How do dumbbells help and actually always remember that if you don’t have dumbbells a great option is two water bottles and you use them as dumbbells you just kind of bring them up and they’re each maybe half a pound and it works so it’s a good option in case you don’t have dumbbells don’t spend the money but doctor how does that help? In the beginning you can just use bodyweight or gravity resistant exercises to start but once you get advanced people get kind of overwhelmed by going to the gym and starting with week’s weights you can easily talk to your therapist and learn the exercises talk to your physician have some guidance in what you’re going to do especially if you’re going to do something more advanced like Pilates or yoga you should definitely have a coach or a teacher and then once you get to the point where you need some weight using things at home are great for example milk jugs or water bottles or great resistance tools to use at home. Now when it comes to age let’s also note that the exercise will differ right doctor depending on whether you’re talking about an elderly person a more sedentary person a more active person or maybe even someone younger all of these are different categories. So it really depends on the patient and what they want to do so as a physical medicine rehab specialist I really focus on function so I try to get an idea of what what the patient is doing what they were doing before the pain what they want to get back to so one big thing that I see is fear avoidance activities or kinesio phobias the medical term for it and that’s when you see somebody that’s afraid to move afraid to bend fraid to walk because they twist it one time and the pain was severe and that’s really what these exercises and stretches either a physician guided home exercise program or physical therapy which is a therapist working with you teaching you how to exercise how to move without causing pain some people think that they’re gonna harm themselves if they’re doing therapy you’re probably not gonna harm yourself as long as you’ve been cleared by your primary care physician or spine specialist you may hurt but it’s gonna be a different type of hurt and we really have to have a conversation together to learn what works for you and what exercises work for you and especially if like myself or sports medicine physicians we really try to get you returned to sport to returned to your prior level of function.