Hi everyone this is Dr. Katie Gross with Performance Chiropractic.
We know you are at home right now and unable to come in.
So we wanted to go over some stretching you can do at home.
The stretches where you are going to go over today are for your lower back.
These are really good for getting good movement in especially if you are on computers a lot and not at your typical desk station.
If you have any questions or concerns about any of these stretches just give us a call or email us.
And if you feel any pain or discomfort during these I would like you to back off of doing them.
So we're just gonna warm things up.
First, we're gonna do a simple cat-cow.
A lot of people are unable to get on their hands and knees to do the traditional cat-cow.
So we are going to be doing a standing version.
So simply stand up
You're going to put your hands on your hips.
You get a good feel and you just open it up and bring it down this is really good for spinal movement.
And you're just bringing it in really rotating those hips back and extending and then rotating them into flexion.
You can do this for 30 seconds to a minute just to get really good spinal movement and stretching in.
You can do it seated as well.
Very simple I like standing because then you get more of a spinal movement.
Once you've done that we're going to bring our arms up to our sides and just gently twist side to side.
I like to do this about 20 seconds and just again help stretch the spine and it's almost wringing out those discs getting the toxins out and bringing fluid and water into them.
We've been sitting all day that's when we get the most pressure on our discs they get compressed.
So we want to really rehydrate them.
So the next stretch is bringing your ankle up onto your knee and just holding you should start to feel some tension or stretching in the hip here.
That's good we want to open it up if you want to intensify to push the knee down.
Hold for 10 seconds and then release.
And you can do that a couple of times to really open that up.
Once that's warmed up in there we're gonna drop our upper body over and hang.
Hang for about 10 seconds really get that right if you're doing the right side.
You'll feel it in the right lower back.
If you're not feeling it so much in the lower back and you're only feeling it in the hip and the gluts then you want to
cross that meat all the way over and then dropdown.
Very good, ten seconds.
And then we want to switch sides bring that ankle up, let it open really breathe as you're doing this, and then push down.
Yeah feels good
It's tight and then you want to just let everything hang.
Let your head drop
Let your arms drop
Let everything hang and breathe into this stretch again.
I said I want you to feel it in that lower back.
So if you're not feeling it with the leg like this go ahead and cross that leg all the way over and then bend down, it takes some of the resistance out of the gluteal muscles.
So lastly we are going to have our feet bent at 90 degrees feet flat on the ground and I want you to just let everything hangs right towards the center between your legs.
So if you need to spread your legs a little bit further that's fine.
Just gonna let it drop
10 seconds and then what I want you to do is walk your hands over to the left and hold again dropping that head down.
And then you're going to go to the right same thing and make sure you're breathing good.
That's all for our lower back stretches.
You can do these throughout the day and like I said pay attention to your body if you're feeling
discomfort or pain I want you to back off.
But this should be a good way to help get movement in throughout the day and ease the tension of sitting and a desk all day.
Thank you and we hope you enjoy this video!
Hi everyone this is Dr. Katie Gross with Performance Chiropractic. We know you're at home right now and unable to come in at this time.
So we wanted to get a video out on how to do some stretching at home.
This series is on upper back stretching and shoulders. So we are going to get some movement in the upper body today.
If these caused pain or discomfort I want you to back off and really listen to your body.
If you have any questions or concerns about these stretches or exercises go ahead and give us a call or email us.
So let's get started we're gonna start with just warming up the area so you're gonna do some shoulder rolls.
You're gonna go forward.
So we're going forwards ten times. Really big movements as much as you can.
If you need to you can go like this one at a time
However you want to get that movement in.
Just get ten movements.
Then you want to do ten backwards.
Okay so just get ten backward movements
Again you can do one at a time if you need to however you want to get some movement in that's fine so then we're gonna stand up and we're gonna bring our arms forward and just let everything hang down. Just let those shoulders hang
You can cross your arms here and go side to side like you're rocking the baby and really just get some good shoulder movement.
Now if you can clasp your hands behind you and bring the arms up.
If you can't do this that's okay.
You can do one arm at a time it's just to get some good movement in the shoulders to warm up the area you'll want to hold those for about ten seconds.
So next we're going to bring the arm across the body you're going to grab right above the elbow and just pull.
You'll hold it for about ten seconds.
I like to go up and then I like to bring in to the midline and then down so I'm getting that whole shoulder blade pulled has relaxed and stretched.
You're going to do those three times per side.
Now we're going to bring our ear towards their shoulder a lot of people say to pull the head over I don't like that I'm not a fan of that for your neck.
So instead of pulling the head I want you to push the shoulder down. Try to relax that shoulder.
Okay ten seconds switch sides very good
Okay three times per side.
Now we're going to bring our head down. This is a really good stretch for people who have been on computers.
If you're having any tension, headaches or stress headaches it's going to get the area in the back of the neck. So we want to use our right hand grab the left side of the back of the head pull gently down into the body at a very slight angle.
So you're looking at that right knee. Hold for ten seconds.
And then switch sides, very good three times per sign.
And then we're going to do some forearm stretches.
These are really good for people who are on computers a lot, phones tablets all of that.
So you just want to grab your fingers here and you're going to pull back as far as you can hold for 10 seconds and then bring it down okay.
If you need to warm up your forearms a little bit before doing this just do some hand rolls back and forth again just pull back and then pull down okay.
Good lastly this is my favorite way to end the upper body stretches because it just lets everything relax. We're breathing I want you to take a deep breath in, bring the shoulders up towards your ears, bring your head back and then up let it down.
I love that because it really just lets the body relax you're getting some good breath in and then you can get back to what you were doing and feel refreshed.
We hope you have a wonderful day and if you have any questions again don't hesitate to reach out.
Thank you!
Hi everyone this is Dr. Katie Gross from Performance Chiropractic and this is my assistant Debbie.
Today we are going to be going over some of our trigger point therapy classwork.
We're unable to do these classes in the office at this time and with people being home and not able to get in for care, we thought it would be a nice way to be able to work on yourself or your partner.
So follow along and if you have any questions just email us and we'll get back to you.
So we're going to start with the shoulders today.
We’re gonna work on the traps here this is something you can do on yourself or on a partner or have your partner do to you.
So first thing you want to do is feel for the top of the trapezius muscle it's that really thick muscle right here.
You’re going to feel along this the top of it for any tight areas or points of tension when you find one like here.
We’re going to have your partner or yourself. You can pull like this, bring their arm up and you're gonna bring the arm down across the body towards the pocket.
We're going to do that five times
So I'll go ahead and bring that down and while you're holding steady pressure here, good job last one okay
Bring the arm down and you always want to do both sides. It's very important that you have both sides stretched out evenly to war if you're doing this on yourself or a partner, you want to move along the muscle don't stay in one spot the whole time because I can get uncomfortable.
We want to work the whole upper trap here another thing you could do let's say you find an area that you push down on and you feel a zinger or a pain coming up into the head or down into the arm.
If you're feeling some kind of nerve pain numbness tingling burning I would say back off of that.
But if it's just a pain that's radiating what you can do is press and hold the area for five four three two one back off and then you can continue that until that pain starts to subside.
Good job so next we're gonna work into the pectoral muscles here.
These are really tender is a very tender area especially for people who work on computers a lot because we're in this position a lot so what we're gonna do is you find the shoulder here find the clavicle or collarbone here and come right below it.
There’s a little kind of triangle here where they come together and you're gonna find the thick part of that muscle
So now instead of having the arm up here
We’re gonna do the opposite movement
You’re gonna come down here and come up
Don’t push too hard because this is a very sensitive area and again we're going to do five movements and move that hand around a little bit so you're not on the same spot the whole time
Good, here we go always do both sides good and five now if you're doing this one on yourself you can find that area bring the arm down and just bring it back.
It's very simple to do on yourself
Of course we're not going to be able to push as hard on ourselves because we don't like to inflict pain on our body okay.
So another one for the trap area or shoulder blade area. Actually let me have you turn this way okay
You find a shoulder blade here if you come along the bone as it comes towards your spine
If you find that area between the spine and the bone which is a small area
You’re going to want to push here and you can do the same movement that we did with that trapezius.
Where you go down and over there's multiple ways to work on this area this again is for people who have a lie of computer desk work.
Go ahead and just bring that up and over.
The other way to work on this area is to press and hold and have yourself or your partner bring their chin down to their chest and then turn to the opposite side, good and we'll do three about this point to and during you can move along those par spinal muscles or wrong blank muscles through here
Let’s do this I just go down and over. Now if you're doing this one by yourself that's pretty tricky bullets you can do is take a ball any kind like a tennis ball, lacrosse ball.
If you can lean up against a wall and hold pressure then you can do these movements yourself okay
So next we're going to do a little bit of the neck we have to be very careful because this is a sensitive area and we do not want to injure anything, so if you go to the back of the neck right here
And that's where your spine is
We don't want to be on there you want to come over about an inch to the thick part of the muscle very gentle pressure and just slowly turn the head that's all.
We're gonna do very very gentle pressure, a very small turn of the head you're not turning all the way is just to get a little bit of a stretch in there.
We're keeping it very simple with the neck.
If you're doing this to yourself you can just simply hold that area either hand and turn away very simple and gentle stretch okay
And the last one we're gonna do is working on the forearms.
This is getting if you're on computers a lot of tablets phones we can have a lot of carpal tunnel like symptoms we can have pain difficulty moving our hands and fingers.
So when you look at the floor arm you have four muscles that sit here and four muscles that sit here where the arm things it becomes tendon
We do not want to work in this area so what you want to do on the top is find a tight area and one of the muscles you don't have to be very specific.
Bring the hand up
Bring the hand down wall applying pressure, good and just follow along those muscles, good
Now turn the hand over
You're gonna bring the hand in and bring it up, good
Let's do the other side hand up down up down, good
The right side is usually the worst sight because that's our mouse can good
And we'll just do four here perfect all
Right so that is all we're doing today
Just keep it very simple for working at our desk if you want to do those four arm stretches yourself again you just press and fall here and here very very easy, very effective only do these about five times per side.
We don't need to be aggressive.
We don't want to injure ourselves, listen to your body if something hurts then you need to back off.
We hope this helps and if you have any questions again you can email or call us
Thank you we hope you have a great day!
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