Medicines and pain relief for lower back pain

Hi gang, Simon here and today we're going to be working a little bit mobility and stretches to help relieve that lower stiff sore back.

So just make sure you've got loads of space to do it in.

We're going to be doing it primarily on the floor with a couple stretches standing.

And yeah, let's get started.

All right, team.

So today we're going to be doing the child pose.

So this one, if you really struggle with the floor, you can use a pillow or a yoga block for your head to rest on.

But the whole idea is that you want the knees wider than the hips and you want to kind of sink the hips towards the feet.

OK, So place your hands on the on the top of each other if you like.

I'm going to focus on some breathing.

OK, So on the exhale, I want you to lean back more, get more into that that position of, of bringing the the glutes further back. OK?

So think breathing in and on the exhale, go a little bit into the deeper into the stretch.

Breathe in and exhale.

Breathe in and exhale.

Let's breathe in.

Amazing.

So next what we're going to do guys is we're going to do the cat cow.

So really good stretch, laces flat on the floor, so part of the shoe. Try and make sure it's flat or close to ground as possible.

Hands, you know, make sure they're starfish. So make that starfish parallel to the shoulders.

We want the knees parallel to the hips and we want to focus on driving that back up, rounding it, bring the chin in.

And then as we straighten the back, the last thing we want to do is exhale.

OK, so should look something like this.

So breathing in and exhale and you want to try and push into the ground guys.

OK, if you push into the ground, especially around that back, makes a world of a difference here.

We're going to add a little twist now. So what I want you to do is breathe in and then squeeze the shoulder blades together and as you unsqueeze, exhale.

Let's get one more.

Amazing, good job.

So we're going to do the Cobra stretch, fantastic stretch for a stiff lower back.

So the idea here is we want the hands close to the body.

We want to make sure that our hip flexors remain on the floor and we're just going to drive up.

We're going to look 5 to 6 feet into the air, OK.

We don't want the shoulders crunched.

Want to try and keep them as relaxed as possible pushing into the ground.

And you should feel this in the lower back also in the abs too.

Let's get 5 good deep breaths.

Let's get one more.

Fantastic.

OK, so lower back should start feeling a little bit more relaxed and a little bit less stiff.

So we're going to do a seated forward fold.

So the idea of this one team is a couple ways we can do this.

So with the seated forward fold, if you fight it too much, you can stay on your feet and just try and lean forward to stretch out the back.

If you want to extend the legs to lock them out so we get a bit more hamstrings involved, you can do that too.

But the idea is you want to keep the legs straight as possible, walk the hands towards the ankles and if you can get really low, awesome. If this is as much as you can get, great, don't worry. Just do what you can.

And with each exhale, try and go a little bit deeper in that stretch. So breathing in and exhale, breathe in and exhale good and slowly relax and come up.

And for our next stretch, guys, what I'd like you to do is we'll do a spinal twist.

So this one, we are going to do it seated. So you want to cross one foot over the other.

Try and keep it above the knee if you can. And then just as an example, brought my right leg over my left, my left arm is going to go behind the right knee.

And then I'm going to look over towards my right shoulder. I'm going to use my hand to help stabilize everything.

I'm going to hold this for four to five good deep breaths.

Amazing.

And what we're going to do next team is we're going to swap sides.

So bring that knee, bring that foot above that knee, make sure the opposite hand is fully supporting the weight of your upper torso.

And then the opposite arm is going to go behind your left knee and you're going to look over your shoulder and focus on that breathing.

Good stuff.

OK, so for this next one team, we can have a little self massage, which is never a bad thing, right?

So the idea is we're going to bring our knees towards our chest.

And the goal here is we're going to interlock the fingers or you can just grab on to the knees, do whatever feels right.

And we're going to rock and we're going to bring our head towards our belly button.

And you can do the alphabet if you want.

You can do figure of eights, so you can do numbers, whichever the whole idea is you want to try and rock.

So that lower back is getting massage.

We're getting that blood circulate into that area and optimizing that.

So I'm just going to rock gently forward, backwards, side to side.

And then you're going to rest that head and you're going to bring those knees towards the chest.

So your tailbone's going to be lifted off the ground and you're going to focus on a nice deep breath. Amazing.

So this next one team, going to grab the knee at the front in slot those fingers and we're going to pull.

So again, this is going to help the hips slightly, but also the lower back.

So I'm going to pull that knee and I'm going to focus on those deep breaths.

Let's get one more. Good stuff.

OK, so we're going to swap legs now and again. We're going to pull that knee towards our chest.

Focus on your breathing. Amazing.

So with that knee, what we're going to do is we're going to dart it across the body.

So keeping both shoulders firmly to the ground.

You can drop that foot towards the ground if you want, but the whole idea is that we want the knee to go across the body.

So we're getting that lower back stretched as well.

We're going to focus on three, four deep breaths.

OK, so in through the nose, out through the mouth.

Great stuff.

So we're going to swap sides, so making sure that knee, both shoulders on the floor, knee’s going across the body and again that stretch in that lower back.

Now what we're going to do is going to stretch the hamstrings. You're probably thinking, why would we stretch the hamstrings?

This is a lower back, you know, relieving session. But a lot of the time is that tight hamstrings can be the cause of lower back pain. So can tight hips.

The whole idea is that you want to try and keep everything loose. So straighten that leg as much as you can.

You want to grab behind the hamstring. So we're optimizing that stretch and we want to bring those toes and curl them towards our face.

So trying to straighten the leg, curl the toes and you'll definitely feel that stretch in the hamstring area.

Focus on the breathing, on the exhale.

We're always going to try and make sure we straighten that leg a little bit more, pull that leg a little bit closer.

Amazing.

All right, let's try and get 4 to 5 good deep breaths.

OK, so straighten the leg, curl the toes, and dial in on that. Breathe in.

So breathe in and exhale, breathe in and out. Great stuff.

For this next one team, what we're going to do is going to do kneeling thoracic rotation. So the whole idea is what we want to do is we want to try and utilise the wall if we can.

The idea is going to go lunge forward with my right hand I'm going to try and place it against the wall, and with my left hand I'm going to try and also touch the wall as much as possible.

If you struggle this one, chances are you might have a tight hips, tight lower back or tight upper back and shoulder mobility.

But the goal here is to try and get both hands to touch the wall myself.

I think it's near about.

So again, just something to work on and be mindful of.

Bring the hands together this time, try and go a little bit deeper in that stretch. Awesome.

So we're going to swap sides, so swap hands.

And the idea is, oh, we're going to try and get into that stretch, try one more time, so a little bit deeper in that stretch.

Amazing. So what we're going to do guys, is we're going to do a standing forward fold.

So the whole idea is we're going to have our feet about hip width apart.

You can interlock. Oh well, hold onto the elbows if you wish. Or you can try and touch the floor.

But the whole idea is we don't want to lock out from the knees. We want to keep them slightly bent.

OK, a little break in the knees.

We're going to lean forward and we're going to try and let just that upper torso hang everything loose.

You can go right to left if you want to get a little bit of hamstrings involved a bit more, but the whole goal here is we want to let that upper torso just decompress as much as possible.

And again, focused on that breathing team.

Let's get one more and slowly come up.

Awesome job today guys. Well done.

Hopefully you got some use out of this and you're feeling a little bit more nimble and less, you know, less in pain or ess sore. So keep turning up and I'll see you in the next one.

Thanks very much.