G'day everyone, welcome back to another exercise video and the first exercise video of 2022.
I hope you all had a lovely holiday period. You had a great Christmas, and a great new year,
and you're ready to get back into the exercises if you haven't already.
What we're going to go through today are the best exercises to help with spinal stenosis.
If you do want to find out more about spinal stenosis, I'll pop a link to an article I wrote
up here in the corner. I'll also pop it down in the description box below as well. And before
we get into the exercises today, make sure you check with your doctor, or physiotherapist. These
exercises today will be done on the floor, I'll be going through them on the floor, if you do
have trouble getting up and down off the floor, I recommend doing these exercises on a firm bed.
Let's now get into the exercises. Getting into the first exercise now,
lying down nice and flat on your back on a firm bed or on the floor like I'm doing today.
Your head flat on the floor, everything nice and relaxed.
Let's just take a gentle breath in and a slow gentle breath out.
Focus on relaxing your body. Let's go through that again taking a gentle breath in,
as you breathe out focus on letting everything go relaxing your body.
Now just let go of any tension in your middle section of your lower back,
relax those legs as well.
Now what you're going to do is bring your legs up to your chest for the first exercise.
Both legs up to your chest, and you're placing your hands around your knees or around your legs
whichever's most comfortable, and you're just holding it there for five seconds and then bring
your legs back. Excellent work! Let's go through that again, when you're ready bring your legs up
nice and relaxed. You're just holding it here five seconds stretching out that lower back,
bringing those legs down. You don't have to bring the legs all the way back,
you can keep them up like this so you're not working your core or your hip flexors too much.
Let's bring them back up, hold that stretch using your hands to pull it in a little bit more
making sure you're not getting any pain.
Increase the stretch just a little bit, great work. Bringing it down,
just relax. Let's go again bring it up feeling that stretch holding onto your knees
relaxing your lumbar spine feeling the stretch, bring it back down.
Let's go once more bring it up, feeling that stretch,
bring it back down. Excellent work!! Bringing your legs out flat again.
What we're going to do now is the same exercise, but we're going to stretch out each side
holding the stretch for five seconds. What I mean by each side, we're going to do one side at a
time. Again relaxing into that position, bringing one leg up, and just holding this stretch. Feeling
the stretch you've got your hands around just below your knees, you can also place your
hands under like this if it's more comfortable. You can do that for both exercises, just holding
that stretch bringing it down, excellent work. Let's do the same thing on the other side,
bring the leg up again holding in the position that's most comfortable,
relaxing into it, feeling the stretch increasing that stretch just a little bit bring that leg
back down. Just relax your body we're going to go through that again bring the leg up.
Hold. great work! bring the leg down. Let's do the same thing on the other side bringing the leg up,
hold, great work. Bring the leg down, again relax in your body relaxing that lumbar spine,
bring the leg up, hold bring the leg back down. Same on the other side, let's bring that leg up,
hold. Let's bring it down taking a deep breath in and out.
Just once more on each side,
hold, feeling the stretch, great work. Same on the other side, relaxing into,
it don't strain. Just a nice relaxed movement and if you do get any pain stop the exercise.
Great work. Let's take another deep breath in and out. Let's now work the muscles of our core. Doing
some bridge exercises which is one of the best exercises you can do to strengthen this area.
You're going to bring your knees up like this, you're going to place your arms by your side,
and then what you're going to do is push off your feet. You're going to bring those hips up
making sure everything's level you're squeezing your glutes, you're holding you come back down.
Let's try that again coming up, hold squeezing that area, coming back down.
Let's go again, coming up making sure everything's level you're not twisted to one side,
hold, great work, coming back down. Let's go again, coming up,
hold, coming back down. Again let's go, coming all the way up,
hold, coming back down, great work. If you did feel the back of your legs overworking
during that exercise, you can bring your legs up just to take a bit of the strain off that area.
Let's now get into the next exercise. What we're going to do,
similar to what we just did then with the bridges. we're going to get more movement into that back,
doing a rotation exercise like we had our legs up for the bridge exercise. What you're going to do
is just rotate your knees to both sides.We're going to go over to the left, to begin with
just like this making sure your shoulders are flat on the ground, and then you're coming back
up. Now let's do the same thing on the other side, coming around rotating that back,
going back to a neutral position.
Let's do the same thing to the left, rotating around keeping those shoulders
flat on the floor or the bed coming back up. Nice and relaxed, over to the other side now,
good. Relaxing into it, coming back up, great work.
Let's take a deep breath in, nice gentle breath out, focus on relaxing your body. Again
let's go over to the left,
great work. Let's do the same thing on the other side, over to the right, bring those legs over,
great work. Again over to the left, nice and relaxed, relaxing those legs,
back to the neutral position, just relaxing, now over to the right,
back to that starting position. Let's take another deep breath in, as you breathe out
focus on relaxing that body. We're going to go once more to each side, coming over
getting the movement in that spine, relaxing, great work. Coming back to the start position.
Now over to the other side, great work. Coming back to the start position,
taking a deep breath in and a gentle breath out. Sitting up on the edge of your bed or in a chair.
The last exercise we're going to finish off with today is a seated spinal flexion
exercise. If you were doing these exercises or if you are doing these exercises on your bed,
you can do this exercise on the edge of your bed. What you're going to do is sit up nice and tall,
feet flat on the floor and then we're just going to run our hands down our legs. Keeping your
core nice and tight, running your hands down your leg and just relaxing that mid section,
relaxing all the way down, placing your hands on the floor. You can bring your legs together,
it makes it a bit more comfortable. Bring your head down, just relax into this position,
and then slowly come back up, excellent work. Let's take a deep breath in,
and out. Let's slowly go back down,
you can increase the stretch by just leaning a little bit further forward.
Coming all the way down, holding, coming back up so you want to hold this for about five seconds
before coming back up. Let's go again, coming down,
holding, relaxing that midsection, feeling the stretch, relaxing into it,
coming back up. Sitting up nice and tall, let's take another deep breath
in, relaxing that midsection, breathing out. We're going to go two more times with this,
just coming down, relaxing into it, getting that back moving, hold the position, feel that stretch,
come back up. Let's go once more, coming down,
holding that stretch, coming back up. Excellent work!
Taking another deep breath in, and a gentle breath out. Let's get a bit of movement in our legs now,
just straightening those knees, great work! Let's do some backward shoulder rolls, one,
two, and three! Excellent work! And we're all done for these exercises today,
to help you improve symptoms of spinal stenosis they're the best exercises you can do. What I
suggest is you do these exercises once per day. If you do get any pain from any of these exercises
make sure that you stop the exercises. Now the reason why we went through five repetitions today
is so you can build on that over time so you start with fewer repetitions and build on that
over time as your body gets more mobile and stronger. Stay consistent, gradually
increase the repetitions you do, but make sure you're not pushing through any pain with these
exercises. Also, go at your own pace. If you had trouble doing the five repetitions we did today,
and you can start with fewer repetitions and slowly build that up. You also want
to be doing other exercises to improve your strength and your fitness as well,
so make sure you do some of the other More Life Health exercise videos along with this
and gradually building that up over time as well. There's plenty of exercises you can do on the
More Life Health website, or the More Life Health YouTube channel, and there's also
plenty more to come in 2022 and beyond! So make sure you subscribed to the channel.
If this exercise video today did bring you some relief, make sure to give it the thumbs up! And
that's it from me for today, I'll catch you again soon. Keep moving and I'll catch you next time!