♪ Bob and Brad ♪
♪ The two most famous physical therapists ♪
♪ On the internet ♪
- Hi folks. I'm Bob Schrupp, physical therapist.
- Brad Heineck, physical therapist.
- Together we are the most famous physical therapists
on the internet.
- In our opinion, of course, Bob.
- We're also quite old.
- Bob you speak for yourself. - We just added that.
- I'm starting to feel strong like bull.
- Combined we're over a hundred years old, easily.
But today we're gonna talk about three
simple shoulder pain relief exercises.
We're all busy, Brad.
We're all busy.
So we're trying to combine
it down to three exercises you could do.
Good chance they're giving you relief.
- Right.
- But easy to do, fast to do.
- Now these are not if you have shoulder pain
where you just fell down the steps,
you've been in an accident. - Right.
- and your shoulder's... obviously from trauma.
- Right, injury.
- This is that nagging shoulder pain,
that hurts when you go up.
- And we're gonna show you how to test it.
Do the exercises, retest it.
And it's all quite quick.
- Yup.
- But before that...
- By the way, if you're new our channel,
please take a second to subscribe to us.
We provide videos, how to stay healthy, fit, pain-free
and we upload every day.
Also, go to Bobandbrad.com,
go to the giveaways section.
We're always giving something away, except today.
- Yeah, it's a Saturday.
So you have to wait 'til tomorrow.
- Yeah, then we start the new giveaway.
- Maybe, 9 p.m. and then it comes up.
But where can they go to find out, Bob?
- You can also go to Facebook. It'll be, oh, Bob and Brad
the giveaways section.
You can also go to Facebook.
It'll be pinned to the top of the page.
- Yeah. This is our website, by the way. (laughing)
- Yeah. Didn't I say that?
- I don't know.
- You can go to Twitter, Instagram or Tik-Tok
if you want a 60 second version of our program.
And we have what, Brad?
- Podcasts on now,
and we have some outstanding people doing our podcasts.
We have authors, we have experts.
And then we have us too.
- Yeah, we have smart people.
- Yeah.
- Not us.
(both laughing)
Okay, Brad. Let's get started.
- Yup.
Okay. So again, assuming your shoulder,
you get that nagging shoulder pain
it hurts right around in here.
This is a nice way to start out,
to find out if you have progress.
- Right,
- So what do you do?
You take a piece of tape,
- Well, Brad I want to say right now,
- Okay. Sure.
- I want to interject.
We have generally found
and this is not just us, who have discovered this.
Robin McKenzie, he found that really, as you regain motion,
your pain levels tend to go down.
So it's really important that,
yeah, if you're stuck and can only go this high
that you wanna get back up here again.
- Sure. Yup.
So to find out where you're at, you know, an objective,
you know, as therapists, we measured with a goniometer.
Well, this is what I have patients do at home.
I'll say go up to a wall with a piece of tape
and just reach up with your arms straight
so that you're consistent for the test.
You go up,
it starts to hurt right there.
Don't go into the pain
and put the tape on the wall and that's it.
Okay. Then-
- So pain maybe limited you
or restriction maybe limiting you.
- Right, some tightness.
One way or another that's as far as you can go.
You don't need a goniometric measurement.
Then what we're gonna do
is do a extension stretch,
which is been found to be very effective.
- Well, it's funny, Brad, because you're actually,
we're trying to improve this, but we go the opposite,
to try and improve that.
- Right. Right.
- And the way things work in life that often helps.
- It's a balance.
- Yes.
- So one way you can do it,
is you can take a stick, it can be a broomstick,
we use the Booyah Stik.
And you put it behind you.
Straight behind you. Not out to the side.
Your thumb is gonna be pointing down
and you bring your hand up as far as you comfortably can
and then bring your feet about shoulder width wide.
Take this hand, the other hand and put it behind your back,
right at the belt line.
What that does is that promotes good posture.
That's the only reason we do it.
- Right it opens your chest up, it stretches.
- Otherwise we start doing this.
This really prevents that without thinking about it.
And then you gently go down with your knees
and you get the stretch.
You're not gonna go into pain, painful, sharp pain at all.
Just a stretch.
So you're gonna feel it in here.
And we're gonna do that three to five repetitions
at this type of-
- Now, you could go to a countertop.
- Yup.
- If it was a high countertop or-
- You could just go to a wall.
- Sure.
- And do this.
The reason I don't like the wall
is 'cause my hand has a tendency to slip off
- To slide down. Right.
- With the stick, you can grab.
But you can certainly do this.
And if you've got a rough wall,
you know those sandy kind of walls what ever they are.
- Right, now, you can also - Textured.
- do it this way, Brad, right?.
It's like not rowing a boat.
It's like rowing a canoe?
- Yeah. You paddle a canoe. - Paddle a canoe.
- You oar a boat.
- That's right.
- If you've got the oar locks.
- That's something I don't do apparently. (laughing)
- Yeah and that works too.
It's a little bit different. Do what works best for you.
Go by how your shoulder feels.
- Yeah I got palm down, palm out
and if you're in a real bind,
you can just actually,
if you are able to, you grab and inter-lock your fingers
and go back like this too.
- Yeah.
- Brad has trouble with that one.
- Yeah, my shoulders don't do that very well.
So anyways, that's the initial stretch.
You can do that and it's gonna take a lot less
than what we just talked about.
- Right.
- It's only gonna take you 30 seconds.
- Should we show the advanced one now?
The chicken wing, or you wanna show that later?
- Well, yeah.
Let's show it later.
- Okay. - Okay,
'cause it will-
- It's a little more advanced.
- It is.
Now the next thing you wanna do is strengthening exercise.
You're gonna need a stretch band.
- Yeah. Of some sort.
- Yup and then it works best if you anchor it
to something on the wall,
a door knob or whatever.
We're gonna use the-
- Wall anchor.
- Wall anchor there
and now the key to this exercise is elbow by your ribs
and you do what's called external rotation.
Now what you wanna do to make sure you do this properly,
is you get a towel roll or anything and put there,
that's light of course and then you hold it.
And if that drops to the floor, like that,
that means your elbow came too far out.
- Your elbow's flying out there. So you want to keep it in.
- Yep.
You don't need this in there, if you keep your elbow in.
I do it with patients because it forces good mechanics.
And once they get used to it,
they don't use it anymore either.
- Right. Exactly.
- So we're gonna do this exercise.
- So this helps strengthen some of the rotator cuff muscles,
to help hold the ball into the socket.
- In the proper position.
- The shoulder joint.
- Yup. And 10 to 15 of these.
And if, once you get better at it,
you can do a two or three sets of them.
Right now I'm in a maintenance mode,
so I just do about 10 to 15, three times a week
and it's working out well.
But you'll do more if you're in the throws of-
- So I stand by my wife when she does these
and she can slap me at the same time.
So it works really well for her.
I don't know, I thought that was funny.
(both laughing)
Maybe it wasn't, it fell dead. It fell to the floor.
- Okay. The next one.
Once that's starting to go pretty good.
Then you got two options.
You can take the same band that you used
and just grab it like this
and then we're going to,
you know, this is an option.
It doesn't work quite as well.
I've had people do it.
- You can't use the handles and it's not as easy.
- And this doesn't isolate, I don't think, as well.
- No.
- It's okay, but what you can do,
I like to work this, is you're gonna go like this,
pull out with some resistance and then hold it,
get up close to the wall
and just go up while you're pulling apart.
So you're strengthening those external rotators
as you go higher.
And that's a real functional strengthening exercise.
Again. You're gonna-
- So you kinda slide the arm up, Brad, right?
- Exactly. Yeah.
And you know, if it's slippery,
you can slide right up there.
If you happen to have a loop band like this,
this actually works better
'cause you don't have to squeeze with your hands
right around the wrist or in here.
And it just works better if you have one.
They're not expensive.
It's completely up to you.
And we're gonna do five to 10 of those
and you'll feel that work those posterior muscles.
- Sure.
- Now, if things are going good.
We'll will show them the chicken wing.
- The advanced one? Sure.
- If your shoulder's feeling good.
Actually just wait, Bob. Just wait.
- Sure.
- Now, I'm gonna take a piece of tape.
- Oh yeah. You're gonna see where you're at.
- Yup I'm gonna see.
It's like, "Oh, they feel a little bit better,
"but am I actually going higher?"
That's the question.
So you take another piece of tape.
I did my right arm before
and you might find, oh man, I can go up to there
- Before you feel pain.
- Before you feel pain. I've just gained four inches.
And now the thing you want to do,
is leave the tape there,
do your exercises for a week,
come back again and do the test.
And then, hopefully the goal is you're getting up
and you have a visual cue.
I did this with a guy
and it worked so well with him.
- Yeah. It's very motivating.
- Yeah.
Yep. Exactly right.
Now, once you start getting higher
and you wanna get even better,
let's say you do overhead work
or you're reaching over your head.
- It also works well for impingement.
- Yep, exactly.
- This is the chicken wing.
A little bit complex to do.
So you're gonna take the one palm is forward.
- This would be the sore shoulder.
- Is that better?
For me to do it this way?
- Yeah. That's all right.
Yeah. We'll spin you around and see what happens.
- So I've got this palm down, the upper palm.
- This one.
- And this palm is out.
- Yeah. So the back of the palm is towards the back.
- I don't want to hit my head
and I don't want to bend over like this.
- Right.
- So I'm gonna go to the side
and I'm pulling that arm out into extension a little bit
and also into internal rotation.
- So he's stretching this shoulder right in here.
And this is something
you do not want to do if it creates pain.
- Right or if you have shoulders that dislocate really easy.
- Yeah if they're hypermobile
and they have a history of popping out,
then you wouldn't do this.
- Now I wanna say this right now.
Brad was not a believer of this.
- Well, I'm not a believer of anything
until it really sets in my head.
That's just my nature.
- So he was having trouble with impingement
and it helped him.
Right?
- It did. It did.
- And it helped my wife.
And it was the thing that I came upon that helped me.
And I was trying everything.
And it's the thing that took away my impingement.
- Actually this is what I do now.
I just started this literally this week or last week.
Instead of going like this, I mean, I do this,
but then I also go on the other side of the head
and it comes in at a different angle.
- Oh, good. Good idea.
- I mean, it's advanced.
I don't have shoulder pain,
but I really want to maintain my flexibility.
I got to try that.
So you go this way.
- Yep.
- And then you go this way.
- Yeah there you go.
- Oh yeah.
- Oh!
See how things are. Everything falls together in life, Bob.
It's like the yin and the yang, you know.
- Brad's gotta always up end me,
you know, he's got to always be better than me.
- Well Bob you wanted a follow-up you know.
- Be careful with that thing.
- Yeah. I am.
- Anyways, this is really a good protocol to follow.
We like to have fun with it, but-
- You like that phrase don't you, be careful.
- Yeah. You should be careful - Yeah be careful.
in everything that you do.
- All right. - Take care.
(upbeat musical flourish)