- Hi, I'm Bob Schrupp, physical therapist
- Brad Heineck, physical therapist.
- And together we are the most famous
physical therapists on the internet.
- Well, in our opinion, of course Bob.
- Well Brad if you are having chondromalacia
or patella femoral syndrome,
which basically is pain on the front of the knee.
- Right.
- A lot of times is around the kneecap.
- Mm hmm.
- I'm gonna go through all the symptoms here.
You might have a little bit of a crunching noise
or as you said, rice crispy noise
when you bend or straighten the knee.
It hurts a lot of times when you bend
or straighten the knee.
- Right.
- Bad on stairs.
- Right. Especially going downstairs.
- Especially going downstairs worsen.
Generally more common in women than men.
- Sure.
- So it's just basically what we're talking about
is a softening underneath the kneecap,
and that's giving you some pain.
In the last video,
and I'm gonna put that up right here, Brad,
it kind of shows you the simple test.
You can determine whether or not you have it.
- Right.
- At least one of the tests you could try.
And if it is true, then you're gonna try
this simple treatment.
Now there's a lot of treatments you can do for this.
You can do stretching and strengthening.
And I recommend you go ahead and do all those too,
but you really should do this one first.
And it's really based on the McConnell taping technique.
- Right.
- And I'm gonna, you know, I know the purists out there
the ones that do a lot of McConnell taping,
there is a lot of different things you might
do to the kneecap.
There might be a tilt or it might be turned,
but most cases, this simple taping will do it.
- Right.
- So you might try this yourself.
If it works great, if it doesn't take it off.
- Yeah.
- And if it doesn't work you probably wanna seek out
a therapist that is trained in that McConnell technique.
- Sure. So what are they gonna do at home?
Get the knee up?
- Real simple. You need a knee.
- Yep.
- I have a knee that's hurting.
The painful knee going downstairs, it hurts.
So basically the kneecap generally,
what the problem is, it was riding too far over
to the outside of the leg, okay.
- There we go.
- It's too far over that way.
So we're gonna push it that way,
toward the other knee.
So if it's this one, it would be pushing toward this knee.
- Right. Always to the inside.
- Always to the inside. There you go.
So now if you're doing this taping for good
and you want to leave it on for a full day,
a lot of people are allergic to tape.
- Right.
- So do you want to gimme the hypoallergenic tape?
- Sure. It's right here.
- Oh, good.
You wanna buy some hypoallergenic tape
or I think it's called Cover-Roll.
If you type that into the internet or on Amazon,
you know you can buy a roll of it and it comes usually like
with a little paper for protection over the top of it.
And you--
- It breathes a little bit, otherwise,
if you are allergic to adhesives
and that adhesive makes your skin broke up,
I had that happen on a patient.
I forgot to ask her.
I taped her and the next day she had a severe--
- Oh, I've had people that I've even used this on
and they kept it on too long.
They kept it on for a couple days
even though I told them not to.
- Yeah.
- And they you're exactly right. Severe rash.
I mean, 'cause there's rubber really togging on that knee.
So, but this one just needs to go down.
You really... sometimes I actually pull over
with this one too, but just put it over the top
going right over the top of the knee.
- The kneecap.
- Kneecap, yep. And pull it over to the side there.
- Pulling that way.
- Yep.
Okay. Now this is the one that does the work
and this is a heavy tape.
One brand that I saw on the internet is called Leuko Sport.
L E U K O S P O R T.
- Mm hmm. - I'll put it down below too.
- Sure.
- And you're just gonna cut off a piece here.
Usually I cut off a couple pieces, Brad.
I'll show you in a minute why,
but you're gonna put this tape right
on the edge of the kneecap.
You want to show them the kneecap?
That one Brad, just so...
- Right here?
- Yeah. Pull that one off.
- Oh, I see.
- Oh, so here's the kneecap, be like this.
And I'll put it right on the edge of the kneecap,
like as Brad said through this, you know,
up over their skin on top of there obviously,
and it's gonna pull it over like that.
- It puts that kneecap back in the groove where it belongs.
- Yeah.
- For whatever reason is out of the alignment.
When you bend the knee out of that groove and the...
So I'm on the edge here and now I'm gonna push
the kneecap over and you gotta see it actually move over.
You'll feel it move over.
So your leg has to be completely relaxed.
If you tighten up your quadriceps or tighten up your knee,
it won't move.
And this may be tough on a lot of people, Brad.
I see a lot of people have a tough time
trying to move their own kneecap.
- Yeah. It kind of gives them the...
they get squeamish about it. Yep.
- So you pull or push the kneecap over,
and then you pull like this,
and that holds it in place.
Now I would then cut another piece of tape
and do the exact same thing again.
Push it over and tape it in place.
Now, based on the last video, if you watched it,
you'll find out that actually
the need feels better immediately.
Like if you were having pain going up and down stairs
now when you go up and down stairs, the pain is less.
- Right.
- So this is something you should know right away
if it's helping.
I think this is a critical part
of treating this type of problem.
If you try just to do strengthening and stretching,
it's really difficult to make headway on this.
- Right.
- This seems like this really makes a difference.
Now so how long are you gonna keep the tape on?
Since you're taping it yourself,
I would go ahead and keep it on just, you know,
do a day at a time.
Take it off every evening before you go to bed
and then redo it in the morning again.
And you wanna look at the skin
and make sure that you keep the skin clean
because if you don't get all that adhesive off,
it's gonna again, start to build up
and maybe your skin's gonna break down or react to it, so...
- Okay. So we're gonna do this every day
and you're gonna continue to feel less symptoms,
you know if you continue to do it right.
- Right.
- And if the knee's feeling better,
eventually you stop doing that.
- Exactly. As you and I found out there's a lot of people,
it seems like it kind of stretches it out, Brad
- Mm Hmm.
- And eventually stays in place.
I think the other thing that happens
is the quadriceps starts working like it's supposed to do
and pulling it in the groove like it's supposed to.
- And we're gonna have a video
on some exercises to help that.
- Are we gonna do a video on that?
- You better believe it!
- Oh yeah, there be some good exercises too.
Alright. Thanks a lot.