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» Weekly Cup of Joe - Episode #10 - Posture Emergency - Stretching Exercises -
Weekly Cup of Joe - Episode #10 - Posture Emergency - Stretching Exercises -

Weekly Cup of Joe - Episode #10 - Posture Emergency - Stretching Exercises -

Read the transcript for this video:

Good morning, happy Wednesday and welcome to your Weekly Cup of Joe! Sorry, we missed last week. I was a little under the weather, so I was not able to put one out last week, so my apologies. But the last few weeks we've been working on posture, and talking about back to school. We've got a workshop coming up next week on Thursday, the 27th at 7:00 PM. So, there'll be a link at the bottom for you to register for that or you can call the clinic at (630) 892-8003 for that workshop if you want. But, this is the last of the series. Today we're going to be working on some stretching exercises. We talked about posture, some tips, and reminders about it. We gave some strengthening exercises the next week. This week we are talking about some stretching exercises, so hope you're ready for that. So first one is one that you may have seen, may have done is just a classic doorway stretch to work on stretching out the front part of your chest and front part of your shoulders and arms. So all you go to do is find a classic doorway, and you walk through a lot of them throughout the day.

The big part of it is, that you'll be putting your hands up against the doorframe, nice and comfortable. We're doing a position roughly about shoulder or chest height. You can put your arms out wide, you can put 'them here and we also are putting down low. You stay within good posture in that area and we're just going to find to a comfortable position. You don't want to be leaning forward with head forward, it's not like a race or finish line, just small steps with whatever leg you feel comfortable with. As you'll see, doesn't really matter which one, whichever one you feel more comfortable with and we're deep breathing, relaxing, holding it for about 20 seconds. Arms go on the side, it can be out down a little bit lower, wherever is comfortable to you. A small step, nice and easy. As I said, you could have your arms down a little bit lower if you want to down here, maybe even a little higher, if it's more comfortable; whatever position feels good to you. And then we also do it with the arms down low. So we get a little bit more down into the form, elbow, biceps, front part of your shoulder and the different parts of the chest. Like I said, always working on deep breathing, relaxing, good posture, lining your ear hole with the bit of the shoulder, bit of the trunk and hips. So we're here instead of leaning forward like this in the doorway, excellent.

The next one we're going to do, and you can do those throughout the day. Doesn't matter how many times a day you want to do that. So next one we're going to do is if you happen to have an exercise ball, like a Swiss ball, like I am going to show you here, one thing you can do is as long as it's comfortable to you, as you can just stretch out backwards. You can go in a modified position to feel a little more deeper squat, just relax, open up, and you can go back, as far as you want to go. Then you want to hold that for as long as you feel comfortable. I don't like the blood rushing to my head, so I don't like to be in that position too long, five seconds, 10, 20, 30 seconds maximum; varied positions, don't really matter, but you can try that and see how that feels. Another good one to do is when sideways over the ball. So you can just put one leg down on the floor, and pop the leg out in front in a stagger-type position. And you can just kind of arm here, arm out, just stretching the whole body out on the side a little bit more. 

These tight muscles on the side are also going to affect how your posture is and we do that on both sides, obviously. Same thing, 5 seconds, 10 seconds, 20, 30 seconds, longer if you want to, deep breathe as long as there's no pain anywhere else in the body. You're not going to cause pain somewhere to get a stretch somewhere else and it has to be really comfortable.

One of the last things we can do is, what we call an upper trunk rotation, but we're going to be on our side to do it. You can lay down on your side, nice and easy, get a pillow to support your head, your hand can support the head, whatever you want to do, just making sure you're still in good alignment here. You don't want to be cranked down too low, you don't want to be propped up too high, so you want to have your head in a good position and your arm will be out in front and what you're going to do is rotate. So you're in this position, you're just going to rotate back as far as you can. So you're just going to go rotating back nice and easy, and your hand goes back and your head follows your hand as you move. And of course, we'll do that on both sides as well, 10 repetitions, 15 repetitions, just something nice and easy to warm up, loosen that body up as much as you can, to just try to open things up so that when you're working on your posture reminders, and you're doing your strength and exercises that, oh, I can be in a better position.

So hope all those tips have helped the past few weeks. As I said, we have a workshop coming up next week, on the 27th that evening at 7:00 PM at the clinic. It's going to be in the clinic or in person. There'll be a limited number of seats to think about eight as well we're going to do it because of social distancing guidelines but we're also be offering it on zoom. So there'll be a link below to click and register and if you want to also go and call the clinic, that's probably the easiest way to do it, (630)- 892- 8003 definitely go ahead and do that. And hopefully, you'll be able to make it if you want to. It's a good time of the year with the kids even though going back to school is looking a little different this year, as last year ended up differently, but the kids still are studying, and you'll be working from home potentially a little bit more again, helping the kids out with their schoolwork, whatever it is. We just may be hunched over a little bit more on the computers, helping the kids out. So, we want to try to help our back health out and try to keep our bodies in the best shape that we possibly can. Thank you once again. Next week we'll have another episode. I'm not sure where we're focused on next week yet, but I have a good idea. So join us next Wednesday for your Weekly Cup of Joe. Thank you. Bye.

COVID-19 Update: Due to the continued COVID-19 concerns we wanted to update everyone on our current policies. We are still considered to be an essential healthcare provider, but as of January 1, 2023...
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