Hi folks
I'm Bob Schrupp physical therapist, Brad Heineck physical therapist. Together we are the most famous physical therapists on the internet, in our opinion of course Bob
Seven best exercises to cure lumbar stenosis pain
We just did a video on this recently, but we didn't get into the exercises very quickly
And I think people probably got annoyed with us,
So we're gonna skip over a lot of the details and the pathology and get to the exercises
But before we do that, we do have to do this part. Okay. If you are new to our channel
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Lumbar stenosis pain what is that pain Brad?
It's typically pain in the low back down the legs can be numbness tingling one
Leg or could be both legs and it's almost always worse with
Standing for a prolonged period of time and walking longer distances, if you bend forward it usually feels a little bit better
Like with a walker or a shopping cart, better with sitting too obviously so if you got these symptoms
You've been diagnosed, these are the exercises all right
Let's start off, the first thing and this is simple easy one you can do this in bed right out of bed in the morning
Before you get up is
If you could just start out with one knee to your chest and do a stretch that way
You know you're just gonna hold it for a few seconds, and if that's going fine
You can jump right into both knees to your chest because that really stretches that low back in the direction it needs to go
We need to flex it and I would do that 10 times
Holding it for about 3 to 5 seconds each, kind of pressure on pressure off too can work
But this one is a good standard exercise for people with spinal stenosis
Almost all the ones I've had have really liked it
Really makes a difference now the other thing you want to do is not just stretch your lower back, but strengthen the abdominal muscles
So in this position you can do the same thing
Now some people might have problems, the goal is to get both knees to come up at the same time while keeping your
back flat
So you're gonna push the back down hold it down and lifting the knees up, but
if you're just starting your muscles may not be strong enough
So you may want to push down and do one knee at a time and then the opposite knee
Keeping that back flat my stomach right now
is tight holding that back down and
When you can do ten of those and it's getting easier and you can help with your hands a little bit
If you'd like to but do the best you can good control flat back and now this should be pain-free
This shouldn't be increasing your pain. If it is then it's something you can't do right now, but again
just to point out again if I were to put my hand underneath here Brad would actually squish the hand so he's
turning his pelvis so that it flattens the back out, right you know
If you think about putting an egg in there you're going to try to squeeze it with your back
Let's go on the next one, okay, so
This is the posterior pelvic tilt and you can do this one
Against the wall and actually this is I'm gonna show this on the spine real quick Brad, okay, good
so
You know this guy's facing the same way I'm facing
here's an anterior tilt he's taking and he's actually turning the ilium here of the pelvis and
Going forward like this. This is a posterior tilt. He's actually turning it this way
So I hope that helps visually if you go like this
That's a posterior tilt so I'm going right like this, right so actually this is very similar. It is exactly the same thing
What we talked about with the double knee to the chest
Except for we're not gonna bring our knees to the chest and you can do this one up against the wall as well
You got me too Lonnie? So I got my feet out
Maybe a foot away from the wall
And I'm just gonna go ahead
And I'm doing the posterior tilt so just like what I'm doing here Bob's doing on the wall
So you can do this one standing or laying down
Did you catch both of us Lonnie? Wow
She's good alright
So we're gonna push in Bob at the same time so we got synchronized pelvic tilting
And relax and again now the nice thing about going on the wall is you can put yourself in that
Posterior pelvic tilt and try and hold it there and then walk away, walk with that same position
That's gonna take the pressure off the nerves and you're gonna be able to walk further that way
That's the whole thing is that you're trying to take this from an exercise to something that you can do throughout the day
So if you're walking and you're having pain you might try a little bit of a posterior tilt and
See if that relieves some of your pain
And that's why I think doing it on the wall is it's a good progression from here to the wall
It's harder probably to do maybe with your weight bearing you know like this
But then you're one step closer to doing it in real life, so I feel good about it
You feel good I feel good
We all feel good
But the next one is neural
Stretching and this one you can do laying down or in a chair, so Bob's gonna demonstrate how to do it in the chair
I really like this one Brad because I've seen different ways to do this and this was the best
Explanation or best demonstration I've seen of this one, yeah, I just think it's, say no more
I always have struggles showing people how to do this and this was a better way to do it
Why don't you do it first?
I'm gonna do my right leg first, you do one leg at a time, the knee has to be straight, don't have it like this
Straighten it out the best you can, hold it and then you're gonna lift it up and you can use your hands to help
Once you start to feel a stretch on the back of your leg, then you're gonna pull your ankle up towards your nose
And you'll feel more of a stretch in the back of the leg and you may even feel that way up
In your back here, and if you do feel it here, then you know you definitely need this stretch
So you're going to go pressure on pressure off pressure on
pressure off and Bob's gonna do the same thing in a chair, so that's all the higher I can get
Well, maybe I go a little higher, and and I'm doing the same thing
I'm holding my leg up
And I'm doing the pressure on
pressure off pressure on
pressure off now if you wanted to do that one if you can't hold your leg up you probably could put it up on a stool
couldn't you Bob, sure, there you go it should be a little higher yet
I probably have to put a pillow underneat and get the stretch so, do at the same time Brad
There we go
I want to make sure we have that good visual
There we go yeah
excellent because the nerve that goes all the way down around your ankle is the one that can get
Impinged up in your back causing the the stenosis problems okay now the next one Bob
You got a pillow handy? I'm going to grab a pillow,
Because this stretch we want to stretch out the hip flexors because they pull that lumbar spine and make the stenosis worse
Yeah
The muscle comes all the way up and attaches to the spine itself plus down into the leg so we're
Going to stretch that so it doesn't pull you down, so if you do it on your side
I'm gonna do my left leg, the leg on top is the one you're gonna do, your bottom leg is gonna bend like this
Okay, all right. I'm looking at the camera Bob sure, am I in your way oh no
I just wanted to make sure though okay hand is here and now what I'm gonna do is just pull my knee back this direction
And you'll feel that stretch in that where you put your hand in your pocket, then you know you're getting a good stretch
You're just gonna go pressure on
Pressure off pressure on and if you like to hold it for a longer duration you can do that as well
I personally like to go pressure on pressure off,
I'm doing it on the right leg here
So I'm gonna go ahead and I'm gonna stretch by go ahead and leaning forward like this, now you
Can actually stretch just a little bit more Brad by going like this
A little bit of side bending that actually stretches that hip flexor a little bit more but
I'm cutting away from Brad's camera time, but again same thing here
You can stretch with good posture like this you can actually stretch like this too
There's the two different variations of doing this and of course
You're gonna want to even things out by getting the other one too so now
I'm stretching the left leg, and I'm leaning forward. I can also lean this way and
Stretch it a little bit more and there you go, sure so you can stretch
You don't have to do both of them you do
Which one is most comfortable for you some people may not be able to do this one
depending on their knees, some people may have trouble with that one too because
It's tough to get ahold of that leg isn't it? Yeah it is, so there's two options if it doesn't work for you
It's not the worst thing in the world the other ones are gonna help
6-inch roll Bob
This is another one I like, this is another one I had not seen before
But I thought this was a great idea, you could use a towel roll if you
Get a towel thick enough, it has to be about a six inch roll like this is
You're gonna put it here not above your belt line
But below your belt line on your sacrum the lower part of your sacrum close to your tailbone
Yep, so we're right there
Right on the old buttocks, okay, so I'm gonna go there
And then you're just gonna take one knee and pull it up and when you do that
You're gonna feel your back get stretched in the direction we want and it should feel good when you do this
It should feel like a good stretch. That's gonna take pressure off those nerves and then here
Now I got a vinyl surface here, so my roll's slipping, if it was on a carpeted floor
I'd be a little bit better off. Oh yeah, I see it is slipping
And I can even go both knees and that feels good and it gets a good stretch
So you have to work this
On your own whichever works best for you again ten repetitions
Or the pressure on pressure off would be a good way to go about it
Okay
Yep on carpeted it wouldn't do that. This is a slippery surface. Yeah, and then the last one Bob
associated with lumbar stenosis is poor posture because you're leaning forward from the top forward to
compensate so we want to stretch the
shoulders out and we're just gonna do the angel one because it's simple to do
We don't want you to develop problems up here because you have problems in your back
If you're like this a lot you want to stretch this out, so you're keeping good posture in the upper body
So I'm gonna go ahead this always works out real well. My feet are about a foot away from the wall
I've pushed my shoulders and
hands and arms against the wall, and I can even go up and down like this and
I'm trying to keep good posture my neck against the wall
And I can tell I need to do this stretch, I do it but I just can't stay ahead of it
You know and I mean, this is a good stretch to do right now for me
And you can do it standing or laying down whichever is more comfortable for you, or you can do both of them
So what say you Bob? I say by the way we can fix just about anything except for that broken heart
Yeah, but stenosis we got a good handle on it. It's the new year Brad
We got to fix that heart and we had a comment on that
They were optimistic too, that's good to hear