Hi, I'm Michelle, and today I'm going to guide you through a series of research-based exercises. Now,
these exercises can reduce back pain, and they usually appropriate if you've had a vertebral or
spinal fracture at least three months ago. Now, make sure you avoid these exercises
if your fracture occurred within the last three months, or, if you've got pins and needles and or
numbness or if there's some other reason, general health reason that you can't exercise. Instead,
please consult with your health professional, the correct exercises for you to start with.
Now, the only equipment you'll need today is a chair to sit on and either a towel,
so I've got my hand towel here, or a bathrobe tie. Okay? So either one of those things. Now,
these exercises are taken from scientific research and this research included exercises
to reduce upper back pain, in individuals with a history of osteoporosis fracture in the spine.
Today, I'm going to guide you through a series of four exercises. And then I'll discuss how often
to do these exercises at home. Just to reminder, all these exercises should feel really comfortable
while you're doing them and afterwards. And, in the unlikely event that you're experiencing
any discomfort obviously stop the exercises or modify them in the way I'm about to show you.
Let me know in the comments below how you find these exercises today. I'd love to hear from you.
Alright, let's get started. We're going to commence with posture. First,
let's start practicing good posture. Now, this is one of the most helpful exercises to practice
regularly to prevent crush factors. And also to stop you slumping forwards like this with rounded
posture. And you can see that on the screen here. And this is because slumping forwards
presses the vertebra together. As you can see on the image here that causes a spinal compression
fracture when the bones are squashed together. If they're brittle, they'll crash into each other.
Now, to start, I'd like you to start by sitting tall away from the backrest of your chair. Step
one is to gently lengthen your spine. And you can do that by lifting the crown of your head towards
the ceiling. So you're imagining a string pulling up and lifting you upwards. Step two involves
raising your chest bone forth and I'll do this sideways so you can see me so it's like this,
okay, so string, the string there and a string there. Try to keep your shoulders relaxed away
from your ears and make sure that you don't arch your back inwards too far because that might feel
uncomfortable. So keep this really comfortable for you back. Now let's do this exercise together.
Lengthen your spine. Lift up through the crown of your head, just slightly, raise your chest
forward just a little bit and feel how your shoulder blades move together slightly and
downwards. And maintain that position. Now for a couple of breaths. Breathing in and breathing
out. And again, breathing in and breathing out before relaxing down. Try to repeat this
exercise during the day, increasing how long you can hold the position for as you breathe normally.
Now, our next exercise helps you reduce stiffness in your upper back. And this can also help to
reduce pain. I want you to keep this exercise smooth and gentle at home. Again, starting tall
with the good posture that I just taught you. Keep both of your feet flat on the ground and
your knees are bad hip with the part. Now fold your arms across your chest, lengthen your spine,
take a slow deep breath in, and very slowly turn your upper body towards your ride. Just
rotate a small way, just a very slow movement, and, come back to center. Breathing again,
and now rotate your chest and your shoulders towards your left, and, come back to center. Have
a rest. Let's do that again. One more time. This should feel really comfortable, smooth, and slow.
Breathing in, and rotate just to the point feels comfortable, breathe out, and come back to center,
and once more breathing in, and breathing out, and come back to center, and take a breather.
Now our next exercise helps you to open your chest to improve your posture and stop you
slumping forwards when the muscles in your chest become tired they can pull you forward and round
your forehead like this. So start this exercise by raising your hands so that your fingertips
touch just behind your ears. If you can't reach your head, instead, you might like to put your
hands on your shoulders like this. Now, sit tall, using the good posture that I've already
taught you breathe in. And now breathe out and gently move your elbows back as far as you can
take them and let's come back through again. I'm going to turn side-on. So you can say that again,
this time, we're going to see if we can hold a bit longer. So breathing in and
breathe out. Really try to bring your elbows back as far as you can and hold for 1, 2, 3,
4, 5, and release. Let's do that one more time together. Breathing in and breathing
out taking your elbows back and holding for 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and slowly release. And you should
find that with time and practice, you can get your elbows back a little bit further each time.
Now our last exercise is a series of strengthening exercises for the back and
shoulder muscles that stop you slumping forwards and rounding forward like this. So I'd like you
to start at home. Bring your elbows into your sides like this. Turn your palms to face the
ceiling and point your thumbs out. Now you're going to move your arms out from your sides,
your elbows are rotating outwards. But keep your elbows touching your waist. So you can
see I'm not doing that. I'm keeping my elbows fixed touching my waist. As I turn my forearms
out and back together. Now you have a tried home. So, palms facing the ceiling, thumbs pointing out,
move your forearms out in that direction and bring them back together. Great!
Let's go again. This time, feel your shoulder blades move towards each other and down slightly.
Good. And come back. Let's go again, squeeze the shoulder blades together and make your shoulders
come away from your ears. Great! And back, and one last time squeezing, and let's take it back. Now,
to progress that exercise, you can use your towel or your bathrobe. Take it in each hand and your
hands are about shoulder-width apart. Start by sitting tall. thumbs pointing outwards again.
And now we're going to try to do that same action by turning our hands outwards and pulling against
each end of the tie but not moving. So here we go. Pull out what's just gently squeeze your
shoulder blades together, and, slowly release. Let's go again, pulling out remember your elbows
are staying into your waist aren't they? Squeeze between the shoulder blades, feel the back of
your shoulders working, and release. And let's do one more of those, elbows touching your waist the
whole time, squeezing your shoulder blades, and let's slowly relax, and you can take that down.
So how often to do these exercises? We'll try to do these exercises daily. Perhaps
you might find them helpful doing them in the morning and again later in the day,
or with the exception of the strength exercise the last exercise, you might like to do that
three days a week if you can. Remember to do what feels comfortable for your body and
you'll probably find that you can gradually progress with more exercises and longer holes
in time. And you can check the description below for how many of each exercise to do.
Now let's review the daily exercises we've covered. We talked about your
posture exercise sitting tall, your trunk rotation exercise, the chest open a stretch,
and finally, we did our back strengthening exercises to do on three alternate days
of the week. I will be bringing you more osteoporosis strength exercises,
and you can subscribe below and click on the bill to avoid missing those videos.
So I really hope these exercises give you an understanding of the types of exercises for
managing crash fractures and back pain. Thank you for watching today, and I'll see you next time.