Hey everybody it's Doctor Jo, and I'm just chilling out on the Saturday evening by
the fire. Someone's at the door. Who is it? It's Chazz!
I met Chazz at our YouTube NextUp 2017. How you doing?I'm doing pretty good, how about you?
Tell us a little about your channel.
Well, my name is Chazz. I'm from ChazzzIsAwesome. I feel fro-y tutorials with my buddy
teddy bear and name's bear. I know a little crazy. But it's awesome. Yeah. So you're hurting a little bit. Yeah
Tell me what's going on. Well with doing my hair, as you can see, it's really really thick. It
could take eight hours for me to do my hair at the moment. Especially being a
Youtuber, so I get a lot of like arm and, arm shoulder, shoulder, back
just kind of like all this up in here. Yeah I could see that working out there all day
long. Yeah. I think I got some stretches and exercise for that. Let's check it out.
So all of you out there like Chazz who works a
lot in a kind of overhead position, working on her beautiful hair, you tend
to get arm pain, shoulder pain, and upper back, neck pain, so I'm just going to go
through a couple of those to help stretch them out, work them out a little bit. The
one that I like most really to help relax the shoulder is the pendulum
series. And with the pendulum series, you want to stand up and have something
sturdy to hold on to like a chair or countertop because you're going to be
bending over. You can use, you can do the pendulums without a weight, but I like
having a little weight because it just helps open up that joint. So if you
haven't had surgery or something you can use a weight, and this is just a soup/
vegetable can I got wrapped up in a band just so you can see it, but what you're
going to do is, the key to the pendulums is to move your body. Your arm is just
going to hang straight down. You're not actively moving your arm, you're going to
use your body to make your arm move, so that makes everything nice and
relaxed in there. That usually just helps relax those muscles. So the first one is
going to be a circle movement. So just hang your arm straight down in front of
you, and then use your hips and your legs to kind of make a circle. If you haven't
had a specific injury, if you're just tight, you can actively move your arm
just a little bit to make the circles bigger, but you really want those muscles
to be relaxed if you can. So do about ten one way and then reverse it and do ten
the other way. Just kind of swinging those hips around.
Nice and wide circles, just to get it stretched out like you do that. Then
you're just going to do a side to side movement. So again using your hips and
your legs just to sway so that arm's going to side to side, and it goes really good.
It's just kind of opening up that area there putting a little stretch on those
muscles to help them relax. It's the same thing, just do about ten of those. And
then the last one of the pendulums, put one foot in front of the other, almost
like in a little lunge position, and now your arm's going to be by your side, and
you're going to go front to back. So just kind of rocking back and forth,
get that nice movement, so again ten of those. Then after you've done that, if
both sides are hurting, make sure you do both sides. Now we're going to do a chest
stretch to kind of open up that chest area because a lot of times if you're
especially working on the front, looking in the mirror, doing this, those chest
muscles get really really tight. So a good way to stretch the chest muscles is
take your hands and clasp them behind your back. You're going to push down and out,
and then kind of stick out your chest as you go. So just going to push like this,
and you should feel the stretch up through here on each side. So pushing
down and out, you'll hold it for 30 seconds, and then relax. You're going to
do that a total of three times, so pushing down and out, and sticking your
chest out. So the next exercise is... Mr. dinosaur, are you trying to be like
Chazz's bear? Get out of here. So the next exercise is
going to be scapular squeezes or shoulder squeeze, and this is going to
help work those muscles in the upper back area a little bit. So it's a pretty
easy move, but what you want to do is imagine that somebody has placed their
hand right in the middle of your back on the spine right between the shoulder
blades, and what you want to do is you want to try and squeeze the hand with
those shoulder blades coming together. You can use your arms a little bit to
kind of help move them, but try and keep the elbows down towards your side, so not
up here, but down here almost like you're rowing a boat. So you're just going to
squeeze back, hold it for about three to five seconds, and then come back. But
again, you want to do kind of a downward motion when you squeeze, so it's not
squeezing up this way, it's squeezing down where your shoulders are, nice and
relaxed, so just pulling back, hold about three to five seconds, and then do ten of
those. So the next exercises are going to be down on the ground. So we're going to
do some shoulder and upper back stretches here, and then at the end I'm
saving a big finale exercise which is really good and it works everything in
the upper back, in the shoulder, in the neck, but now we're going to do a
rhomboid stretch. You can stretch the rhomboids a couple of different ways
but this one's pretty much the easiest. Put your leg straight out in front of
you. You don't have to, but I feel like it makes a better stretch if you have your
legs straight out in front of you. Your gonna clasp for your hands on the front,
and you're going to, at the same time, you're going to tuck your chin in and
push forward, and that's going to stretch those muscles in the upper back there. So
punching forward and tucking in the chin, and kind of curl your back a
little bit to get that extra stretch. So again you're going to hold this for
30 seconds, come back up ,and then push three times out and away, and you can see
kind of how I'm rounded in the upper back, and that's what gives it that big
stretch. After that you're going to come in and do an upper trap stretch. For the
upper trap stretch, I like to take the hand of the side you're going to stretch, and
kind of sit on it, and what that does is it helps keep your
shoulder down just to give you a better stretch because if you don't, then when
you stretch your shoulder tends to come up a little bit and then you're not
quite getting the stretch that you need. So kind of sit on your hand, take your
other hand, and just gently pull your head towards the opposite side. You want
to keep your head in this upright position, so you're not turning it and
going down, you're really just trying to take that ear and bring it down to the
shoulder. So just a gentle pull this way, and you should feel the stretch all up
in here and right there, and again you're going to hold it for 30 seconds and do
that 3 times. And so if you're having pain on both sides, make sure and do both
sides. Even if you're not, if you have time, do both sides because that just
helps keep everything even. So 30 seconds 3 on each side. Then the next stretch is
going to be for the levator SCAP, and the levator scapulae is right here, and this
one tends to be the big stress or muscle that gets all tight because when we get
stressed out, or we're working a lot doing overhead stuff, we tend to bring
our shoulders up, and that's what that muscle does it brings up those shoulder
blades, and so when they get overworked, they get really tired and get those knots and
trigger points back there, so this is a great stretch to do. So with the
side you want to stretch, you're going to bring your arm up kind of like this. You
want your elbow going towards the ceiling, it doesn't have to be straight
up, especially if you're hurting, but by doing this, that helps push that shoulder
blade down, so you're going to get more of a stretch. This time you're going to
put your hand back behind your head, and you're going to pull it at an angle
towards your opposite knee. So not straight to the front, not out to the side,
but kind of that 45 degree angle towards opposite side. Put your hand behind your
head, and not on your side, but behind it so you can pull it down this way, and so
you should feel that right through the back part there, and again holding it for
30 seconds, and then doing three times on each side. So then you'd come up and then
go down the other way. I like to alternate back and forth just to give
each side a little break in between, but some people like to do all of them
on one side and then all of them on the other side,
and that's fine, you can do that. So then the next stretch is going to be a trap...
that's not the trap... the tricep, the tricep stretch, and so that one is
going to be kind of like that levator where you're bringing that hand up, except this
time you're going to take the other hand, put it on the elbow, and push behind you.
So now you're going to feel that stretch right in through there. So again if
you're working up here a lot, this muscle might get really tight, so this is a good
one just to stretch that tricep out, so you're just kind of pulling that elbow
up and back behind you, and again holding it for 30 seconds, and then doing three
on each side, and then coming up, and pulling back. So now we're going to get
on all fours, and then we're going to do that finale exercise at the end. So the
next stretch is the cat dog, cat cow, it's got a couple of different names, but they're all
animals. So you're going to get on all fours or in quadruped, and what
you're going to do is tuck your chin in and arch your back, and that's the cat
stretch. So you're going up just like a cat, stretching that back, and then you're
going to come down, drop those hips, and then bring your chin up, and so that's
the dog or the cow, and so with this one just hold each pose for about three to
five seconds, and just kind of get that stretch in there. And this is a good time
to do some nice deep breathing, really just to kind of help open up the chest
and everything while you're doing it. So breathing in, and then blowing out, and so
just do that about five or ten times each way.
Then the next stretch, the side you want to stretch, you're going to bring your
hand up behind your head, and then the other side you're going to come down on
your elbow. So you're going to start like this, and then just open up this way and
that really stretches that upper back. It also stretches your shoulder out as well.
So just hold it for this one's going to be another about a three to five second
hold, and then do ten of those really stretching everything out. Alright, so
the last exercise is going to be down on the ground, it's gonna be snow angels.
Oh hi up there. Oh hi Mr. Dinosaur. Get out of here. So the last exercise is the snow
angels. Snow angels look like they're easy, but if you do in right, they're
actually pretty hard. So what you want to do is prop up your knees, and you're
going to get yourself into a pelvic tilt, and the way to do a pelvic tilt is that
curve in your back, you want to flatten it out. So you're taking your abdominal
muscles and pushing down, so you can see how my pelvis tilts a little bit, and you
want to hold that down. So you want to take that curve out of your back and
keep your back nice and flat. You're going to put your hands kind of up in a
stop sign motion, it's almost like you're making a snow angel, but the key with
this is you want to keep your shoulders down as well. If they start coming up,
then you don't want to go any further, you want to try and keep everything flat
on the ground, the arms, the shoulders, and the back, all at the same time. So just
all you're going to do is put everything flat and then just slowly come up, almost
like you're making a snow angel. You can do this against the wall too,
you don't have to necessarily do it on the ground, but again if you're coming
here and your elbows start coming up, then you're going too far. So only go as
far as you can go by keeping everything down and then coming up, and then nice
and slow coming back down, and that's going to work the neck, upper back, and
even the lower back a little bit. Hey Mr. Bear. My Bear wanted to say hey to
Chazz's bear! So there you have it, those are some
stretches and exercises for the upper back and shoulder area. Hopefully a
little looser. Thank you. And don't forget to subscribe to Chazzzisawesome and don't forget
to subscribe to AskDoctorJo, and remember, be safe, have fun, and I hope so better soon!