In this video, I'm going to show you five ways to walk for longer. If you suffer from lumbar spinal
stenosis, spinal stenosis is often associated with pain, numbness, tingling, and weakness that goes
into the legs, the longer that somebody's walking, if you've been told that you have a stenosis
problem, or you suspect that you've got a stenosis problem, then you're going to want to save this
video, make sure you bookmark it, and apply all the tips that I'm going to give you today.
Now, I'm not going to go into the details of how lumbar spinal stenosis works, what causes it,
all the things to look for, I've got actually a playlist of videos here on this YouTube channel
that go into all those details. There are over 10 videos there that give you tons of information
about lumbar spinal stenosis, and I've linked it in the description below, I'm just going to tell
you in this video exactly what you need to do to walk better so that you can walk for longer.
Let's start out with the first thing, you need to prime your abdominal muscles.
abdominal muscles are key for being able to take pressure off your lower back. So priming them
is really, really important. So what I mean by priming them is get them to wake up and turn on so
that they're more active for you when you go walk. That way they're taking pressure off your spine
while you're on your feet. And this will allow you to experience less pain, numbness, tingling,
and weakness into your legs. And here's exactly how to do it. In sitting or standing. I'm going
to sit on the table here so you can see me better. And sitting, I'm going to do is suck
in your abdominals. But do it in a way that makes you slouch from your upper body a little bit.
So your abdominals attached from your lower ribs right here to your pubic bone down here,
it feels that space in the front where you don't have any bones. And when you suck in your abs,
if you do this properly, it should make your chest come down slightly. The way that people
do this incorrectly is they suck in their abs and stick out their chest and get taller, more erect,
and they are trying to improve their posture, but actually wants you to slouch slightly,
that's important for turning on your abs the correct way to take the pressure off your spine.
Because if you're sticking out your chest, and getting in that more upright posture,
it actually compresses your spine more, which feeds into the lumbar spinal stenosis problem. You
don't want to pinch those nerves by compressing your spine more. So on a scale of zero to 100%,
you only need to fire your abs about 25 to have very most 50%. So I'm going to do
it right now I'm just going to go 100%. So I know when that's at sea, you know,
I slouch a little bit, my chest and shoulders came down. And I'm going to back off to about
50%. And it feels like this will hold that for about 10 seconds or so. And then relax.
Suck it in 50%, I'm going to 80% right now just to go a little more intense than I usually do.
And then relax and do this five times 10 times if you want, it just takes seconds,
if you know you're going to be on your feet, like you're going to go to the store, you're
going to start doing chores around the house, or you have to do something outside the house.
Take one minute to prime your abs or less. Now after you're done priming your ads,
we're going to move into the second thing, which is to prime your glutes, the glutes are just as
important as the ABS because they're the muscles that are right below your spine. And they help to
give a lot of stability to the base of the spine, which sets up the rest of the back right here.
So the way you prime your glutes, you could I prefer to do it in standing, you could do it in
sitting as well, you would just tension up your buds, squeeze them right here. And it's the same
intensity as the abs. If you think of 100%, you can go on 2%. But you just don't want to lose your
abs in this because what some people do is they squeeze your glutes and they extend their back,
which means you don't have ABS anymore, you are kind of sticking out your chest up here.
You need to be able to flex your chest down just a bit like when you have your abs contracted. So
glutes, hold that for about 10 seconds. Do that five times.
And at this point, if you want to just throw the ABS into it and combine the two.
You certainly can't. The way to do these two seated is just like I was sitting; I can squeeze
my glutes see how my whole body comes up a little bit because these muscles just thicken down here.
But tension the abs too so my pelvis turns back and you should feel less pressure in your low
back. It should feel like muscles aren't really working your low back. If anything,
they might stretch a little bit, which is a good thing. You need those back muscles, the ones that
are right on your lower back to stretch out and lengthen to take pressure off your lower back.
Take a minute doing this hold it for 510 seconds. 10 seconds is best. And do it five to 10 times
shouldn't take you more than a minute or two at most. And after you've primed them.
Now you're ready for step three. Step three is use your abdominal muscles and your gluteal muscles
correctly when walking The way to do this is just like I've already shown you how
to suck in your abs a bit while bringing your chest and shoulders down 25 to 50%.
Hold that in, you're going to walk like that, but the glutes are a little bit different. You have
to get individual control over each glutes, you have to be able to squeeze your right glute and
squeeze your left glute. And as you take steps, listen closely, when you put your right foot down
to take a step, the right glutes, the gluten, the same leg should tension up a bit 25 to 50%.
Then when you step on your left foot, the right side is going to relax the right glutes going
to relax and the left glute of the left on the left side where you're putting your left foot
down and putting pressure onto your left foot, the left glute muscles should then contract.
And then when you step back over to your right glute contracts left glute relaxes.
So basically, any leg that you're stepping on and putting pressure, the corresponding glute muscle
of that side should tighten up a little bit 25 to 50%. So essentially, walking is going to be
alternating glute contractions. While holding your abs a little bit tight. This is the best way to
consistently get pressure off your low back. So that you can tolerate walking for longer
with less pressure on your nerves, which translates to decrease pain, increased strength,
decreased numbness and tingling in your legs, if you suffer from lumbar spinal stenosis. So to give
you an example of how this looks, I'm just going to walk across the screen for you here. sucking in
my abs, I'm going to step on my right leg, I'm going to put pressure on my right leg. And I'm
already thinking about tightening up this right glute here, as I lean my body over my right leg.
Now this glute has to engage a bit, my left side is kind of relaxed as I take a step with
my left leg, then as I step over, this side is going to start to relax while my other side
begins to contract. And just keep going like that. So I would just do it like this,
you might literally just spend some time with your hands on your hips like this,
feeling the muscles work. And getting an idea of how to do this while holding the apps.
This takes some serious practice. For some people, I teach this in the clinic all the time to our
patients that have lumbar stenosis problems. And they can sometimes get it really fast.
Most of the time, they take a week or two to get it down, right. And there's some patients
that take longer than a week or two to get it down. Right, because of the coordination.
The biggest mistakes people run into is they're firing both glutes at the same time. And then they
forget about their abdominals when they're working their glutes or they forget about their glutes
when they work in the abdominals. So coordinating it all together and making this the normal way
that you walk is challenging, I've got a couple more things to you, there's five things I'm going
to give you here, I'm actually going to bonus one. So make sure you watch to the end. Just to make a
point about this walking pattern. This has got to be the way that you walk all the time. And if you
don't fix it now, especially if you haven't had a back surgery for your spinal stenosis problem,
you're going to keep walking the same way you were which probably fed into the problems and
got your lumbar spinal stenosis problem, you're going to keep up that same walking pattern.
After your surgery, which is going to set you up for some other problem, it doesn't
fix the root problem to have a surgery. This walking pattern is part of the solution for
fixing the root problem. You're getting your abs and your glute muscles working
properly during walking. That's incredible. Because how much time do you spend on your feet?
It is the cure for lumbar spinal stenosis problem, it is the way to stop it from progressing
so that it doesn't get more aggravated and worse over the years. And then you end up in
a situation where you have to have surgery because of the amount of compression that's
going through your nerves. Alright, that being said, let's move into number four, you've got
to get more strength in your abdominals. Now, you may have thought you're doing
abdominal strengthening by sucking your abs and doing that while you're walking. But I consider
that more coordination, not strengthening, and there's a difference between the two. To give you
an example of strengthening, it's basically how much weight you can lift up in a single motion.
Like if I were to pick up a weight and press it up overhead, and it's 100 pounds or 200 pounds.
That's a way to test your strength and to increase your strength if you do it repetitively.
But coordination is adding fine movements to this motion. Like if you're going to
change a light bulb you have to be able to twist your hand up here. Being able to
reach in a high place in move something around like you might do at home when you're cleaning
or organizing things. Coordination is where your strength turns into your practical everyday life.
They overlap and so It's important to work on both strength and coordination. So when
working on the strength of your abdominals, you got to do what looks like an exercise,
not a walking pattern. So let me show you the first exercise that you need to get started with.
In order to get your abdominals stronger. For your lumbar spinal stenosis problem,
you're going to have to lie down somewhere like on the floor or your bed somewhere comfortable.
Have your knees bent just like this. And your goal is to get your abs especially your lower
abs below your belly button to work to turn on and to get a little tired. In order to do that,
you've got to smash your low back all the way down to get your lower abdominals engaged.
You should feel your all your abs tighten up, but you want your abdominals below your belly button
to tighten up a bit more than everything else. Once you have achieved that, then you're
going to reach your hands up at your, at your knees and hold it here for 10 seconds.
And ideally bring your chin down to your chest and look between your legs like this.
Now I'm getting shaky here. And that worked on my abs, I am not suffering from any back
problems. Thankfully, this is just a challenging move to do. And when you're up here holding it,
you need to double check that you're pushing your low back down as hard as you can as if you're
smashing your hand behind your back here. And that allows you to turn on your lower abs better.
You're going to hold this for 10 seconds, and do 10 reps at a time
1520 30 reps at a time. You can take breaks whenever you need to.
And if you can work your way up to doing more than 30 reps, 50 reps, your abdominals should be
getting significantly stronger. Now the glutes are really important to strengthen as well.
And there's a exercise from the similar position that you can do with almost the same movements.
And now you're going to turn on your glutes so looks like this. Lie down again with your back
flat and your knees bent feet flat just like this. Push your back down the same exact way
that you did for this abdominal exercise. But now instead of bringing your head and shoulders up,
you're going to lift your hips. So it looks like this. You're going to push
that back down, squeeze the butt muscles. Think about tightening these glutes.
Avoid tightening your thighs a whole lot. What you should feel is your glutes working the most,
you might feel the thigh muscles working some, but you always need to get these glute muscles
working harder. If you feel like you can't do that, like your thighs are working more
than your glutes. Modify the exercise by opening your feet, angling your toes out,
living your knees fall out a little wide and do the same thing back flat, but tight.
And then you can begin to lift your hips just a bit of wood coming up as high as you can,
because that's definitely going to make you use your quads, the front of your thighs quite
a bit and your back muscles. You don't want to use your back muscles,
you actually want to relax those and focus on using the glutes so it looks more like this
back flat, but tight, lift up just an inch or two. And hold here for 10 seconds. You should feel your
abdominals working some and your muscles work in a good amount to after 10 seconds. Relax
and repeat this about 10 times. Like the abdominal exercise, you want to work your way up to 20 reps,
3050 reps or more to really get at the strengthening for these muscles back here.
Now these are just two starter exercises, the abdominal strengthening and the glute exercises.
But I've got plenty more exercises that progress you through getting your glutes stronger your
abdominals and other muscles that that could be weak and contributing to your lumbar spinal
stenosis problem. And we've packaged them all in a program called the 28 day back health and wellness
boost program. It's an online and comprehensive program for treating the root problem for most
back issues, including lumbar spinal stenosis. You can get more details about this program
by following the link in the description below for the 28 Day Back Health And Wellness Boost Program.
Now I've got a bonus tip for you and I didn't want to include this as part of the main five
because this doesn't work for everybody. The other stuff that I gave you definitely works
for just about every person that I've seen with lumbar spinal stenosis, as long as it's not too
far gone and the nerves are super compressed. Those people probably need to talk to a surgeon.
But if you have days where the pain comes and goes, it's not as bad the numbness
tingling or weakness is not as bad some days then there's a good potential for you
to improve your situation by following these five tips. Now this next bonus tip might give you some
relief but I find it to be less consistently successful. And it's this it's quite simple.
Get yourself a back brace. I've got this one by Spartos I did a review on this one. I'm
not going to go into the details of all the pros and cons and my honest review. As you can tell,
I recommend it still have it and brought it onto the channel here. but it's a simple back brace.
And putting this on helps you to decompress your spine. So just to show you how this one
straps on and how you might use it, take off these other straps here
get it nice and compressed on you and then add these extra straps.
And the way to use this is when you go walking now it's giving you some, some decompression through
your spine, some extra support, but you still want to be using your abs the way that I showed
you where you were, you kind of dry it. That's the key with this brace here
is you can't just rely on the brace and not do the exercises or engage the muscles that I've told you
to the glutes and the abdominals. You need to include the glutes and the abdominals with this,
this just might boost the amount of time that you can spin on your feet.
But it's not going to cure the problem. This is just a supplementary thing
that might help you out if you're interested in getting this race or something similar
to it. I've got the link for this brace down in the description below for Amazon.
That's where I got this one. Hey, I hope this advice was helpful for you drop any
questions or comments down below in the comment section. And I'll see you in the next video. Bye