Stephen: Yeah.
Jared: All right.
Stephen: Yeah. Hey guys, what’s up? It’s Stephen Dunn and Dr Jared Aguilar from CORE Therapy and Pilates.
But today we want to do a quick little video to basically answer some concerns and questions, some things that we’re seeing commonly in the clinic right now. So with that said, take it over Dr. Jared.
Jared: Yeah.
Stephen: And tell us about it.
Jared: As far as the topic of this conversation today, the past couple of days, past couple of weeks we’ve interacted with some lovely people, some lovely strong people. They did happen to be women but what we’re going to talk about can apply to women or men. That were afraid of moving their spine in some form or fashion, particularly it was when bending over to pick something up. Some people were afraid to bend their spine towards the ground and some people were afraid to pick up even a purse off of the ground, and in general you know that’s okay, especially if you’ve been in a car accident, if you’ve had some type of trauma, if you’ve even suffered from back pain for a while, it’s okay to have that, to be a little hesitant to move. But just understand that movement is natural and over time you will regain that confidence, and that fear will slowly wipe away. Anything you want to add to that psychological aspect?
Stephen: Yeah, it’s kind of like as a whole the medical profession has taught us, if you’re having back pain to rest and don’t do anything. That’s some of the worst advice you can get is resting and doing nothing. What you should be doing is moving, the moving within your comfort zone and moving in a way that’s allowing you to progress. So I think it is a very common thing where we have been taught, sometimes by our parents.
Jared: Yeah.
Stephen: Sometimes by, my mom has a bad back and she taught me that I should never bend over to touch my toes. So I have never bent over to touch my toes. The reality is that our backs are very strong and very able to bend, you’re not going to hurt yourself bending over. It can be a bad thing when you’re flared up and having an irritated disc, there’s times when bending is not advised. But to just have a blanket fear of moving and bending for the rest of your life because your mom told you or your orthopedic doctor told you that, that’s not really a good way of living.
Jared: For sure. I couldn’t have said it better. That sounds beautiful man. But, so we’ll give you a quick demonstration on how to do a basic lifting pattern, if you need to pick up something heavy from a low to medium height. So if you are kind of sensitive in the back and you’ve got a little back twinge going on, we’ll show you how to lift with more of your hips than your back. So we’ll bring a little stool here and this can change a bit, whether we’re talking about picking stuff up from the floor, picking stuff up from medium height. But just for a demonstration purposes here in the video, we have let’s say a little dog here. We’ve got a little Reece, not quite as heavy. So medium height here is about my knee height. First we’ll get into a little powerful stance. If you’ve ever played sports, your knees are kind of soft, your butt’s going back behind us. Here you’re in a powerful position somebody won’t be able to come and knock you over here. We’re not just Lucy Goosey.
So we’re in a powerful stance, due to the camera my feet are a little bit wider here. What’s going to happen from this position, we’re going to hinge at the hips, my butt’s going to go back, there’s going to be a stretch or some tension that I feel in my hamstrings, and I’m just going to reach out, be as close as I can to this object, pick it up, bring it close to my chest, squeeze my glutes on the way up, and stand.
We call it a hip hinge pattern, it’s a real easy way to pick up moderately heavy load from about your knee to your shin height, and look we have a guest star coming through behind us. Look at that. There’s your real live dog.
Stephen: Here’s little Dudley.
Jared: Do you want to demonstrate an appropriate way to pick up a dog.
Stephen: Yeah. What most people would go to do is they’ll just do like this and come up. That’s something we want to avoid. So you want to get down low. I like to get underneath him and then come up here.
Jared: Like that.
Stephen: Then once we have him here, keeping him very close to your body, instead of our here. The further they are out the harder it is. So keep him close to your body and really move into those legs. What do you think Dudley?
Jared: That’s beautiful. What a beautiful model, Dudley is.
Stephen: Dudley is the man. So that’s our lifting tip for the day and I like to also talk about breathing. Whenever you’re lifting you want to make that your exhale. So that you’re exhaling as you come up. Exhale on exertion. So just a few things to think about. Thanks for watching guys that are out there. Comment below, like, and we’ll see y’all around next time.
Jared: Hey. See ya.
Stephen: Take care guys.
Jared: Bye.
Call 512-215-4227 if you have a fear of moving your back! We see it all the time and have helped so many overcome that fear and get back to moving, exercising and doing the activities that they thought they would never do again…
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