Home care during stage 4: Move and Soothe your back and hips
This post is for anyone missing their normal routine and would like some tips on getting rid of the tension and restriction you may be starting to feel in your back and hips.
As most of you are aware, during the stage 4 restrictions in Melbourne, allied health are only allowed to practice on an urgent care basis, meaning that a lot of our regular clients are missing out on getting their regular adjustments as well as maintaining themselves while living in lock down!
Never fear however as Martin and Kieran have got your back and are still in practice!
If you have a specific issue please do not hesitate to contact the practice so we can see how we can keep you going.
Due to popular demand, here are some more stretches and mobilisation exercises to use at home!
Below is a video Martin made at home about how to keep yourself moving at home, helping your back and hips feel human again after the change in routine from the last few weeks of stage 4 lock downs.
As usual with our videos, the transcript is available below, but I strongly recommend you have a watch as Martin runs through some excellent tips, stretches, exercises and muscle releases that will have you feeling a lot more yourself during this period.
Enjoy!
Welcome:
Hi, it’s Martin here from Align Chiropractic. This is a follow-along video, so you can follow along as I run you through a series of exercises. Today’s video is really about moving and soothing the lower back, hips and sacroiliac joints.
When we are taking care of people in the practice in this area, there’s kind of a hierarchy that we work through to help people’s bodies work at their best. We want to restore movements to the joints first, because if the joints aren’t moving then it tends to create increased stress and strain on everything else. Lack of movement also affects the alignment, and if the movement and alignment of the joints is not the way it should be, then it causes changes to the firing patterns of the nerves. This affects the muscles, which affects the ability of your spine to balance overall, and affects the stability of how that whole system and the body works.
Begin: 1:01
We’re going to work through a sequence. Whilst it’s not as good as getting an adjustment- which is often the only way to get each of the segments working, we can use movements of our body to maximise the amount of movement we’ve got with our spine. We want to make sure that we’ve got everything moving nicely first, and then we’re going to move into increasing and improving the alignment so that we can translate that into having things working as stably as possible.
Often your body will hold onto muscle tension when things not working properly. We’re going to run through a few releases that you can do to help things feel as comfortable as possible.
Lateral Flexion: 1:40
We’re going to start off with some lateral flexion movements. Lateral flexion is a really important movement in the way that our spine works because the coupled motion of the spine means that if you’ve got lateral flexion, every other movement will perform better.
We are going to slide our right hand all the way down your right leg. We don’t want to force this movement- just get to a point where we feel a point of tension. We are going to go through a count of 3 here, then come all of the way up to go to the other side. We are going to go through this sequence 5 times each way. This should be nice and gentle. We really want to get each of the vertebrae moving as much as they can.
Flexion and Extension Introduction: 3:45
So, next we’re going to move into flexion and extension. It’s a bit of bias towards really wanting extension as much as possible because so many of our activities, whether we are sitting or bending forward, encourage flexion. For this reason, there is a bit of bias towards encouraging extension.
Flexion/Extension Exercise: 4:03
We are going to start off with extension. Hands on the lower parts of your hips here, and then we’re bending back this way. You just want to be careful that you’re not jamming things, so we’re not going super far into this one. Just get to a point where you feel a degree of tension, then holding for 3.
From here, we’re going into flexion. I’m going to be nice and gentle here. If your back is feeling a little bit tight then just stop at the first point of tension. It’s fine to have your hands on your legs there, or if you’re feeling free then we’re just going to go as far forward as we can. In this case, the fingers are touching the ground for 3, and then we are going to come all the way up.
Nice and slowly, coming back into extension. Hand is on the lower back for 3. Same thing coming forward. Nice and easy, just dropping from the hips. That’s our second time through. I’m going to come back here. All the way forward for our third sequence of five. Onto four. Nice and easy coming forward, then last one. All the way back for 3, and then last one forward.
Rotation: 6:22
For the next part, what we want to do is increase the amount of rotation that we have with our lower back. There are a couple of different ways that we can do this, but I’m going to pick an easy way.
So, what I’m going to have you do if you’re able to, is get your foot over so that it’s at the level of the other knee- that’s ideal. If that’s not comfortable, you can end up just with the leg down like that- but ideally, we want it up like this, so we’re then using leg as a bit of a lever.
So, with this one, we’re going to incorporate a little bit more breathing. So, this time I’m going to get you to breathe in through your nose, and then out through your mouth. Rather than rotating back and forth, we are just going to hold in a rotated position for three breaths.
So, we’re going to come all the way around, I’m just hooking my elbow onto my knee. The other hand goes around like this way so I’m getting a nice rotational stretch, then just increase it a little bit if I’m able to. That’s two, so we can get a little bit more.
So just little point of performance there, we’re not wanting this sort of position, we’re wanting a more upright stretch, so stretch comes through our back. So nice 3 breaths there, and then we’re going to swap legs there and stretch to the opposite way.
So, leg over and then this way. Get that rotational twist in there- in through the nose and out.
Sacroiliac Joint Movement: 8:33
Okay. So from there, we have some rotational movement. Now we want to get some movement through the sacroiliac joints. They’re the pelvic joints, the joints right at the very bottom. Their plane of movement is rather than this sort of plane, they twist forward and backward a little bit this way. The best way of working them is we want to pop one foot right out in front, and with the other we’re basically going into a long lunge here, and so the back leg is there. It’s really important that this front knee is behind our front foot, and we’re wanting to get this knee back nice and long. Then what I’m going to have here is I’m going to reach my hands in on the inside of my hips there. So, it’s a bit of a hip flexor stretch as well as mobilising the sacroiliac joints. So, from this position I’m going to hold here. I breathe in through my nose, and out through my mouth, just dropping a bit further in with each breath.
Okay so that’s 3 for that side, just going to swap positions here. I pop that leg forward and this leg back and keep my hands on the inside. If that’s too much then you can do more or less the same thing from this position, but ideally we want to really encourage a lot of movement into those sacroiliac joints because when we’re sitting, they’re not getting much movement at all. Some breathe in through the nose, and out. Just gently come out of that.
Exercise for Postural Alignment Introduction- 11:03
Okay, so we’ve now got some movement through both the spinal joints- the lumbar spinal joints, and the sacroiliac joints. So, what I want to move onto now is an exercise to just help in terms of our postural alignment. We’ve got everything moving, so let’s do an exercise that will kind of offset that tendency toward flexion and slumping forward that many of us have just from hours spent sitting. What I’m about to show you now is an exercise called a superman exercise
Superman Exercise: 11:30
It’s a really great exercise both in terms of encouraging better posture in your spine, and also it can translate to some improvements in stability.
So really simple exercise. You can lie face down, arms extended in that classic sort of superman position, and what we’re wanting to do here is just quite simply start of quite low. Lift up and hold for 3- that’s one repetition. Making sure you just sort of pinch your shoulders back as well, and having better posture through the middle back as well. That’s 10. Okay, so movement and alignment taken care of. Now we want to see if we can get rid of and release some of the tension that builds up.
Glute Tension: 13.22
The biggest driver of tension tends to be that tension in the gluteal muscles, so we want to focus on that for this sequence. You can use a lacrosse ball, a tennis ball, a cricket ball, a spikey ball, or a foam roller- this is a little short one, but the same thing works with the bigger roller. For today I’m going to use the spikey ball, but any of these will work.
So, to start with we’re going to go on our side. We’re going to work this big fleshy part on the side here called your gluteus medius. What you’re aiming for here is if you reach down you’ve got the side you’ve hit that top of your hip bone, which is called your iliac crest. There’s a fleshy bit between that and the next part of your hip called your greater trochanter. So, what we’re going to do here is we’re going to lie on our side with that there. Just find a tender spot, and then we’re going to hold that tender spot while we breathe. You’ll notice I’m slightly backward of exactly on my side- your tender spot could be slightly forward or back of there.
Breathing Introduction: 14:35
From there, I’m just going to breathe in through my nose, then one more deep breath until we’re at that full point, and then out. We’re going to repeat 3 times.
Okay, so that’s the gluteus medius released. That type of breathing also helps to get us relaxed, or what’s technically called a parasympathetic, or rest and repair state.
Piriformis Release: 15:24
Now we’re aiming for is a muscle called the piriformis muscle, which is kind of in this fleshy part right where the pocket of a pair of pants might be. We can either just put the thing on the floor and go straight on there. If you want to increase it a little bit more, you can pop that ankle of the right leg onto the knee of the left. Find that tender spot, and then we’re just holding pressure there. We’re going to do double breathes again. Let’s just relax into it. Last one.
Gluteus Medius: 16:30
That’s it, so now I’m going to flip over to the other side there. Again, we’re going to start with the gluteus medius, so come onto that side and find that tender spot- that’s the one right there. Breathe in through the nose (double breath). Alright, so let’s just released that gluteus medius.
Piriformis: 17:20
So now we are going for the piriformis. Now I don’t have a pocket on this side, but imagine where a pocket would be. I’ll pop my ball there and just have that leg straight like this, with the other one like that, or if that’s too much, just like that works fine as well. We’re going to find that tender spot- yeah that’s the one, it’s a bit more on this side than on the other side. So, I’m going to breathe in, and again.
Conclusion:
Perfect! So, there we have it. Sequence to move and improve the alignment, and then soothe and release the muscle tension there. Thanks for watching
How to set up your home work space in 4 steps - Desk top computer edition
As a chiropractor for South Melbourne and Albert Park and Seeing as though a lot of our community will be working from home for a little while longer, I thought I would take the opportunity to repost some of our more relevant blog entries. This one was from 2018 but is even more on point today, Martin and I still refer people to it regularly.
This post is gives our 4 steps for setting up your desk top computer to work from home.
It is especially good for people worried about or who suffer from tension headaches, neck or low back pain, high or sore shoulders, or other postural issues such as forward head posture.
In the video, Martin (using Kieran as an ergonomics model extraordinaire) talks us through the correct ergonomics of how to set up our desktop as a workstation.
Please enjoy the quick video.
For your convenience, the ergonomics demo has been transcribed below.
Hi, Martin and Kieran and we are here to give you a quick instructional video on how to set up your desktop computer so that it puts you in the best position to look after your precious spine and nervous system that you have, given that we are spending so much of our day working on computers.
We have got a separate video that shows you how to set up for a laptop. There are some similarities but there are a couple of really key differences when you’re setting up for a desktop, so we'll run through everything here as well.
Just like with the laptop setup, key thing is we're gonna start from the bottom up.
STEP 1: SEAT HEIGHT AND FOOT POSITION
First thing is, Kieran has his feet absolutely flat on the floor, he’s not crossing his legs which would create a twisting torsion through your lower back then cause tension to build up through the day.
Next, we set the height of the chair. If you have a gas lift chair, you want the height of a chair so that your hip is either at the same level as his knee, so we've got a horizontal line, or so that the hip is slightly higher than your knee because that allows him to maintain a really good lower back position.
If you sit with your hips lower than your knees it's really easy of get into a rounded posture, causing horrible loading up of tension in your lower back.
STEP 2: POSITION YOUR ARMS, ELBOWS, KEYBOARD AND MOUSE
So once we've got that position we then want to make sure that the height is still okay for his elbow position.
What we really want is as close to possible as a 90 degree angle at the elbow so that you can have relaxed shoulders while your hands are on the keyboard.
What we don't want is to be sitting too high, so that you have to reach down or too low, so that you’re scrunching shoulders up to get your fingers onto the keyboard.
That height looks pretty good.
Then what we want to do is to zoom in or out, so that we've got a nice relaxed position here.
If Kieran was too far back he'd be reaching and then having to use all those shoulder muscles to hold his hands on the keyboard.
What we want is that so that his arms are nice and relaxed by his side while he's using the keyboard.
The same rule applies to the mouse.
A lot of people may have the keyboard set up right but then end up having the mouse right across the desk where it’s causing a peep of pressure through their shoulder that feeds back up into your neck and causes all sorts of problems.
So once we've got that set up, this is where it's a bit different to the laptop setup.
3. SCREEN POSITION
With a desktop, the screen can be moved to two different positions depending on how often you needing to look at your keyboard.
If you touch type or you're doing a lot of data entry where you're very rarely looking down at the keyboard, then you really want the screen to be a bit higher than we've got it here. In that case, the landmark that I always use is the absolute dead center of the screen.
If you are the type of person who needs to look down at the keys periodically you don't want the screen too high, otherwise you make yourself dizzy going up and down.
So the compromise in this instance is to have the centre of the screen at about chin level and that way you're never looking too far up, and you're just working in this range.
If you're the sort of person who can touch type and you don’t really need to look at your keys, then you can go up higher which has the advantage of having a posture where your head is more balanced over your shoulders.
What we have here is a set up that is good for Kieran if he can touch type.
If he doesn't often need to look down at the keys he can spend all of his time just looking straight ahead at the screen.
So for this setup, what we've done is put a couple of books underneath the screen here, to raise it up, allowing us to have the centre of the screen at the point where it's hitting here, in-between the lip level or the tip of his nose.
That's a really comfortable posture for him to be able to look at the screen and have his head posture really nicely balanced over the shoulder, meaning a nice relaxed position through here.
When you're in that position, you are not building up so much tension on your neck and shoulders etc. by looking down all the time.
Remember, this setup is only for people who can touch type but it's a really optimal position that'll mean that he feels nice and comfortable for hours and hours of work.
STEP 4: AS ALWAYS, TAKE MICRO BREAKS
There are programs you can get that will remind you every 20-25 minutes to just stop for a minute, relax your arms way aside have a little micro break, turn your head all the way to the left, all the way around to the right, just drop your shoulders up and down a little bit and then you can get back to work.
I hope you found this video helpful please feel free to shoot us a message and let us know what you think.