♪ Bob and Brad ♪
♪ The two most famous ♪
♪ Physical therapists ♪
♪ On the Internet ♪
- Hi folks, I'm Bob Schrupp, Physical Therapist.
- Brad Heineck, Physical Therapist.
- 'Cause we are the most famous physical therapists
on the Internet.
- In our opinion, of course Bob.
- Our humble opinion. - Humble.
- Yeah, everybody says we're humble.
- Yeah!
Humble bumble.
Reminds me of bubblegum.
- All right. (laughs)
Today we're gonna talk about how do I exercise
an injured knee?
This is a big problem because after you injure your knee,
you want to exercise in order to make it better,
but it hurts to exercise.
- Right and you--
- It's a dilemma.
- Right, you don't want to irritate it
and set it back either.
- Right, which you can do by doing the wrong exercises,
so we're gonna give you some hints on what you may try.
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because we're always giving something away.
Now it's Saturday night,
which means tomorrow we'll be starting a new giveaway.
- Sure.
- So you want to check on that tomorrow.
Go to bobandbrad.com, go to the giveaway section,
and what are we giving away Brad?
- The mattress?
- Yeah, we're giving away a mattresses.
- Oh, this is big.
- This is cool and this is a fantastic mattress.
- Right, it's about a $1,000 worth.
- Yeah and very comfortable.
I mean if you're having trouble with pain
that's the baby you want to get.
- Yep, there's no doubt about it.
So with the knee injury Bob.
We're talking about...
at the point where to walk on it
is not comfortable, is that?
- Yeah or we're also assuming that there's no fracture,
there's no dislocation, there's no infection.
You know you just kind of injured your knee
and we want to start getting it moving again.
- Right.
- So the first thing we want to do is
start to get some range of motion.
- Sure.
So in a seated position and you might...
in order to lift your leg up a little bit
so it doesn't hit the floor,
you may get a rolled towel and put it underneath like this.
and you can just start working on range of motion.
Now if this even, you know,
we're just working on flexion and extension.
It's a great thing to do throughout the day even.
Just starting to get some motion in there,
some of that synovial fluid.
- Right.
- That's kind of the grease of the knee.
- Right.
- You want to get that moving,
but if this even hurts,
at that point you may actually have to put a weight on it.
- Here I'll...
- Brad's gonna put this weight on me.
I'm gonna feel like I'm at a shoe store,
he's putting the shoes on me or shoe shiner.
- Do they do that anymore?
- I don't think they do.
(laughs)
So what you can do is actually,
this actually probably work here Brad.
- Sure.
- So you're gonna let this
and this is gonna give a little traction to the knee.
- Yeah, so it helps distract the joint
just a little bit and be completely relaxed
and just think of this as like a pendulum and it's gonna--
- I'm just gonna let it go back and forth like this,
kind of just let the momentum carry it for--
- Right.
- Not even have to use the muscles at all.
And you can give a weight like this online
or pretty much any big-box store
they have weights like this, ankle weights basically.
- I've had people put their winter boot on
if they got a good heavy winter boot,
that can be a couple pounds sometimes.
- Sure, good way to start, yeah, and see how it feels,
but you actually could put a fair amount of weight on there.
You could put a 10 pounder on there even to start off
because you're not doing strengthening,
you're just using the distraction.
- It should feel good
or after a few repetitions of going back,
if it's a little painful it should clearly improve
after repetition.
If it's just making it worse then you need to stop.
- What's nice about the weight then
eventually when the knee starts feeling better,
you can start using it to do some strengthening.
You can use it to do some quad strengthening like this,
but having said that, if that feels fine,
to start some strengthening
you probably want to do isometric.
Isometric means we're strengthening the knee
without moving it.
- Right.
- So Brad's gonna demonstrate how you can strengthen
the quadriceps, hamstring, hip...
I'd say probably the hip abductors
but they cross the knee.
(laughing)
I'm trying to not make it sound like it's a hip issue.
- We're not only gonna strengthen the knee,
but in order to do that you're gonna cross over to the hip,
which is good because the hip muscles stabilize the knee.
- Some of the muscles that start in the hip
actually go all the way across.
- Right.
- Okay Brad, take it over.
- There we go.
So this knee is the injured knee.
I'm gonna have the other one up like this for support.
Okay and we're simply going to keep the knees straight
and then my quads are gonna tighten up
and I'm gonna lift the leg up, whatever you can.
You know you could go up to here.
That's probably more than you need.
I go up to about a 45 or so,
and then just keep that knee nice and straight,
work on those quads right now,
and if you do 10 or 15 of these slow with good motion
like I'm demonstrating you're gonna feel those quads work
and I already feel mine working now.
And then after you do 10 of those, go ahead Bob.
- Oh, I was just gonna say like we've had...
I've had young girls who a lot of times
get patellofemoral syndrome.
- Sure.
- I'll tell them to do thousands of these.
- Thousands?
- Yeah, I mean just exaggerating but--
- Yeah.
But you can do a lot.
- You really can't do too many.
- Sure, right.
- It's just a great way to strengthen
without putting stress on the knee.
- Exactly and then you turn to your side,
gonna keep the leg straight.
Don't have your toe pointed up like this,
keep it like this and simply up and down
like they get this again.
Good controlled motion.
- We got the IT band that crosses the knee here
and that starts all the way up on the hip
and so you're strengthening the hip
and strengthening the knee at the same time.
And quite often what we find after you injure your knee,
very quickly, because you're favoring that whole side,
the hip also becomes weak
and so you need to keep that strong too.
- And then prone.
I'm gonna switch to this leg just so you can see better.
I know I started with the right hip,
we're gonna say it's the left hip now so it's more visible.
And knee is straight and up like this.
So you get some hamstring
and of course you're getting a lot of glute which is fine.
Just like Bob had mentioned, you still want to make sure
you're working the hip along with it.
10 repetitions good and slow.
If you need to you can leave it rest,
you know if it's sore or tired.
But otherwise just work it up and down a nice smooth motion.
- If you don't do these they're harder than you think.
- Yeah, yeah.
- They look easy but they aren't.
So here he's gonna get the inner thigh,
which can also strengthen across the knee.
- Right, so adductor muscles, the groin muscles,
and I like to take this knee
and get it up out of the way like this.
You can have a pillow if you'd like and up like this.
This one in particular, you'll be amazed,
at least I am because it's an exercise
you don't do very often.
- You normally don't do, right.
- And work 10 of those.
Okay, so that gets all four directions.
- Now if you want to start getting some movement
in the knee, you want to generally with the knee,
especially if you have a meniscus problem or the cartilage--
- Mm-hmm.
- You can bend the knee, but only so far
before it starts to compress on that cartilage.
So what we can do is you can do wall squats with a ball
and I'll show you another variation
of something you can do,
but we can start with that ball on the wall
and you can do shallow squats here.
Yep, you just start off, just real shallow.
You're starting to get some strengthening isotonically.
- Right.
- But you're not putting a lot of stress on the joint.
- We're not going down here.
- You can actually probably go even further than that.
You can probably...
- It's nice if you have something hold on to,
especially on the sore knee side
it gives you some confidence actually.
You have a little bit just in case it hurts.
What were you gonna say?
- Oh, you can go a little bit further,
but the reason this is nice, the ball on the wall,
'cause it makes it very easy to stop your knee
from going past the front of the foot.
- Right, here, let's bring it in here.
- Yeah, I'm dropping a plumb line there.
There, that puts a lot of stress on the knee,
even on a good knee, so if you have a bad knee--
- You simply just step out with a ball on the wall
and then it's easy to--
- Yeah and have good grip tennis shoes on,
so you don't slide forward, but you can do shallow squats
with the knee not going forward.
You want to make sure the knees not going in or out,
you keep it straight up and down.
Also to not put undue forces on your knee.
Now the one that's surprising to me,
my wife has bad cartilage in her knee
and surprisingly she didn't like that one.
I don't know if it just was hitting a part of the knee,
but she likes kettlebell swings,
which is just shocking to me.
She just loves these and she does a lot of them.
I'm starting off with a very small weight here.
- Okay.
- You know you're getting some knee bend
and she goes fairly shallow
and then you thrust your hips and pull up like this.
So you're getting the butt hamstring and especially,
surprisingly this rates very high
for hamstring strengthening.
So and obviously you're getting some quad too
because you're extending.
So she rips off like 20 of these at a time.
I'm not lifting my arm,
I'm using my pelvis to throw it up.
- Right, it's not a arm exercise at all.
It's hip and leg.
- Yep and you want to keep very good posture,
keep your back very straight, head up.
- Right here, this is key right there,
don't let that round forward.
- Now you don't need to go way forward like they teach you,
you know that's one--
- That's a little controversial.
- We don't hinge way down.
I just think this is a good functional position.
You don't need to go way down as far as what they recommend
and you certainly don't want to bend your back like this.
Again, you want to keep nice and straight.
- Right, a good athletic posture stance.
- Athletic posture, yeah.
So you know, those are some suggestions.
I think you want to keep in mind always keep it pain-free.
Just use that as your guide and you're gonna be fine.
- Bob once again, this leads us into
the next big challenge that we're working on.
- We can fix just about anything.
- Except for--
- A broken heart.
- There you go.
- But my gosh, we are working on it.
- Maybe these kettlebell swings will help.
- Well it's all cardio too, doesn't hurt.
- Oh yeah, it's all connected.
- Yeah.
Thanks for watching.