Hi, I’m Michelle, and today I’ve got a short stretch routine to help you with
your posture and take a short break. So we're going to get into it, this isn't for watching,
this is for doing, so I want you to get out of your chair. All you'll need is either a jacket
like this to use for our stretches. You could use a towel if you wanted to. Or, take your belt off,
so I’m going to take my belt off and show you the stretches with the belt. So you've got your belt
in your hands, or, you've got your jacket rolled up. We're going to start nice and tall. We're
going to do some shoulder forward, up, back and around, so nice big shoulder rolls, just to get
the tension out of our neck and shoulders. But these are nice exercises to do if you sit down
for the course of the day, we've got one more breathing in and breathing out and take it down.
So just take hold of your belt, about arm reach apart, and I’m going to come side on for you,
we're going to take a big breath in and breathe out and really stretch out in front,
take your chin down towards your chest. And I don't know whether you can see, but I’ve got my
knees soft here, and I’m really stretching forward separating my shoulder blades, breathing in
and breathing out, roll forward, stretch between your shoulder blades, chin down.
And one more time, breathing in and breathing out, right out and coming down.
Now, this is where the stretches get good. So we're going to take our arms wider apart. So if
you've got a bigger waist, you get a longer belt, it's going to be helpful with this.
We're going to stretch up above our heads. So we're going to breathe in
and breathe out and lift up high that way. So try and bring that belt back or your
jacket back as far as you can to really open up your chest. So this is the type of stretch that
stretches out muscles that pull you forward during the course of the day, breathing in
and breathing out, start stretching out muscles called your pectoral muscles.
And one more time, breathing in and breathing out, right above your head and try and bring it
right back, you should feel that stretch through your chest. Now, from that position, that's your V
stretch, let's take it down to your T stretch. Whoa, pull back, and see if you can put your
elbows back, behind your body, and try and get that belt back away from the back of your head.
Let's go back to V stretch, breathing in and breathing out, so all these are postural stretches
at the moment, and one more time breathing in and breathing out. Should feel good to really
release through there. Now, pull your elbows back, squeeze your shoulder blades together,
and let's release and bring that belt back over.
Let's get rid of the belts, and we're going to go into some hip stretches now. So I’ll get you
to come – actually, before we do that, let's take a stretch out behind to really open up.
So in that position there, and take your chin down towards your chest.
And now, if you'd like to do a more of a back stretch and a bottom stretch, we're going to bend
forward. You don't have to do this if you don't want to, but if you can come forward up and over,
lift your arms nice and high, and you'll feel that you can get a really nice stretch for
the front of your arms, your chest and your shoulders, as well as you're starting to get
a back stretch there too. And let's come back up from that stretch and roll your shoulders.
All right, so our hips can get tight from prolonged sitting, a couple of hip stretches
before we go back to work. You might need to hold on to the side of a desk or a wall. I’m
going to start with some hip swings, so forward and back, so keep your upper body nice and tall
and just swing back through. So when you take your leg back, you're stretching out the front of your
hip there, you can see my hip stretching. Let's just do a couple more of those, just hip swings.
This type of dynamic stretch is a really nice way of releasing through the hips. Now, hold it there,
bring the knee up, clutch onto your butt cheek, and push the leg back, and this is the two for the
price of one because it activates your bottom muscles but stretches through your hip. Bring
it forward again breathing in, and breathe out, press back again, stay tall, you can see I've got
my supporting knee slightly bent, and one more of those breathing in and breathing out. So we really
want to activate our glute muscles, because they support our low back, very important for posture.
All right. On the other side, here we go, take it around, swing forward and back,
again stay nice and tall, again try and keep your supporting knees slightly bent if you can, swing
through, that's it, couple more, and let's hold it there, bring the leg up in front. All right, butt
cheek – they're going to wonder what you're doing in the office, aren't they – squeeze the cheek,
push back, squeeze that cheek, and take it forward again. And again, take it back as far as you can,
so you're taking the thigh back to really stretch through the hip, but activate your buttock. One
more of those, and take it back, squeeze through the glutes, and bring the leg down.
All right, we're going to finish off with just an exercise to help with that chin
poke that develops. This exercise isn't a good look, I'm going to do it side on to show you.
Looking straight ahead, it's basically chin tuck, making a double chin. So you're doing that,
keep looking ahead, and back. So this helps to bring the neck back and stop that chin poke.
Two more of those, you can do these sitting too during the course of the day,
you don't have to stand. One more time, chin poke, don't [inaudible 00:05:20] lower your nose down,
look straight ahead and back. And let's finish off with a couple of shoulder rolls, breathing in
and out, release through the neck and shoulders. One more time,
breathing in and out, bring both hands up and just gently guide your nose down towards your chest,
and bring the fingers down behind your back, press right down. And arms around now, thinking
about your posture – again, that nice posture is just soft knees, lifting up through the chest,
45 degrees, relaxing the shoulders away from your ears, and you're ready to go back to work.
You can do this exercise routine as often as you can to have a break during the course of
the day. If it helps you out, please give it a like below. I’ll see you next time. Bye for now.