Sean Croxton: Welcome to undergroundwellness.com. We are here at Robek Chiropractic in San Diego, California, with my favorite Chiropractor of all the time, Dr. Shawn Robek. This guy is awesome, I owe so much to this guy, I had some terrible low back pain a few years back. Now its complete Chiropractic skeptic and he fixed me. He is been blowing up ever since, he is working with the PGA now. He is working at the Olympic Training Center in Chula Vista with some of our tracking field athletes and so he is here to show us some exercises if you have low back pain, if you have postural pain, my man, welcome to the show.
Dr. Shawn Robek: Thank you. I am going to show you guys some postural corrective exercises and some lower back strengthening exercises today. We have got Michelle here.
Sean Croxton: Good we have got Michelle here, over here. She is going to be performing the exercises for us. So let's get to it.
Dr. Shawn Robek: Now for people who have acute lower back pain, this exercise is great, you just get movement back into the spine. We are going to start with keeping pelvis relaxed and exaggerating the curve in your lower back, so you are bringing your belly up to the ceiling. And doing this you want to make sure, you make that contraction as in hard, you are exaggerating that curve but the opposite movement is where the exercise comes into play, where you tuck your pelvis back towards your head and you suck your belly down towards your spine. People who have both types of back pains should do this exercise but people that have an acute severe episode of lower back pain should start off doing this exercise specifically but only going to the pain parlor.
Taking the position of the pelvis, where the pelvis is relaxed and the spine is up to the ceiling, it's going to help increase the range of motion and bringing the pelvis back will help the muscles relax as well as you are taking the pressure off to this.
Sean Croxton: Okay, well what about somebody with a chronic lower back pain. What are the exercise that they can do to shrink in the lower back?
Dr. Shawn Robek: It's a great question, we are going to start in the position where we started with the pelvic tilt and we are going to tilt your pelvis back just like you did before but you are going to keep coming up into the bridge position. When you are in this position, you are going to keep your body nice and now you are going to contract your abdominal muscles and pelvicular muscles here in a plank position.
You are going to take this leg and you are going to take it straight out keeping this knee in the same plane as the other knee. You are going to keep your belly tight, you are going to avoid twisting or slouching, you are going to hold this position for ten seconds and going to relax. Maintain the position, maintain that plank and kick out the other leg.
Sean Croxton: So in what way does the strengthen this supine leg?
Dr. Shawn Robek: And drop that leg. This is why it strengthen the spine is because the spine has to stabilize itself when you take this balance point away. Once this balance point comes, away go ahead and do that, all the force is going to the lower back. And it's going to make the small muscles of the lower back contract hard which are the muscles that stabilize the spine.
Sean Croxton: Alright, what else have you got for us today?
Dr. Shawn Robek: Well there is postural corrective exercise I would like to show you because most people have poor posture, people in society now, they are so forward dominant, what they do, whether they are driving a car at long distances or if they are sitting at a computer for hours throughout the day, they are studying or at work. This is a great exercise to get your shoulders back and get your body in a more upright position. This exercise is called the Prone Cobra; there are three steps to it. Arms stretched back, the first step is keeping your nose pointed straight in the floor and then bringing your head up maintaining that position. So you don't want to look forward, you don't want your head to come forward or your nose to come up. Second step is rolling your hands back thumbs back, pinching your shoulder blades together, keeping your shoulders to press and don't shrug them, keeping the feet down, you are going to bring your chest up off the ground maintaining that head position and trying to bring your chest up as high as you can.
Sean Croxton: Now what if that head took tilt back. I think, it will do a us a great help if the head tilted back.
Dr. Shawn Robek: It's kind of productive, it's going to be worse for your posture than better. So you are going to keep your head down, maintain that position and maintain that contraction for ten seconds, ten times and I tell people to do that once a day.
Sean Croxton: Ten seconds on, ten seconds off, for ten reps.
Dr. Shawn Robek: That's right. So what you can do, you can sit in your chair and do the same thing. You can sit nice and tall, you are going to suck your belly in, keeping an erect posture, same thing with the head, you are going to bring your head back, you are essentially trying to create a double chin and doing this, you are going to roll your arms back and keeping the shoulder depressed, pinching your shoulder blades together. I tell people to hold this for one minute every half hour.
Sean Croxton: Alright, Thank you very much for coming on Dr. Robek. So we appreciate and we will check you guys on next time.
Transcription by:
Scribe4you Transcription Services