rhomboids.
I love this one.
I do it every morning, I did it this morning.
So Brad, are you done now?
- Yeah it's about, you can spend at least
one to two minutes doing that.
There you go, if you don't have one of these
we're gonna show you some options.
- You can use a tennis ball.
Or a lacrosse ball.
This is a bit of a softer ball.
We actually made it softer by cutting a slit in it.
- Right.
Probably too soft for this one, but--
- Right.
Not if you're just starting though.
- Well that's true.
We'll put that down there.
Bob, you wanna show them where I'm gonna do it?
- Yeah.
So we're gonna hit in-between
the shoulder blade and between the spine.
Here's the spine running right down the middle.
Here's a shoulder blade, here's a shoulder blade.
You can hit anywhere along that area.
Six areas.
- And that's gonna hit the rhomboids.
- Yeah, it's gonna hit the rhomboids.
- Just like on Sam.
So I'm not gonna spend a lot of time
on this, but just to show you.
- [Bob] But again, this can be aggressive
if you've never done it before and you're
just starting off and that's why we recommend
you might want to start with the slit,
or you might put a towel over it,
or you might have a pillow under your head.
I mean all these things.
- Boy this lacrosse ball is very aggressive and if you
haven't done it before I would not start with one.
But you can adjust, my arms and my feet,
I'm adjusting the pressure.
- [Bob] How much stress you're putting on it.
- Yup.
I'm getting in there, ooh.
- If you find that you do like this, eventually what
you may wanna do is purchase a back pod.
What this does is it actually has
a different shape that seems to fit this perfectly.
- It's specifically designed for this.
- Right.
- Yeah, and if you ever have costochondritis,
this was my key to quit going
to the doctor with chest pain.
But anyways.
- [Bob] Same thing.
- It works very well.
- [Bob] Bring the arms way up, yup.
There you go.
- I use this on a regular basis.
Do both sides.
But yeah, this really gets into
the muscles where that rhomboid is.
And it's gonna do the job very well.
Okay.
- All right, now if it is way too aggressive for you
you can take a tennis ball and put it into a sock.
- Right.
- And you can actually go up to a wall.
And actually start off this way by not
putting as much stress on the area.
- And the reason it's in a sock, as you can see Bob can--
- I can easily manipulate it then.
- It doesn't fall down to the floor.
- Right.
So I got it right there.
This actually feels pretty good, Brad.
- Yeah!
It's a wonderful deal.
- You can really control how much stress you put on it.
- I highly suggest take your sock and your tennis ball--
- A clean sock.
- To work.
- Yeah.
- And go up against the wall, and it won't be long,
and the whole office, everyone's gonna
bring their sock and tennis ball.
- Yup.
- They'll be working the walls.
- It'll be a craze.
- They'll have a wall area designated for--
- It'll be a craze on TikTok.
- I do wanna mention one thing
that works really well with this.
It's a lot cheaper than a lot of things,
and if you put two of them in and you
set them down on the floor you actually
get both set of rhombuses at the same time.
- [Bob] Yeah, you can go right on either side of the spine.
- Yup.
And you can roll on it, and that's the nice thing
about using these tennis balls.
So if you know anybody that plays tennis,
get their old balls, or you can go down
and buy some new ones if you want.
Or kids that have tennis ball games,
just take it from them.
They lose them anyway, so who knows the difference.
- Take them from your dog.
Now after you stretch, that's when
you want to strengthen, Brad.
So what are we gonna do for that?
- Well Bob, this is a simple exercise.
We're going to do the Ws.
And we're gonna actually pull back.
Shoulder blades together.
- And we're strengthening those rhomboids.
- Yup, and if you wanna go back,
and the rhomboids actually pull up.
Think about those elbows going up.
But it's really not that critical.
- Right.
- They're all gonna work.
- This is all good for you.
Put those shoulder blades together and make the W.
You can see the W I'm making with my arms.
- If you wanna do resistance you can do it this way.
You got your bands and you use
your attachment to the door.
- Yeah, it's really good to add resistance.
Because it's gonna stay better.
- Yup.
And the thing is with resistance
is you're gonna do it until you feel
those muscles fatigue 'cause when they fatigue
they relax just because they're tired, so you can
get through to that knot as a result of fatigue.
I'm feeling good, Bob!
I'm feeling strong like bull.
- Too bad you're not looking good.
- I know, my wife keeps telling me.
I says dear, I can't help it, it's the aging process.
You know what she said to me?
- What did she say?
- 'Cause I said the S-H-I-T word.
- Oh you did?
- Because something happened.
And she said "You're saying that
"a lot more lately as you get older."
She says I say it in my sleep now.
- That was the one--
- I do!
I said you gotta record it.
You gotta record that.
I guess I do.
- What I was gonna say is my mom would never swear.
She's a very religious woman.
And once she said the word S-H-I-T-T-Y.
And it was a scandal in our household.
All the kids were talking like
"Did you hear mom said that word?"
- Was that when you were born?
- Oh yeah, yeah.
- She started swearing every time after that.
- The diaper.
- She still doesn't.
- No.
- Oh good, good.
- My dad was a swearer.
- Oh really?
- He was a friendly swearer.
- They balance each other huh?
- Yeah, they balance each other.
- Yeah, there's nothing...
Yeah, if it's all in fun it's different.
- Yeah, exactly.
- Well that's another story.
- Thanks for watching everybody.