 Low back pain exercises in pregnancy
Let's start with the following exercises for relief of lower back pain. This simple procedure is best done in the evening before going to sleep. I have found with my clients that the next morning they have had fewer problems with their backs. The relaxation exercises consist of 3 phases. Phase 1: Stretching the long back muscles 1. Take a nice warm shower (or bath) so that your back is warm and well blooded. Do not wear tight or tight clothing after showering, but for example just your underwear. 2. Make sure that you can do your exercises in a warm environment (at least 20 degrees), so you remain relaxed. 3. Lie flat on your back on a bed or on the floor (preferably not a hard floor, but a carpet or a blanket) and stretch your arms completely along your body. 4. Watch your breathing, it must be relaxed and not rushed. Your breathing is very important in the exercises to relax. 5. Pull your left leg with your knee towards your left shoulder by pulling your leg under your knee to your shoulder. As you take your knee towards your shoulder, bend your head forward so that the chin goes to the chest and, importantly; take a deep breath! Hold the knee as far as you can stretched to the shoulder. Come back in the stretched position and again relax. 6. Then pull your right knee to your right shoulder with your hands just below the knee. The procedure is the same as for the left leg. 7. Repeat for a total of 5 times on your right and left. Don’t forget: exhale when your chin is to your chest, hold for 3 seconds and return to the stretched position. 8. Then we do the same exercise with both knees side by side. Grab your legs just below the knee and pull them both to your shoulders in the same way as you did for one leg. Again exhale and relax, chin on the chest and hold for 3 seconds (you will be in the foetus position). You will notice that during the exercises you can get your knees closer to your shoulders. 9. Come back to the extended position and relax. Phase 2: Stretching the lower long back muscles 1. In the extended lying position with your arms beside your sides, place your feet flat on the ground as close as possible to your buttocks. Your knees should now be standing side by side. 2. Look at a point directly above you on the ceiling. During this phase you will continue to look at this point, this helps you to keep your back as straight as possible. 3. With your hands flat on the floor, let your knees slowly turn to the left, with the left foot twisting, but still on the ground. The knees will also keep you together. Try to turn your knees as far as possible to the ground. While doing this: exhale gently but completely. Do not force it, but let gravity pull on your legs and focus on relaxing by exhaling. Keep your knees to the left for 10 seconds. Come back to the posture with the knees straight up. 4. Then do the same to the right. 5. Now repeat steps 3 and 4 three times. If it feels good then you may keep your back twisted if you can do this relaxed and you feel your lower back muscles relax. 6. Come back to the extended position and relax. Yay! Phase 3: Creating space between the vertebrae 1. Turn around get onto your hands and knees. Your hands right under your shoulders and your knees right under your hips. 2. Angle your elbows out by turning your fingers to face each other. Now look forward and keep your head straight. 3. Slowly lower your head straight to your hands, but keep looking forward as much as possible! Fully exhale as you lower your head. Stop when you get to about 10 to 5 centimetres above your hands. 4. Keep looking forward and try to place your chin over your hands, then stretch your bottom backwards, keeping your head at the same distance from the ground until your stomach is on your thighs. Relax in this posture for a moment, but keep looking straight ahead. 5. Now you should return in the same movement, but as soon as your chin is above your hands go forward slowly and bring your chin upwards in a smooth motion (looking upwards). Now lower your belly to about 5 to 10 centimetres above your hands. Try to hold this posture for 3 seconds while breathing out again. You will especially feel your arm muscles because they are in an unusual posture, but your back comes in a nice hollow posture to create space between your vertebrae. 6. Come back to your original position on your hands and knees, relax for a moment and repeat step the movement another two times. 7. When you are ready, get up and go to bed. You should go to bed with a relaxed lower back, your back pain relieved. Now let rest do its job. How often and when The exercises take about 15 minutes. They may be repeated in the morning and at any time of the day when your lower back pain becomes unbearable. But at least every night before you go to sleep. It is important that you also observe the pattern of nutrition and rest. Within 7 to 10 days if you do these exercises every night then your back pain should be considerably less, if not completely gone. Once the pain is gone it is important to make your back stronger so that your back pain does not return. By Dr Joe Arrindell Osteopath Care 4 Health Mallorca  BIG ANNOUNCEMENT!
I am ON THE MOVE! From the end of September, I will no longer be working out of the Son Caliu Hotel. From next Monday, October 1st I will have a one-month residency at CrossFit Mallorca in Son Bugadelles, Santa Ponsa. I will be available for appointments as normal in the private treatment room there. There is plenty of easy parking outside of the gym, and on street as well. Then for November, I will be announcing even BIGGER NEWS! Stay tuned! BOOKINGS: Joe@carefourhealth.com M: (+34) 635 870 606 (WhatsApp) CrossFit Mallorca Carrer Mar Mediterraneo 25 (opposite the Buga 2000 gas station) Poligono Son Bugadelles 07180 Cycling is a growing sport; at the moment it is in the top 20 and still climbing. Races like the Tour de France, La Vuelta and or the Giro de Italia all contribute to the awareness of cycling. The successes of Team Sky have also played a very important role in the awareness of cycling in Great Britain and beyond.
Nowadays more people are being more active. We live in a very stressful world of sitting sometimes more than 8 hours a day. Cycling is a very good way to getting fitter and also let us not forget the social aspect of it, you can go for a ride with your neighbour, friend, colleague or even your significant other. Once you start racking up those miles, you may even start to think further in the sense of a training camp or a cycle competition for instance on an idyllic island such as Mallorca, Spain. At the moment there are quite a few professional teams training here on the island. Last year while working as an osteopath and training specialist for the Swiss pro team IAM Cycling, I would get the question asked by regular cyclists visiting us in hotel: How can we train like a pro cyclist? There are many ways to train like a pro but we choose to go for simple but yet effective ways of training. A very important aspect of training is the awareness of correct breathing. Believe it or not, most people are not breathing correctly and even worse when doing any form of sports, especially endurance sports such as cycling. I teach the pro cyclists to activate their diaphragm before training and competition. The diaphragm is a dome-shaped, muscular partition separating the thorax from the abdomen in the body. It plays a major role in breathing, as its contraction increases the volume of the thorax and so inflates the lungs. Increasing the volume of the thorax is what we want in cycling but what many of us unfortunately don’t have! Good breathing helps to keep the body from not getting injured but more importantly changes how we are sitting on the bicycle. The body’s postural muscles are all slow twitch muscles; they need to hold up the body for sustained periods of time with minimal movement required to sustain position. Slow twitch muscle fibers require oxygen to operate effectively. If we are not breathing correctly and therefore not getting enough oxygen to the muscles they cannot function correctly to support our bodies in the continuous fight against gravity. This means that if we can influence our breathing we can influence our ability to maintain a good posture. If our posture is aligned, we feel better, stay healthier and most important achieve ability to generate more power on the bike. What can be impacting on our performance on the cycle?
Before you activate the diaphragm, notice the position of your spine. The more upright your spine, the more open up you are to breathe. By correcting your position alone, you can increase your oxygen intake by up to 1.5 liters. To activate the diaphragm, we are going to start rubbing with our fingertips along the rib cage, up to the sternum. This process should take up to 2 minutes at most; there will be areas where you are sensitive, stay there a little longer, these that need more rubbing. Best way to start this is by lying on your back, (in the video link I have prepared; I have my client standing up though) You can activate at least once a day. If you are going out for a cycle, I would also recommend doing activating 10 mins beforehand. After that I also give the correct breathing exercise to take home: First breathe out through your mouth, pull the belly in to get the air out of the stomach. By breathing out first you feel where the movement is going to take place, in the belly! No movement in the chest!! This is very important!! This is part that most people get wrong. Breathe in through the nose so that the belly goes out again. Keeping a hand on the belly is a good way to feel if you are doing this correct. I tell my clients to start with one min and each day increase a minute until ten minutes. This can also be done more times a day. You would be amazed at how difficult this is. In the video you can also notice a clear ‘before’ and ‘after’ in the testing of the length of hamstrings, the muscles that run from our back of our hip bones to the backside of our knee joint. Take a look at the video below: https://youtu.be/LCLVzed0XwQ So by activating the diaphragm you can already change the tension in your hamstrings, imagine what you can do if you combine this with correct breathing? I love abbreviations. They make our lives easier and if used frequently it becomes a part of daily rituals. There was once a well-known abbreviation known to everyone who had a cellular phone. S.M.S. stands for short message service. The Whatsapp messaging app has taken it over in popularity.
From January 1 2017, I would like to introduce a new abbreviation; one that I may someday hope will become as well known as the S.M.S here in Mallorca. S.M.C. is an abbreviation that will be known to the Non Spanish speaking residents/visitors either living and or working on Mallorca. S.M.C. stands for Skeleton & Muscle Consultant. The idea for this abbreviation came about while working on Mallorca as an osteopath and rehabilitation specialist. Mallorca is a Spanish island in the Mediterranean Sea. It is a popular vacation island. Beautiful nature, a well-connected airport, fully equipped marinas and sportive activities all year round make the island a well-visited hub for many tourists and workers. Unfortunately accidents do happen and when they do, you would like to get the best available care to get you back on your feet as soon as possible. This where the SMC comes in handy! If you have an issue with understanding the Spanish language, the SMC can assist you. If you need to know where you can get a MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) as soon as possible, the SMC can assist you. If you need to see a specialist dealing with any part of the skeletal body, the SMC can assist you to help you the best choice available to you. Also if you had any musculoskeletal treatments and you would like to have more information regarding your injury, rehabilitation and or follow up care in your country of residence, the SMC can also give assistance. For instance, a temporary worker twisted her ankle during work and was rushed to the hospital for treatment. Here it was unclear if the ankle was broken or not but they put a cast around the ankle until the knee. She was told to buy crutches and she would not be able to walk on the ankle for 3 weeks. She decided to consult a SMC and found out that the ankle needed to be repositioned and a cast was not necessary. Three osteopathic treatments in a one week and homework exercises during the week got her back walking on her feet after one week! This is just one of the many examples where a SMC can play a crucial role in your health! If interested in a consultancy, please contact Joe Arrindell Jr. via email: joe@carefourhealth, facebook page http://facebook.com/CareFOURHealth, whatsapp: +34635870606 #carefourhealth #osteopathmallorca #skeletonmuscleconsultant |
AuthorAfter 20 years of learning from and working with the best people in the business, Dr. Joe Arrindell Jr decided to move to Mallorca to use the years of experience to grow and develop a sports therapy & osteopathic
clinic. The 2016 season when he was not in the clinic working, he was then traveling with the IAM Swiss Pro Cycle team. Besides being one of the osteopaths for the team, he was also in charge of the strength and conditioning aspect for the complete team before and during the pro cycle season. Archives
September 2018
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