Behind-Back Pain, Solved

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome & Purpose
• 0:18 Why Behind-the-Back Hurts
• 0:33 Get Diagnosed First
• 0:41 What the Capsule Is
• 1:08 Basic Hand-Behind-Back Stretch
• 2:01 Using Tools to Get Position
• 2:46 Belt-Assisted Shower Stretch
• 5:12 Pain Limits & Stretch Reflex
• 5:45 Glide Tools and Final Tips
• 6:15 Wrap-Up & Thanks

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:01

Welcome back to the Hand to Shoulder Solution, giving pain the middle finger. I'm your host, Carl Petito. Thank you for hitting the like button and for subscribing to the channel. Also, thank you very much for your donations. Every little bit helps me and my team bring you useful information. I want to talk to you today about difficulty placing your hand behind your back. When shoulder stiffness sets in, it can also become very painful in the front of your shoulder when you try to put your hand behind your back. It can also be caused by other things as well. That's why it's very important to get into your healthcare practitioner to get a very clear diagnosis of exactly what's going on. But let's pretend for today that the shoulder capsule is tight and we have to stretch that. What's the capsule? So if you look at your ball and socket and you and you take a ball and socket and wrap it really tight with saran wrap about 15 times or so, that's the capsule, and it doesn't get very much blood flow. It's very tight, it's ligamentous material. Ligaments connect bone to bone. Once that gets tight, it's pretty difficult to stretch. There's many little tricks of the trade to stretching your hand behind your back more effectively. So one one of the most basic ways is to just always have the back of your hand against your body and placing it behind yourself with your elbow straight. Once it's behind yourself and your hand is flat against your body, you start bringing it up. If you can grab your hand, start bringing it up at least to your belt level and just to the point to where you feel it pull in your shoulder and hold that position for about 20 seconds. Then you can relax it a little bit. Now we do two repetitions of that. We usually have people stretch their shoulder every one to two hours, or at least three or four times a day. More is better, but not any more than every hour. So if there's a lot of instances for folks where it's hard to even get the hand behind the hip. So we need to use a tool to help that hand get back there easier. And one tool is to use a golf club, a dowel rod, anything, so that it can be pressed against a wall or a door, and then you can with your elbow straight, you can step in front of your hand, and that will help get your hand behind your back easier. Once you're able to get that hand behind your back easier after some work, then you can reach back and grab your hand. I usually have my patients just grab their hand with the stick right in place, then they can just hold that there, maybe ease up a little bit, to bring it back up nice and easy. But using using a wall to hold the end of end of the stick or the golf club, whatever you're using, and stepping in front of your hand, that is a really handy tech nice handy technique. So let's look at that from a different angle. So by elbow straight, the stick is gonna go against the wall or any surface, then you're gonna step in front of your hand, then you can get a hold of your hand. Another technique is to hold the edge of a door frame, or in this case a shelf, and you can hold the edge like this, step out in front of your hand, and then you'll be able to reach it much easier. So you're gonna step out in front, squat down a little bit, grab that hand, and there you have it. Also, depending on the height, the depending on your height and the height of your drawers in the kitchen, you can grab a drawer handle and step in front of your hand. That has proven to be an effective technique as well. Once you're able to more effectively get that hand behind your back, another nice tool is a smooth belt. This is a nylon belt that I had a shoulder injury, I had to stretch my shoulder quite a bit. I just left this in the shower, and I was standing there in the shower with the warm water running on my shoulder, and I would stretch, I would stretch my shoulder up like this, and then I would I would hold on with my hand and just let my shoulder relax. And then once the stretching sensation would reduce a little bit, I would just simply go a little bit higher, which was probably another quarter of an inch, not very much. And then once that would relax a little bit, I would go just a hair more. In another angle, we can put that right over, and you're gonna pull it right up your back. Very slowly, incrementally, not forceful. You should just have a firm stretch. If you have a slight discomfort, no matter what you do, that's acceptable. So typically one to two out of ten, three out of ten. If you start getting a four out of ten pain, five out of ten pain, it's just way too aggressive. If you get too aggressive, it'll cause a stretch reflex, and the and the tissues will contract, try to protect themselves, they'll react in the wrong direction, and they'll actually tighten up more. So stretching should be low, low and easy, uh not aggressive. What's handy on dry clothing is to have a smooth leather belt that will slide easily on your clothing so you can get that up there better. Anything to make it glide easier. Um, but it again, just you're holding on with your hand and being very conscious of allowing your shoulder to totally completely relax and bringing that up your back. Every stretch should be 20 seconds, a couple of repetitions. Not painful. Thank you very much for watching. I hope this was useful, and thank you again for liking and subscribing to the channel.