Weekly Cup of Joe - Episode #20 - Back Pain

Read the transcript for this video:

Hey, everybody happy Tuesday! And, welcome to your Weekly Cup of Joe! My name is Joe King. I'm the owner of Physical Therapy Advantage, North Aurora here. I'm actually in the clinic. I don't know how many we've been doing in my basement because of COVID and working from home quite a bit, but today I'm in the clinic and we're releasing today early because we have a workshop coming up on Thursday, so I wanted to get it out a couple of days ahead of time. So today is the last segment on back pain. We've been doing a lot of different segments, in the last two or three weeks on back pain. Last week, we did stretches, so hopefully those have been good for you. Today we are going to talk about some strengths and exercises that you can do; some mobility and strength exercises. So I'm going to get right to it here.

So the first one is going to be what we call Sideline Upper-trunk Rotation. So you're going to lay on your side comfortably find either the bed and or the floor with a mat or blanket or whatever you feel comfortable with and keep it a pillow. So your head is in good alignment. So we don't want your head cranked up as we talked about before, we don't want your head tilted down too far either; so it's uncomfortable. Try to be directly on your side so you're not rolling back too far, you're not rolling over too far and you're put your arm out in front of you, and rest it on the floor. I'm going to rest the dangling below the table here, but then you're just going to bring it up towards the ceiling and then rotate back as far as you can and then bring it back again nice and easy. And keep it about chest heights, shoulder height, nothing higher, so just try to keep it the same plane. Nice and easy. Have your eyes follow your hands, your eyes are always looking at your hand, nice and easy. Go as far as you can, stop before any point of pain and of course, if you are on the table, don't roll over and fall off the table. Couple of sets of 10 of that, pretty easy. One set of 10, one set of 15, couple sets of 10, just something nice and easy. Do it in the morning and in the evenings to loosen up.

The next one we're going to do is the Bridge. So a lot of you may have seen this before, were you picking your butt up off the floor or off the table, kind of a thing. So we want to make sure that we're in a good, comfortable position. Our feet are in a good, comfortable position. They don't want to be too far or too narrow, just a nice shoulder-width part. But the big thing when we do a bridge is we want to make sure that we can track our abdominals first. So tighten up your stomach muscles; tighten them up a little bit and then raise it up and then down slowly. So think about tightening your stomach up first, then squeezing your butt cheeks and then raising it up as far as you feel comfortable, stop before pain and then down slow. Keep your abdominals tight as you go up and as you go down, keep your butt tight as you go up and as you go down; so tighten everything up, abs, butt, and then raise it up to what you feel comfortable, keep it tight as you go down and then relax everything. A couple of sets of 10, at least one, but a couple of sets of 10 of that a day will be very good as well.

The next exercise is going to be, and if you notice I have my shoes off already, it's for this next exercise. So we can do some heel slides. So we're at the same position where just stand, we just laying on your back with knees back out in front of you. So now you're going to tighten up that stomach once again. And you're just going to slide the taped leg out partway and come back in, slide leg, partway out and come back in. You don't have to go all the way; you can if you want to but you only have to go partway. If you want. The most important part is can you keep your stomach tight as you slide out and you slide in can keep the stomach tight as you go up and as you go back in. So we're learning to stabilize and tighten up our abdominal muscles as we're using our leg muscles. So if we can do that, we can really stabilize our spine. Same thing there, a couple of sets of 10 left-right one, left-right two once a day, twice a day, whatever you want to do, but once a day, for sure, will be very good for you. So that's the three exercises that we have. We have laying on your side doing upper trunk rotations, laying on your back knees bent doing the bridging, and then laying on your back with your knees bent, keeping your abs tight sliding one leg out, slide the other leg out. Those are three really good exercises to do to help with your back pain. Along with your stretches along with good posture, if you can maintain all those things and work on that consistently should help decrease a lot of your back pain, may not decrease at all, but it'll decrease quite a bit of it throughout your day.

So we do have a workshop coming up on Thursday, the 17th at 6:30. So there is a registration link below here, go and click on that. If you want to register, if you have questions, call the office at (630) 892-8003, we can answer those questions for you. And you know, we're still dealing with COVID, unfortunately. It looks like there's a vaccine on the way, so that's really good, but we're still going to have to deal with it for a while. And, we are taking all the precautions that we possibly can. So, all staff are wearing masks, all clients are wearing masks., we are cleaning diligently, and therapists are wearing gloves during treatment especially when we're doing any hands-on treatment as well. And if you don't feel comfortable, as our tables are six feet apart, we do have a private room. So, if that's a little more comfortable for you, just let us know and we can try to arrange that for your sessions also. Have an awesome week and we will catch you next week for your Weekly Cup of Joe. Bye.