hey everybody it's doctor Jo and today I'm going to show you seven ways to
relieve back pain. so let's get started.
So the first exercise / stretch is going to be lying down. make sure you get it in a
nice comfortable position. so use a comfy pillow to get your head in a nice
neutral position. feet are going to be propped up. your knees want to be about
hip-width apart. and so hip width is you can take your fist and then put them in
between and that ends up putting it about a hip width apart.
so the first exercise / stretch because it's going to kind of loosen up
everything, is just a pelvic tilt. pelvic tilts don't look like a lot
because there's not big movements, but it's really a great way to kind of help
relieve back pain because a lot of those muscles around that pelvic area are
really tight. so with the pelvic tilt, all you're trying to do is flatten out your
back where that curve is. but you're not pushing with your feet. if you're kind of
pushing in with your feet, you're not really doing the pelvic tilt right. you
want to do like it sounds, you want to tilt that pelvis, but using your hips to
do it not your legs. so if you feel like you're pushing down almost like you're
coming up into a bridge, that's too much. you just really want to rotate it back.
see it's not a really big movement, but I'm trying to flatten everything out. so
if you need to put something underneath just the first couple times you do it,
that's fine, but you want to feel that movement there .so I'm just going to do a
tilt and then hold it for about three to five seconds. really kind of get those
muscles working and get those muscles relaxing by working them a little bit.
and then do maybe five or ten. so again just holding it three to five seconds
and then relaxing it. but again if you feel like you're trying to come up a
little bit using your legs, that's not quite a tilt because the next exercise
is a bridge. so when you're bridging, you're in the same position. but now
you're gonna lift your bottom up off the floor or bed or a couch. if you have a
hard time getting down on the floor, you can you don't have to do these on the
floor, you can you can do these on your bed. might be a little bit harder, but
don't try and get down on the floor if you know you're gonna have
a hard time getting up. so with a bridge, you really want to kind of come up one
segment at a time. you're pushing those knees forward as you come up. you don't
have to stop at each level, but you're not just coming up and down because then
you're using momentum and you're not really using those muscles. you really
want to activate those glute muscles. and if you come forward or even if you bring
your knees a little bit or your feet a little bit closer to your bottom, you
take the hamstrings a little bit out of it. and then as you come up, you want to
try and get about level. you don't want to try and arch up higher, and if you're
a little bit lower that's okay, but you want to eventually try and get to here
and then nice and slow coming back down. so again, you don't have to stop at each
segment, but you really want to roll that back instead of just popping up and down.
so nice and slow coming up, a little squeeze at the top, and then slowly
coming back down. so depending on how that feels, maybe you can only get to
there. that's okay. just start with what you can do, about five to ten and a
couple sets of those throughout the day just to get everything nice and moving.
so the next exercise is going to be a trunk rotation. this can be an exercise
or a stretch. so now you're going to bring your feet and your knees close
together. with an exercise, you can go continuously side to side, or with a
stretch you can hold it. but you're just gonna bring both knees down to one side
to get a stretch. your shoulders should stay down. so you're not coming all the
way up, but your your shoulders should stay down so you're getting that stretch.
so again if you want to do the stretch, then you're just going to hold it there
for that twenty-five to thirty seconds, get that nice stretch. if you want to do
an exercise, then you're just gonna gently roll back and forth pausing maybe
just for a second or two back and forth. but make sure for the stretch or the
exercise you're going both both sides just to get everything loosened up and
and get some strengthening in there as well. so the next treatment is really
using something like a TENS unit to help relieve that pain, and the great thing
about TENS units is you can put them on while you're
doing your stretches and exercises. and the folks at Auvon sent me their
dual-channel massager. and so this is really nice because it has 20 modes and
it has 8 electrodes that come with it. what I really like about the Auvon brand
is they have some really good instructions in with their units. and if
you've ever gotten a TENS unit before, you might know that sometimes manuals
aren't the best with the the units. and so as you can see here, their user manual does
a nice job of showing what each mode does. and the reason that's important is
with tens units particularly, I always tell people it's really about your
comfort level. you it's all about pain control. but sometimes people want to
know what those pictures mean, so what's really nice about this is it has the
picture and then it tells you what it's doing, and then it tells you what it's
stimulating as well. so I think that's a really nice component to have into a
product. what's really cool about using a TENS unit especially with back pain is
like I mentioned before you can do these with your stretches and exercises. you
don't necessarily just have to use the tens unit and then sit there in one spot,
they make them so portable now, you can see this, you can slip it in your pocket
and have it on, even go do your activities. so when you're using a tens
unit for the 4, the four electrodes, you want to make sure they're crossing each
channel. channel a, and channel B. if you have it on your back and it's like this
then the current is just going to go up and down like this, so you really want
them crossing so those currents make an X pattern into the middle of your pain.
so I'm gonna put them on my back real quick and then show you what it looks
like. so now that I have them on, you can see here that it's kind of a square
rectangular pattern. and they're those those channels are crossing. so you want
to make sure that they're crossing. now sometimes it is a little bit harder if
you put it on your back or your neck or something to do it by yourself, so it's
always better to have somebody put it on for you. but if you have to put it on
yourself which is fine, with tents unit electrode placements you don't have to
be exact. they don't have to be in this specific spot, this specific spot. you
know they don't have to necessarily be level. if you're like me and you like
to have things level, you know then when you're seeing it, you want that, but they
don't have to be exact. if you're using EMS it needs to be a little more
specific, but I don't ever recommend using EMS um near the spine. so like if
you don't ever want to cross the spine, but I don't even really like using the
EMS which is the muscle stimulation on the back or the neck area. but since
you're using TENS, you can cross the spine. and sometimes a lot of people ask
that, but if it's tens, and you're not having the muscles contracting, it's okay
to cross that spine. so if you're interested in purchasing the auvon
dual-channel unit, you can click on the link up there or in the description
below. so I'm just gonna go ahead and go on into the rest of my exercises with
the unit on to make sure everything's feeling good while I'm doing it. so the
next one is going to be a bridge with a ball squeeze. and so what the ball
squeeze does it starts actually using other muscles to help. so with the ball,
you can use a ball if you don't have a ball you can use a pillow, you can use a
yoga block, but you want it again to be about hip distance apart. this is a
little further out that's okay not a big deal, but you don't want it to be
something super big, and you don't want it to be something so small like a
tennis ball. you want to have them still about hip width apart. so with this one,
you're gonna squeeze the ball. so you're activating those adductor muscles. while
you're squeezing in, you're gonna come up into that bridge .try and keep that
squeeze the whole time. don't let that squeeze go while you're coming up or let
it slip it out on you while you're coming up. so you're squeezing, coming up
into that bridge, and then still rolling down really gently. so you're not just
coming up and down. that's not really working it that's just using momentum.
but make sure you get that squeeze, come up into that bridge, and then nice and
slowly come down. since you're activating more than one group now of muscles, maybe
you just want to do five couple sets of five, see how it feels, then go up to ten.
then do that a couple times a day just to get it working. so then the next one
is just going to be kind of the opposite direction with the bridging. so now
you're just going to take a band, the resistive band. and the loop ones are
nice because you don't have to tie a knot, but you can just you know make a little
loop on your own if you've just got a regular resistive band. and so it's the
same kind of concept. now I'm using the band to work my abductor muscles, the
ones on the outside. I'm not doing this while I'm going up into the bridge, I'm
just bringing my my knees out to about that hip-width apart, but I want to keep
that distance the whole time. as we come up, a lot of times that band is going to
want to pull your knees back in, but you want to activate those muscles so you're
keeping about that same distance the whole time. and then nice and slow coming
back down. it shouldn't be super hard, you don't want to have to be fighting the
band the whole time, you're just trying to activate those muscles to get those
muscles to work together with the gluts in the back. so again just nice and slow
coming up, a little squeeze at the top, and then rolling nice and slow back down.
so again 5 to 10 to start off with. you can do a couple sets a couple times a
day. and then so the last one is going to be a stretch kind of in a tall kneeling
position. so the last stretch is going to be for the QL muscle muscle or the
quadratus lumborum. and so this muscle is one that's not stretched. a lot people
don't think about it, but it does cause a lot of back pain.
so in this tall kneeling position, make sure you protect the knee of the side
that you're going to stretch because you don't want to end up getting knee pain
by putting all the pressure down on the floor. you're going to put the other leg
out to the side. so if you have some balance issues make sure you have your
couch or your table or someone next to you just to make sure you've got some
nice balance. so the side that I want to stretch is going to be the side that's
down on into the pillow or something to protect that knee. you can place your
other hand on the side here and then you're gonna bring the same arm of the
knee that's down up. so if your QL is tight just doing this you might get a
little bit of a stretch. if you need a little bit more of a stretch, try and
keep your body straight, a lot of times people
rotate like this. but just bring your arm up and over almost like you're trying to
point towards the corner of the ceiling or the the the curb or point in the
ceiling over on the other side. so I should feel that stretch through here.
since this is a full stretch, you want to hold it for 30 seconds. and see I'm not
coming over like this, I'm coming up and over. that's why you want to kind of
point towards the ceiling or that corner as you're going and really get that
stretch. oh yeah, I was I was turning a little bit, so you want to keep this kind
of flat forward not rotating, and then coming up to get that stretch. so when
you're stretching the back, you want to make sure you're doing both sides just
because those muscles attach to the spine so even if you're hurting more on
one side, I would do both sides. so again leg out, you might be getting a little
bit of an adductor stretch with that that's that's fine. that's good to
stretch everything out. and then arm up, and if you're getting enough stretch
with that that's fine holding for 30 seconds. and if you need a little bit
more, that up and over holding that stretch for about 30 seconds. so if
you're interested in purchasing the Auvon dual-channel tens unit, make sure
and click on the link up there or click on the link in the description below, and
don't forget to subscribe. and remember be safe, have fun, and I hope you feel
better soon.