Lower back stretches to help get you moving!
Transcript
Hi Guys, Emily from POGO here. I just wanted to show you a couple of stretches that can help get you moving a little bit better if you’ve got some lower back pain.
So the first one is a stretch we call a bow and arrow stretch. What it actually works on is the upper back and it helps get some rotation through what we call your thoracic spine and stretches through your chest a little bit. This is important for people with lower back pain often because the stiffer you are through you thoracic spine the more it loads up your lower back. So if we can reduce that tension through your upper back it’s going to take some pressure off your lower back. So how you do your bow and arrow stretch is lying on your side, your knees and your belly buttons stay facing the same way the whole time. You have your arms out in front, you slightly lean forward and then you open up back like this. So you can see that because my knees and belly button stay facing the same way all of the rotation is coming from my thoracic spine. So, I get a stretch through my pecs and rotation through my upper back and you’ll want to hang here for about 45 seconds to a minute, and you want to do it on both sides.
A great time to do it is when you wake up or when you go to bed because you’re lying down. The second stretch I want to show you is kind off an extension of this. So for some people it can be irritable for their lower back if it’s in the early stages of discie type back pain. So once your pain has calmed down a bit this is really good to help stretch and it’s just when you let the leg come over and then instead of the stretch moving through your upper back it moves down into your lower back and helps stretch through some of those lower muscles. So again a great stretch to do in bed, you can do it morning and night just to help stretch through the lower back muscles. So, when it comes to lower back pain, you want to address the lower back definitely but we want to address contributing factors which for you may be a stiff thoracic spine.
If you have any questions about lower back pain, any stretches feel free to leave a comment underneath and otherwise happy stretching. Thanks guys.
Emily Georgopolous (APAM)
Physiotherapist
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