Read the transcript for this video:

Good morning and welcome to your Weekly Cup of Joe. My name is Joe King. I'm the owner of physical therapy advantage in North Aurora. I'm here today talking to you about Activities of Daily Living. This is our second part of a three-part series. The last time we talked about getting into the dishwasher, today we're going to talk about getting into lower cabinets in your kitchen or wherever you may be, or getting underneath, even making a bed or getting underneath the bed if you stored some stuff there, wherever it may be, just getting somewhere down lower. So what we try to do is decrease some daily irritating factors that might being placed on your body, whether it be your upper back, mid back, lower back, hips, knees, ankles, whatever it is. We can show you some proper mechanics and techniques to do, or some modifications that you can do to break the habits that you've been doing for many years that might be irritating things on a daily basis. That's going to be some nice relief for you. And so hopefully some instant relief and especially if you do it over time, wow, this feels much better on a daily basis for you.

All right, so one of the big things you want to do is making sure that you can utilize the counter space around you. It's okay to hold on to something, you don't have to feel like, oh wow, I can't, hold on. If you're getting something that you need two hands with, much different story. But if you need to use your hands for balance or to support yourself, don't consider that cheating or anything like that. So as we get into those lower cabinets, you're bending down, you're opening that up. Depending on how big, how many, whatever you're getting into, depends on how you can do this in many different ways.

You can widen your base of support, you can hold on and you can just squat down if you can squat down and get whatever it is you need; a pot top, an actual pot, whatever it is. Or you can put one leg in front of the other, kind of in an offset position and do the same thing. And you can put your hand on your leg, hand on the counter and get down and squat down. If that's a little too much on your hips and your knees, you could actually go onto one knee in this position. Once again, you're holding on the counter, put your other hand on your thighs, fine if you can tolerate putting pressure on your knee. But this is a really good one, especially if you're going to get something really heavy. A bigger pot or bigger item underneath the cabinet allows you to get two hands, bring it close to you, and now you can stand up and be able to go down. Or if you don't want to do that method, you can do what we call a "Golfers Pick Up", kind of a reach where you put one leg way back behind you and you squat back. So I'll put my one leg back really far, whether it's on the ground or not. And then I can just bend the one knee, the front knee if it's a good knee, and put whatever is your best knee up front and bend here. My back still stays pretty straight and I can still kind of, down and reach and get the pot when I need, or if I put it back down, I can go and I can put it back, hold it on, like I said, for balance, utilizing it to support yourself. Not considered cheating at all, but it's much better than what we would typically see people do, is they'll get over the cabinet and they bend over like this and puts a lot of strain in the low back and the hips and you obviously can't reach nearly as far either. So you're really trying to really struggle at that point in time.

If you have any questions about this type of stuff, ADL training, activities of daily living, other things that you may be having difficulty at home with and you want to talk to a therapist at the clinic, we'd love to talk to you, see if we can help you out. And like I said, decrease of daily irritating factors for you. Just give us a call at clinic at (630) 892-8003. Love to hear from you. If you have any questions PT related, definitely give us a call as well. And we look forward to seeing you next week for your Weekly Cup of Joe! Bye.