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Preventing Back Pain with Exercises |

Brian Betancourt, Exercise Physiologist with Baptist Health South Florida, explains some exercises to prevent back pain. One is having the leg coming across the body and bringing the knee up towards you to give yourself a glute stretch.

Diana Solares, Physical Therapist with West Kendall Baptist Hospital, recommends stretching the thoracic spine by putting a small pillow in the lower back of your chair, crossing your arms over your head and stretching over the back of your chair.

Transcript

Okay what are you showing me today?what does desk-exercises are we doing? the you like. > What… Okay. So it’s gonna be a little difficult and a little tight, but one of the ones that they were kind of showing is having the the leg coming across the body but I like to bring my knee up towards me, and and give myself a little little glute stretch there, you know, keep it nice, you know, > Glutes are important. So basically as Brian said you could stretch the hips up. Another one that I really like is stretching the thoracic spine. So what I tell my patients to do is put a towel roll or a small pillow in the back of their chair kind of in the small of their back — oh that’s a good one — and then use you… either cross your arms or if you don’t — where is your thoracic spine located — in the middle of your back. — in the middle of the back, okay — and then the lower back would be kind of where that small curve is… — yes — You can put a pillow there or or a rolled-up towel — okay — a desk chair, and then as long as you don’t have any shoulder issues, you can put either your hands over your head, or if you do have any pain in your shoulders you can put them like this gently on your on your shoulder this is my jacket it’s kind of tight… So then at that point you’re gonna work on keeping your core braced by bracing your abdomens, and then trying to get a stretch over the back of your chair. Focusing on the middle of your back and not letting the lower back > So what… what muscle my using here, well your stabilizing with your core, you’re getting a nice stretch in the front of your belly, your abs, — okay — but what you want to do is make sure that you’re bracing your back and getting the majority of the movement in the middle of your back, your thoracic spine. > And that’s helping my.. this is for your back? > This will help loosen up the thoracic spine and the hips, which tend to get stiff from you know inactivity, and at the same time you’re learning to brace your your core, your abs, and the back muscles as well, — okay — So those do their true function which is to stabilize the body. > To stabilize the body. Ok now Brian one of the ones we were doing during the break is the push up how easy is to do that? Right. > Super easy. — tell me, show me. > Slap your hands on the table, come down and then you will come right back up, right. And you can do it standing, and then little by little you would decrease the height of the table to make it a little more difficult.

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