if you're sitting in a chair all day then your abdominals and deep spinal
stabilizer muscles are probably shut off and weak in this video you're going to
discover some unique exercises that you can do while you're at your desk that
will keep these muscles active so that when you go to use them in the gym or
everyday life they're there for you keeping your back healthy
hey what's up
Eric Wong here from Precision Movement and welcome to another episode of the
active office worker in this episode we're going to talk about the thoracic
and lumbar spine and how to keep these areas in the muscles that control these
joints active and keep the joints healthy when you're sitting in that desk
all day typically if you've got a backrest they're kind of slouched down
leaning against it a little bit and supported by the backrest what that does
to you the muscles of the spine is it shuts them off because now you have
stability from the backrest and you don't need stability generated from the
musculature of the spine and the abdominal wall that's not a good thing
because if these muscles atrophy that can lead to low back pain and of course
low back pain is something that affects so many people
80% plus of people in the Western world and it's only getting worse what can we
do about it well here are a few exercises if you're sitting at your desk
all day you can throw these in just to wake up these muscles now these videos
the series the active office worker series they're not designed to be the
be-all and end-all of seated office exercises there's little ideas that I'm
sharing with you to get you to think about your body and taking care of your
whole body not just certain areas but your whole body and how something like
desperate can affect your body and what to do about it so don't think of this as
the ultimate office seated exercise workout program but just some ideas that
you can use and you period every day or every workday to
keep you a little bit healthier alright so the first technique we're gonna get
the abdominal wall active and this is just an anterior abdominal wall
isometric first up you want to get into a nice tall neutral spinal alignment and
once you find that tighten up the abdominal squeeze the abs without
actually changing your posture so you're doing this looks like nothing's
happening but I'm tight here versus this I don't want flexion to occur so stay
tall get that eye so now once you're there hands on your thighs or on your
knees and think about driving your torso forward driving your hands into your
knees not with the shoulders but with the abdominals and once you get a good
activation that'll fire up the activation a little bit more hold it for
10 seconds keep a strong activation
while you're maintaining a steady breathing rhythm in other words don't
hold your breath and when you're done just gradually relax and that's gonna
activate the anterior abdominal wall rectus abdominis external obliques and a
little bit of internal obliques so you can do anywhere from 1 to 6 repetitions
holding for about 10 seconds and that'll get these guys fired up and awake next
up we're gonna work the lateral musculature so this is obliques internal
and external and also quadratus lumborum and the latissimus the lats for this one
you'll want to slide over to the edge of your chair
hand on the side here and same thing we're going to start with just a general
isometric contraction of all the torso musculature
okay so just bracing but then what I'm gonna do is I'm going to think about
side bending into my hand but my hand is obviously blocking me so I'm not moving
some side bending and then that's gonna fire up the lateral musculature right
over here same thing hold ten seconds while maintaining natural
breathing rhythm keep strong through the scapula so it forces those
muscles to fire up and then you relaxed you're gonna get a little bit of lateral
flexion here and that's okay same thing at least one up to six reps
holding for ten seconds on both sides you could switch up sides you can do one
side all at once it doesn't really matter just do something and then move
on next up a segmental spine flexion and extension this is a really important
concept and movement to be able to get so the spine it's like every vertebrae
there's 33 vertebrae total including the fused ones in your tailbone every
vertebrae is a separate joint and joints are designed to move so if all we're
doing is bracing all the time then that's not training what the spine is
actually designed for if it was designed for to be just a stiff rod then that's
what would have occurred is just it would just be one bone and the nerve
could go right in the middle of that bone and it would be perfectly safe he
would never get injured well might get injured if he had a fracture of the bone
but I digress okay the spine is designed to move and that's what I talk about in
spine control what we're gonna train here is segmental flexion and extension
so sit up tall start in a neutral position and from there get into a
extended position so pushing the chest out really opening up the chest towards
the ceiling from here I'm gonna go chin to chest
so cervical flexion and then think of thoracic spine which is this area
flexion but I maintain extension down at the lumbar area until I get all the way
down through to here and then come up one vertebrae at a time
so keep the chin in the chest keep the thrust spine rounded then go extension
here and then here and then here it's really slow here
and all the way up so you're stacking one joint on top of another one at a
time and that's the Sigmund ttle flexion and extension the key for this is to go
really really slow and start off in a hyper extended position so you could
feel those muscles on that are keeping you extended and then keeping those
muscles on down low as you flex over top of it and then vice versa on the way up
keeping the muscles on that are flexing you so the abdominals chin to chest the
neck flexors here as I'm firing up one by one the extensors up the spine
this one looks simple but it takes a little bit of practice takes a lot of
practice actually so if you don't get it right away if you just feel like you're
moving as one whole unit that is perfectly normal especially in today's
society where we're not used to training this keep at it and you will get better
I promise you okay finally very simple pelvic tilts this is best done on a
wheelie chair because then you can just roll the the wheelie chair around but we
could do it on a stationary chair as well as long as your butt slides sit up
nice and tall and good alignment and then you might need to grab on something
behind your faring non really chair but posterior pelvic tilts and to your
pelvic tilts coincides with lumbar flexion
lumbar extension trying to keep the thoracic and the cervical areas from
moving keep them stationary so with this you could do like five reps of each
somewhere around there and that'll keep the muscles that control the pelvis in
the anterior and posterior directions it'll keep those guys active get some
blood flow in through the hips as well which is important to you because when
you're sitting well nothing is moving so it's important to get everything moving
and active okay so there you have four techniques to
keep the spine healthier if you're working at a desk all day if you like
this make sure you check out the rest of the videos in this series and if you
have any spine issues I alluded to it earlier but please check out my spine
control course this is of course that I recently launched in a couple months ago
I think as opposed as at the time of posting this video that takes you
through the two major stages of training the spine for long term health movement
longevity phase one is stabilization so this is kind of what is most popular in
training the core nowadays core stability okay keep it the core neutral
posture and building strength around that neutral posture that's phase one
but most people don't move on don't move past that and the problem with that is
that the tissues the connective tissues of the spine like the vertebrae or the
intervertebral discs and the ligaments those respond to movement and loading
and if they're got not getting moved and if they're not being loaded they're
going to get weaker and degenerate and that's going to cause shrinking of disk
Heights easier disk herniation weakened ligaments so you get ligament
sprains a lot of bad things so phase two is all about developing dynamic and
training dynamic control of the spine to not only develop the muscles but those
connective tissues as well so if you want to learn more about that course
click on the link at the end of this video otherwise I hope you enjoyed this
and I'll see you next time peace