3 Best OSTEOPOROSIS CORE Strength Exercises

In this video I'm going to talk specifically about core strengthening for osteopenia and osteoporosis. Hey everyone, welcome to the channel. Ed DeBue, Physical Therapist out of Integrative Physical Therapy in now snowy Bellingham, Washington. Whenever I have a client that comes in with either osteoporosis or osteopenia, their main concern is whether or not they should take the medication. A lot of my clients have really strong feels about the medication either one way or the other, but the thing that I try to stress with them is regardless of whether or not you decide with your physician to take the medication or not, we all need to be on a strengthening program. I'll put a link right up here to another video that I did where I talk about five specific exercises that I think you should also be doing and those are a little bit more upper body and lower body single leg kind of balance things. This video I'm going to talk a little bit more about core strengthening. When you think about core exercises, you oftentimes have this image of specific exercises like the old school sit-up, curl-ups, maybe Russian twists, all sorts of things that all work the core, but I'm going to tell you that I don't recommend any of those that you just saw if you have osteopenia or osteoporosis and I'll tell you why. Remember what starts to happen unfortunately when we have low bone mass density? The anterior or the front part of the vertebral column starts to lose bone density. So if we're not careful, we can actually get wedge fractures and as we get wedge fractures is when it starts to kind of collapse on itself and then you end up with that hyper kyphotic posture because we're getting fractures of this anterior part of the vertebral spine. With that knowledge in place, it now makes sense that we wouldn't want to do a lot of exercises that really focuses on crunching multiple times which just reinforces that posture into the nervous system. Remember whenever we're strengthening, we're basically reinforcing that posture into our nervous system. So oftentimes I'll talk about scapula in the back pocket or engage the core before you do any type of strength training. It's because we're telling our body, look this is kind of where I want you to be, not collapsed or slouchy. So that's why strength training is so important but with intention. At the end of this video, I will talk about how many times a week you should be doing the exercises and how we should incorporate core strengthening with upper and lower body strengthening so that it's reasonable and not overwhelming. So what we want to do is make sure that we strengthen our core in neutral. We don't want that excessive bending of the spine. We want to be nice and straight and in neutral. First we'll work on strengthening the posterior chain and what I like to have you do is do some version of a front plank. The first exercise I'm going to go over is the plank. Now don't worry, I'm going to show you many modifications and so if you can't do a plank on the floor on your elbows, don't worry, I got you covered. But if you can, we're going to start off with a harder version and then make it a little bit easier. The idea is to try to give me two minutes worth of total work. So maybe you could only hold a plank, whichever position that you're going to be able to do it in, for 30 seconds. Then you rest and you give me four 30-second intervals. So two minutes worth of work total. If you can, you can go ahead and get onto your elbows, engage the core and you can hold this for a total of two minutes but taking a break when you need to. If that's too hard, go ahead and come on down to your knees and hold the front plank in this position. If planking on the floor is too challenging, no worries, come to a wall. Assume the same kind of position, scapula in the back pocket. Notice my elbows are a little bit lower than my shoulder. Belly button in towards my spine, scapula in the back pocket, engage my core and I'm going to hold this position here, a total of two minutes worth of work. When it comes to side plank, I'd like you to give me one minute worth of work on each side. So if you could only do 30-second holds, then give me two 30-second holds. And don't worry, I'm going to show you modifications as well too. But if you can, you're going to be on your side, on your elbow. You're going to keep your top leg in front and you're going to maintain this position for up to a minute if you can. Remember, if you can only go 15 seconds, then go ahead and come on back down and give me four 15-second intervals. You can also side plank on your knees if you need to and hold this position here. You can make it a bit more challenging by lifting up your top arm. The idea is just to kind of meet your body where it's at versus forcing it. If the side plank on my elbow and even on my knees is too much, I can do the side plank on the wall. So I'm coming to the wall here. I'm going to step out, stagger my legs so my top leg is in front. I don't want this arm too high because I can irritate my shoulder. So I'm going to come down just a little bit and find that sweet spot for my shoulder so it feels pretty good. I'm not going to let my body sag in through here. I'm going to make a conscious effort to engage my core and you should feel the muscles on the side working. If you want to make it a bit more challenging, lift up this top leg and you'll really get a nice strengthening response in through here. You may have to adjust your shoulder a little bit if the shoulder is painful. You might want to drop the angle of the arm and I'm fine with that. The whole goal is to get some lateral core strength and endurance. Remember one minute worth of total work. Now when it comes to strengthening the front, the rectus abdominis, rather than doing the old school sit-ups which really causes a lot of flexion and pressure on the anterior part of our spine, once again we're going to strengthen in neutral. One leg is straight, one leg is bent. I want you to picture that you're taking your belly button and kind of pulling it and drawing it in towards your spine. I'm going to put your hand behind your head. I'm going to put your scapula in your back pocket and then you're just going to gently lift up your shoulder blades a little bit off the floor. Your hands behind your head if you can. If this bothers your shoulder you don't need to, but you're going to come right here. Remember to engage the core, belly button in towards your spine, scapula in the back pocket and then just gently lift up your shoulder blades a little bit off the floor. So if you notice I'm not really moving very much at all, but I'm getting a nice strong contraction of the rectus abdominis or basically the front part of my core and I'm going to hold this one here for a 10 second count and then I'm going to release it. So this one in terms of the holding is a little different than the side plank and the front plank. Once again belly button in towards the spine, scapula in the back pocket, lift up just a little bit, engage that rectus abdominis and I'm going to hold that there for a 10 second count and then repeat that for a total of 10 repetitions. After five you can go ahead and switch just to keep things balanced. If you look at the literature the good thing is even strength training once a week assuming that you have the appropriate intensity and volume will produce strength changes. So one option is to do those five exercises that I put a link up to earlier and I'll put a link again right up to here are to do those exercises once a week and then another day a week to do the core strengthening exercises. Remember strength training is a continuum so if I'm only doing something once a week sure I'm going to get some benefit but not nearly as much as if I start doing something two and three times a week. If you would like to go deeper and learn more not only about osteoporosis but how we can all take care of ourselves after 50 make sure you check out livewell50.com and I will put a link down below for those that want to go next level with their health. If you found the video helpful and you want to support the channel please give the video a thumbs up and subscribe to the channel. It's the best way you can support me. If you have any questions please leave them down below, turn on your notifications so you never miss another one of my videos. All right take care.