Hey… I’m Allyson at CORE Physical Therapy… I’m a physical therapist and I wanted to do this face book live today to try and help you guys have some tools on how you might fix yourself. I’ve used a lot of these concepts that I’m about to teach you when I’m out on a run on the trail and happen to tweak something or you feel a muscle or some spot on you that hurts. It might be an old injury, might be something new, but you can use this idea to try to fix whatever… and I’m going to teach you.
There are six movements you would normally try, but I’m going to do one today. Maybe we can follow up with some more but the one I’m going to do is going to address the core. So there are two for the arms, two for your core and two movements for your legs… today you’re going to learn one that’s focused on core…
A lot of things and problems in your shoulders arms and legs will stem from your core, so it’s a good place to start. It’s called an upper twist and this one specifically you can do in any position you like and you might find which position works best for you…
What you’re looking for with these movements is asymmetry. I’ll demonstrate them standing up right now… I’m not going to use my hands, we’re not pushing or torquing or trying to go for more range of motion. We’re just relaxing our hands and seeing how far can I twist over my left shoulder and then we look and how far can I go over my right shoulder. I don’t know if you guys can tell but I don’t go as far over my right shoulder as my left. Notice that?
You can try it sitting and this is kind of nice because it keeps your hips stable. If you have a hard time stabilizing, this might be a good place to try the twist. If something hurts in your hips you might start in sitting and try to the right and try to the left and that might be different in sitting than it is in standing…
You can do this on your hands and knees… so if I were to do that it would look like a twist this way or twist to that direction and see which way feels better, which way is easier, which way you have more range or less pain… any of those things that would make you think my left is way better than my right or vice versa would make for an asymmetrical condition…
So what to do when you figure out which side is easier, better, has more range of motion? Since I was standing in the beginning I’ll do that that one for starters. My right twist was more limited than my left twist, so I’m going to twist the way that was easier or less painful or had more range, the better way, the good side… I’m going to go that way and hold it for 20 seconds and with every second that I can, I’m going to try and twist a little more, twist a little more, get a little more range of motion in that direction… I might practice some of my breathing from Pilates that you already know… try and get taller, twist a little bit more, a little bit more and that’s my 20 seconds.
I’m going to do two of those so I’ll do another one, a twist to the easy way, the better way… lengthen… big breath and twist a little more, a little more… okay and then with all of these, you test in the beginning, you do your two 20 second holds and you’re going to re-test at the end. We’ll go to the left, this is my easy side, we’re gonna go the right to re-test and that’s better… it still feels a little tighter, especially my hip, than the other way does. But it is improved and that’s typically what I see when you do two 20 second holds. The bad side will get better when you treat the good side, which is usually a side you’re willing to move and do something with anyway…
The other thing possible if it’s a movement that doesn’t lend itself to stretching and holding, is to do 20 repetitions…twist one, go back, twist two, keep trying to go a little further each time and do that 20 times. Re-test and see how that bad side feels…
A mistake a lot of people make is they’ll they’ll test the good side and then they’ll go to the bad side and go ‘wow’ that’s so much better and they’ll keep doing it… you don’t need to keep doing it… just retest it once. It’s good so keep going on your run or keep going through your day. You don’t need to do another 20 times on that bad side, just be happy that it’s better and move on.
A lot of times you can do this in a yoga class or Pilates class that you’re taking and you notice the asymmetry because you’re doing movements on both sides… go to the good side a couple of extra times in your class and see if that doesn’t help the bad side.
So I taught y’all the upper twist… you can apply it to any movement you want to and see if treating the good side doesn’t help alleviate your problems on the bad side… anyway, I would love any comments that you guys have about the live video and of course you know, hi to those guys that are watching it.
I’m a physical therapist here at CORE and if you need more help, or you want more explanation, or if there’s anything we can do that would make your life better, please give us a call at 512-215-4227… We would love to talk to you more about this as well as more of the stuff that’s going to make you feel better and be able to do the activities that you want to do…
We have 20-minute free discovery session, a consultation that you can do if you want to explore what that looks like for you too… just so you know, you’ve got options. Apply at https://therapyandpilates.com/free-discovery-session/
Try that Twist and see if it helps… See you!
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