By the power of Grayskull!
Hey everybody, it's Doctor Jo, and me and my grayskull kitty are going to show
you some stretches and exercises for degenerative disc disease for the low back
So let's get started.
Sometimes you might also just see it called DDD which is a lot easier to say
as you can tell, since i have a hard time saying it sometimes.
Let's start off a lying down on our backs and propping up our knees. And you're
just going to start off with a simple pelvic tilt. So with the pelvic tilt, you
want to basically imagine that somebody's got their hands underneath
your back and you're pushing down into those hands. So you're tilting that
pelvis. So just a tilt, a little hold, about three seconds, and then relax so you
should actually see the movement there. If you're just kind of doing this
that's not exactly doing a public tilt. You want to actually see that pelvis
tilting and flattening out that back. So just start off holding it three seconds,
do about 10 of those. Then you're going to actually go up into a bridge. So this
time, the whole hips come all the way up. So nice and slow and then slowly come
down almost one segment at a time. So really kind of loosening up those discs
in there. So up and then nice and slow coming down. So again to start off with
about 10 of these, and if that becomes easy, you can work your way up from there.
Then you're going to go into some stretches. So you want to stretch your
hamstrings. You can do that whole bunch of different ways I have a hamstring
stretching video, but the easiest one is to take a strap, if you have one, a belt, a
dog leash, or a kitty leash if you have one of those, straighten out your leg and
then use the strap to pull it up. So you want the leg to stay nice and straight
at the knee. So if the knee's bending, you're pulling too hard. So make sure
it's straight. You can bend this
side, some people keep it straight out, but I think it comes to take some pressure
off of that back. And pull it up as far as you comfortably can, keeping that knee
straight, hold it for about 30 seconds, and then do three of those. Then you're
going to go into a piriformis or glute stretch. So it's a figure 4. Take the
leg of the side you want to stretch, cross your ankle over at the top of the
thigh. The knee's up this way.
Take your hands and grab underneath and pull up towards you. And you should kind
of feel that stretch in your bottom area, maybe a little bit the side of the hip.
And pull it as far as you comfortably can, and hold that for 30 seconds
relax, and do that one 3 times as well. Then you're going to stretch your hip flexors
and your quad muscles. So with the hip flexors and the quads, you there's also a
whole bunch of different stretches you can do for those, but I like just kind of
coming up this way onto your knees. Now if you have pain in your knees as well,
make sure you put a pillow underneath. And then just kind of come up into a
lunge position. For the quad stretch, you're going to grab your leg, your ankle,
back here and pull it towards your bottom. So just holding that for about 30
seconds and then coming back down. For the hip flexor stretch, you're going to
bring your hips forward, driving them forward this way, and you should feel the
stretch in through here. And that's kind of loosening up that whole pelvis area
so it's not putting pressure on the spine. So again try try to keep your
upper body straight up, not lean forward because that's going to take away from
the stretch. And then lean forward holding that for 30 seconds, doing that
three times. Then the last couple ones exercises are going to be on the all
four position, or we call it quadruped. Try to keep your weight level on each
leg and
arm, and then just take one leg at a time, and kick back, and then slowly come
back in. Try not to lean over a whole lot to the other side, try to keep
yourself level. Keep those arms pretty much straight underneath the shoulders
and kick back about. Do ten on one side, and then kick with the other side,
10 on that side as well. And then the last one, still in the quadruped
position, do a camel stretch. And then you can kind of alternate between cat/camel
some people called Cat/Dog some people call cow, dog, cat, all those animals. But
basically you're going to arch your back up, kind of in that Camel position,
tuck your chin in, take a deep breath, and then come back down and lift your chin
up kind of letting your back leg down just a little bit. And then you can just
hold it for about three to five seconds in each position, and do five to 10 of
those. So just going to where you feel a little bit of a stretch, not where it's
super uncomfortable. So there you have it.
Me and grayskull kitty showing you the stretches and exercises for DDD. If you have any
questions leave them in the comments section. If you'd like to check out some other videos,
go to AskDoctorJo.com And remember, be safe, have fun, and I hope you feel better soon.