What are the most effective osteoporosis exercises for the spine that you can safely do at home? Hi,
I'm Michelle and today I'm going to guide you through
two osteoporosis exercises for the spine that are safe and effective to do at home.
Now, the most effective exercises are exercises that strengthen the spinal muscles. Now these
muscles are muscles that actually attach to these vertebra in the lower spine. So this is where the
Osteoporosis fractures or densities takes and tends to decrease and because these muscles
attached to the spine, they directly pull and load the spine when they're under force and resistance.
So the exercises I'm going to take you for today are for the long muscles of the spine,
and also to for some of the smaller muscles of the spine. Now these exercises should feel really
comfortable throughout, I'd like you to stop the exercises if they cause you any discomfort,
but I'm going to show you some modifications to do that will help you reduce discomfort and
avoid discomfort throughout the exercises. Then at the end of the video, I'll go through how
many exercises you need to do and how often so that you get the best possible results.
By the way we will be doing these exercises will be lying down on your tummy so you can do these
exercises either on the ground if you're able to get on the ground, or on a firm bed, using a
pillow underneath your hips to support your back and support your pelvis throughout. So let's get
started straightaway. So this is our starting position for our exercises for our lower back.
Now you can see I've got the pillow underneath my pelvis, and I much prefer having this
just reduces the strain on my lower back. It's up to you if you use it at home, some women actually
like to use two pillows, but I use one pillow and this is a comfortable position for my back because
it stops me hyperextending my back when I do these exercises. So coming right down into this prone
position. Now with these exercises, your feet stay down with this first particular exercise
and this is for the long extensors of the spine muscles that you can see above.
Now coming right down, your arms come down by your side and you pull your shoulders
back away from your ears. This is going to make this a postural exercise as well.
Looking down what you do as you squeeze your buttocks, pull your shoulders away from your ears,
and you lift your chest and shoulders off the ground for two and then lower down 1, 2, 3,
4 and relax. And again, keeping looking down so you're avoiding looking up straight ahead.
You keep looking down to avoid any strain on your neck, and you lift for two and then lower down
1, 2, 3, 4. And you'll feel the back extensors working even if you put your hand there, you can
actually feel those muscles working in your spine. So that's our first exercise, avoiding coming up
too high off the ground because we don't want to hyperextend the back without exercise.
For this exercise, I like to bring my hands up and support my forward with my hands placed under that
position. If that's not comfortable for you, you can have your arms down by your sides. But
that's the position I like to use. Now with this exercise, I'm going to start with a modification
for you. This is the modification. So modified exercise is to lift one leg just off the ground,
and then lower it down slowly, slowly, slowly. Now that looks like a leg exercise and it is a
buttock and leg exercise, but it also strengthens the muscles in your spine. So when we do that,
again, lifting up to progress the exercise, what you do is you reach out with the opposite arm
and you're just lifting the arm off the ground and I like to point my thumb towards the ceiling
with this particular exercise, I can just feel that I can engage my postural muscles
pull my shoulder blade back and down as I do the exercise in that position. So here's the exercise.
Lifting up just off the ground, full leg and arm and then lowering down 1, 2, 3,
4 and repeating on that side, lifting up
and lowering 2, 3, 4 and then you can repeat the same exercise on the other side if you choose to
just doing the leg or doing the leg and the arm. And I'll just show you what I'm doing with my arm
in that position. Just lifting up and lowering 2, 3, 4 and once again, lifting up and lowering 2, 3,
4, and take a rest and you can do I'll go through the number of exercises that you can do ideally
recommend to do but do what feels comfortable for you when you're first starting out.
So how many of these exercises do we need to do for getting benefits for strengthening,
for osteoporosis or osteopenia in the spine? Well, ideally, for strengthening exercises,
they need to be performed a number of times in a row. So we're trying to do up to 10
repetitions in a row, and trying to do two lots of 10 of those particular exercises.
If you can do them on two to three alternative days of the week, that is great and that's going
to help you strengthen those muscles in the spine, and also to help you to improve your posture. So I
really hope that these exercises home exercises for osteoporosis for spine help you understand
some of the types of exercises that you can do safely at home. As always, if you found the video
helpful, I'd really be grateful if you could give the video a like below because then YouTube will
share the video with other women and men that can benefit too so I'd like to really thank you for
your time for watching today and I look forward to seeing you in the next video. Goodbye for now.