Self Care and Body Maintenance
Know you need to do some work on your body to help prevent injuries? Don’t know where to start? On this page we are about to start a list of basic exercises that when done consistently can help give you a chance of staying injury free.
As a disclaimer. If you are reading this and decide to do the exercises. Please understand that if you have underlying issues that are chronic and, or are currently under the care of a trained therapist or trainer. These are not designed to replace that training or therapy or countermand any they have said. These drills, exercises, stretches that I will be putting up here over time are designed to be put in to your program to supplement and help what you are doing.
Desk Bound Posture
In today’s society Desk Bound posture could quite possibly be the biggest predisposing cause and predictor for injury of the modern day recreational athlete. I don’t know the figures but the amount of workers that now spend a high percentage of their days sitting behind a desk on a computer or phone or both is huge, and with the worldwide pandemic still going on people working from home has actually made things even worse.
In this first series of photos of; stretches, and exercises I will show you how to try to unwind some of the damage being caused and maybe even help you improve performance in your choses sport.
Head Aches, Sore Neck and Shoulders
If you work behind a desk the above three problems are likely a part of your life to some degree: A/ The top left photo shows a typically bad posture of someone (me) working behind a computer. B/ The top right photo shows me lying over a loosely rolled up towel. Believe it or not if you did nothing else, this alone would help improve a lot of back, shoulder and neck problems. Many people attempt to use a foam roller or something larger than a rolled up towel but for most people anything more than a towel and you put too much extension in to the spine and it becomes harder to relax into the stretch as it is too much for the body to handle. C/ The bottom left and right photos are me using a medium strength Theraband and pulling my arms back and squeezing my shoulder blades together. These are great exercises to activate the muscles on your back and to keep them engaged through out the day.
Try doing the stretch twice a day for 60 - 90 seconds and doing the exercises every 90 minutes or so and doing just 5 repetitions of each one. The exercises will likely take you no more than about 60 seconds to do properly. To help you keep your back healthy and pain free. I think it is a great investment of your time. Don’t think you will remember. Set an alarm on your phone to do them. As an added benefit it may just wake you up a little bit as well and keep you more engaged and productive at work.
Further Shoulder and Thoracic exercises.
The top exercises look very much like a front plank, and they are, however if you look closely you will see in the second photo my torso is lower. This exercise is commonly called a Serratus Push up or Scapular Push up. You can see the broomstick along my spine to give me feedback to keep it neutral and I am holding a thin TheraBand in my hands and pulling the hands away from each other. In this exercise slowly lower your self towards the floor keeping the back of your head in contact with the broom stick and then push away from the floor again keeping your spine neutral and head still. This exercise lengthens and strengthens key shoulder control muscles that are needed to keep the shoulders in the correct position during exercise. Start this from your knees and as you progress, move up on to on your toes, again like a proper front plank. Once you are used to feeling what proper posture is in this exercise there is no need for the broomstick. It is useful for people that can’t feel when they are not holding correct form.
The bottom exercise is called a weighted swimmer. For beginners this can be done with out weights and I suggest you do start with out weights as the posterior muscles that control the shoulder blades and the rotator cuff muscles are more often than not dysfunctional and if you weight the exercise you will likely miss the point of the exercise in the early stages. Start like in the bottom left photo and squeeze the shoulders back and keeping your elbows off the floor, press your hands as far as you can above your head. Then again keeping your elbows off the floor pull your hands back down to the starting point.
For each exercise do 10 repetitions of each.