3 Ex's For SENIORS Who SIT Too Much!

Many of my senior clients tell me they finally have enough time in their day to do some of the things that they want to do. But unfortunately, most of those activities involve sitting. Although, it's a good book. If you haven't seen it, you should check it out. By now, no doubt you've heard of the ill effects of prolonged sitting. But however, in this video, we're taking an optimistic tone. I'm going to show you three simple but yet effective exercises that you can do to help counteract some of the prolonged effects of sitting. Stay tuned to the end of the video where I've got a special offer for going on right now. Hello, everyone. Welcome to the channel. Ed DeBoo, physical therapist from Integrative Physical Therapy in beautiful, partially sunny Bellingham, Washington. Our hips are one of the biggest, strongest muscles in the body. However, and if I'm sitting for long periods of time, that means I'm not moving. So guess what? We can definitely end up with some glute weakness. So the first exercise I'm going to show you is an exercise that you can do to kind of activate the glutes a little bit. I'm going to put a video link right up here to a whole video that I did about dead butt syndrome or glute amnesia. So if you are having achiness in your hips after you've been sitting for a long period of time, or if you're starting to have some knee or ankle pain that's kind of coming out of the blue, it could be because the hip on that side isn't working like it should, or maybe has become a little bit weak. So check it out. Find out if your butt is actually dead or not. But in this video, we're going to talk about a simple exercise that you can do to try to activate the glutes a little bit and improve the strength. Now, when it comes to glute strengthening exercises, no doubt you've seen bridges and glute marches and things like that, or clamshells when you're lying down. But I really prefer that you stand up because of course you've already been sedentary and you've been sitting. I don't really want you to go and start lying down again. So the exercises I'm going to show you are all standing. Use a little bit of chair for support if you need to. But the first one could be something as simple as lifting your legs straight up and holding into that position. So in this example, when I lift up my right knee, my left glute is firing hard, and I only want you to squeeze that left butt cheek. Remember, use a chair if you need to, and I want you to hold that for about a five second count. Then I want you to switch, lift up your left knee, really squeeze your right glute muscle tight, and really feel it activate. Hold that for five seconds, and you can just repeat that 10 times. Another thing that you can do is hip circles. Once again, balance if you need to. Lift your right leg up, left glute's doing a lot of the work, hip circle, and back down. It's a great way to work on balance, glute strength, proprioception, all at the same time. And make it your own. If you can't do such a really big circle, start down here and move it around this way. Remember, these are all to be done in a pain-free range of motion. Then, of course, you would do the same number on the opposite side as well, too. Another way to activate the glute is to first hinge at the hip, especially if you have any bone density issues. I'll put a link right up here that talks about all my osteoporosis playlists because it's really important that you learn how to bend correctly. So in this situation, when I'm going to bend forward, I'm going to bend with my hips and do a hip hinge versus rounding out my spine. So I'm going to hip hinge down to a counter or to a chair, I'm going to balance myself, I'm going to bend my right leg, and then I'm going to bring it up and back down and bring it up. And when I bring it up, I'm really going to squeeze that glute muscle tight. Now, I'm also working my hamstrings, I'm working my low back, but I really want to activate that butt muscle. And back down again, same thing on the other side, bend the knee up and back down nice and slow. When you get to the top, really squeeze that glute muscle and back down again. I would probably do one to two sets of 10 to start with, but whichever one of those exercises that you feel is comfortable for you should not be painful and you really feel those glute muscles activate. Another thing that happens after we sit for long periods of time is our hip flexor muscle, one that's responsible for helping to flex the hip gets tight because we're always in this crunched flexed position. And when the hip flexor gets tight, that can lead to pelvic imbalances, it can lead to lower back pain. So let's talk about a way in which you can stretch that hip flexor. So remember, when I've been sitting for long periods of time, this hip flexor muscle gets tight. So the idea is, is that we want to do the opposite motion. Once again, use a chair for balance and just take a comfortable stride, both of your feet pointing straight forward. Now, the most important thing that I want you to do first is you have to tuck your tail. So you have to squeeze your buns and do a little bit of a posterior tilt, or if you're Pilates person, you're going to imprint. So basically it's the opposite of your back arching. I want you to flatten out your back a little bit and tuck your tail and you should feel your glute muscles activated. The whole goal is to feel a stretch in this front part of the leg. After you tuck your tail, I want you to slowly come forward over this front leg. Notice my spine is nice and straight. I'm not leaning forward. I'm not leaning backwards. I'm tucking my tail and I'm coming forward. Now, you may have to go bigger with your stride until you feel a comfortable stretch. The goal is to come forward until you feel a nice stretch. Now, sometimes people will tell me, well, you know what, I'm just getting this big calf stretch. Nothing wrong with the calf stretch, but we're really after opening up the front of this hip. So go ahead and take that bottom leg and just lift up your heel. What that will do is it'll take the stretch out of there, and then we can focus on here and we may have to lunge further, just a little bit forward until I get a stretch. So like for me right here, I get a nice stretch. I'm tuning in, I'm tucking my tail and I'm holding this position for about a 20 second count. Then of course we do the same thing on the other side. Nice big stride, come forward until you get a pull in the front of this right hip that feels like it's opening up that area. And I'm going to hold that for about a 15 second count. And I like to repeat that three times on each side. And the last exercise we're going to talk about is the effect of sitting, especially with that forward head posture on the muscles of our neck, especially the anterior deep cervical muscles of the neck. So in a perfect world for sitting with great posture, the earlobe kind of lines up over the shoulder or at least close to it. But if you're like me, after you've been sitting for a while, tend to get a little bit tired, a little lazy, a little human, we start to slouch a little bit and then our neck has no choice but to go forward. Now I don't want to constantly look down so that I crank it up. Now what happens is we get compression of the cranial base, but I also get this lengthening of the muscles in the front of my neck. Now, if you ever had a rubber band and you put a rubber band around a stack of books, and then after a while, because the rubber band is so far stretched, it becomes weak. So it's called stretch weakness. And that happens to muscles as well too. So when I'm in this position for a prolonged period of time, the muscles that are responsible for bringing my head back where it needs to be, the deep cervical flexors get weak. So what we'll do is we'll work on an exercise that's going to stimulate and strengthen those deep cervical flexor muscles of the neck. You get to lie down for this exercise and I've got a little rolled up towel here. You may or may not need this. For some people laying flat is pretty comfortable. If you are one of those people where you can lay flat and you don't feel like your neck is all the way doing this, then you don't need a pillow or anything at this point. But if you do just get a rolled up towel or something small that you can put and I'll show it to you both ways. So now what you'll do is the first thing you'll do is you're just going to slowly do a nod. You're just going to kind of bring your chin down, make double chins, and you should feel the muscles in the front of your throat kind of activate and fire. And then you're going to relax. If it's a little bit awkward with the pillow, try it without the pillow. Double chin, hold five, four, three, two, one, and let it relax. And again and hold making the double chins and let it relax. Once that starts to get easy, I do about 10 of those. Once that starts to get easy, what we're going to do is we're going to challenge it a little bit. So first we'll nod our head and do the chin tuck. And then we're going to slowly hover our head a little bit above the bed. So chin tuck, nice and stable, and then slowly lift your head up and back down and let it relax. Now you'll notice when I'm lifting my head up, I'm not doing this. All I'm doing is nodding my head, doing the double chin, feeling the muscles in the front of my throat activate and fire. Then I'm just going to lift up, five second hold, back down, and let it relax. So ultimately that's the goal that I want you to be at, where you can do the full chin tuck and you can hold it for a five second count while your head is just hovering just a half an inch above the table and back down. And what that's going to do is that's really going to try to strengthen up those front of those muscles that have stretch weakness. It is so important that we move and don't sit as much, even if we have the leisure time. I'll put another link to a video I did up here about the benefits of walking, but also walking backwards and how profound that can be in terms of improving balance, strength, and overall proprioception. I'm also a big fan of tracking your steps. So if you can try to get outside and give me 7,500 steps a day, because according to literature, that's one of the best long-term health insurance policies we can take out for ourselves. Not sitting as much and improving your posture can have a profound effect on neck pain, shoulder pain, mid-back tightness, and burning. So if you really want to take your health and your posture to the next level, join me starting next Monday, September 16th for a 14-day posture fix challenge. Are you tired of having persistent neck, shoulder, and upper back pain? Could your posture use a little improving? Well then let's do something about it together. By the end of my 14-day challenge, you'll have the tools that you need to fix your posture and alleviate your neck and shoulder pain. But improving your posture is so much more than just sitting up tall. I'll teach you how to relieve tension in your jaw, how to treat trigger points in the muscles of your neck, improve the flexibility of your mid-back, and how to improve your shoulder flexibility and so much more. Each day you'll learn a new skill to improve your posture, reduce pain, and increase your overall flexibility. Hello everyone, welcome to day two of the challenge. Hello everyone, welcome to day four of the challenge. Hello everyone, welcome to day eight. But remember it's not just about watching videos. We must have an action plan if we truly want to implement long-term changes. Every day we'll have a little bit of homework and you'll have to submit proof and I'll be happy to give you feedback and encouragement every single day. And the best part is you're not alone in this journey. I'll be with you every step of the way. My name is Ed DeBoo and I challenge you to complete my leap month. The link to sign up to the challenge is down below. If you found the video helpful, please consider supporting me by giving it a thumbs up and subscribing to the channel. And ding, turn on your notification so you never miss another one of my videos. Please leave a comment down below if you have any questions or if you found the exercises helpful. And then I will see you at the next video. Bye.