3 Stretches to Fix Posture | Chiropractor for Posture in Boulder, CO
Hey guys, Dr. Duff here with Dr Emery. And today we’re going to focus on three stretches to help improve posture throughout the day.
Sitting Glute Stretch For Better Posture
Now as we go about our day, our posture starts to fall, whether that’s from working at a desk, whether that’s from working on our feet and getting tired, there are a number of things that we can do throughout the day to help improve those. So today, we’re going to focus on three that I commonly see here in the office that I always recommend to our patients. And the first one is really easy to do, we can do this in a seated position. So if you have a desk job, this is great. If you don’t, that’s okay, there are modifications that we can use to do this as well. And so to use Dr. Emery as an example, she’s going to take a seat here on the bench. And this is going to be to work on the glutes. So as we start to go about our day, our glutes tend to turn off unless we’re using them actively. And what we want to do is we want to keep the blood flow into those glutes, stretch out those muscles and start waking them up again. So here, we can just go into a cross legged position with one leg, she’s going to bring her leg over her knee, and this position here, and that’s going to help stretch out that glute muscle, and she can even pull that into her chest and start to lean forward to get an accentuated stretch here. Now I love the timing of about 30 seconds for this stretch on each leg up to three times one time is probably okay, just to get the blood flowing. But if you can do this for 30 seconds at a time on each leg for three whole sets or three rounds, that’s the best way to do it.
The Pigeon Stretch for Your Glutes
An extra stretch or an extra way we can get deeper into this stretch is by doing this what’s called a pigeon stretch up against something that’s elevated. So I’m going to have Dr. Emery go ahead and stand up and turn around and she’s going to put one of her legs up on and one of her shins up onto an elevated surface could be a chair, it could be a table, it could be a bench, whatever that is. And now what she’s gonna do, she’s positioning one of her feet back a little bit to get leverage and lean into that stretch, she can start to bring her chest forward, even get down to both of her elbows and really lean into that stretch, don’t push it too much. And then hold this one for about 30 seconds as well. That’s how you can deepen the stretch out. If sitting into that position is not enough for you. That’s a great way to start turning on the glutes, activating the posterior chain of your leg muscles all the way from the ankles all the way up to the back. Another fantastic exercise for the opposite side, right, we talked about the glutes and the in the back is the hip flexors.
The Runner’s Stretch for Your Hip Flexors
Now this next one is for when our hip flexors need some blood flow and some love and they need to turn on and start to warm up throughout the day. A great stretch for this is called the Samson stretch or also known as the runner’s stretch. So we’ll do it facing the camera to start, she’s going to take this kind of lunge, step forward, one step back, one step forward. That way we can get into a nice deep stretch here. And now she’s going to try and straighten out her back legs. So it’s straight like a board with her knee locked out, and she’s going to lean and kind of sag into her hips here, you can also kind of bend from side to side to get a deeper stretch. Sometimes I like to bend backwards into this one too. And again, about 30 seconds isn’t the most that you want to do this one for just to start warming everything up. To give a better sense of the angle its turn. And then let’s do the same thing. Good. So here’s she’s got her arms up over ahead, she’s actually leaning over to the side sagging and those hips areas, hip areas to to help open up those hip flexors. Awesome, thank you. And then the last one is the upper body. So when when it comes to posture, our head starts to tip for dip forward and look down when we’re going about our day looking at the computers, looking at our phones, so many different things. And that causes our shoulders to kind of close and round this way. So what we want to do is the exact opposite, we want to open them up. And this one’s really easy.
The Wall Stretch for Your Shoulders
This is the wall stretch, also known as like the doorway stretch, where you can just bring your arm up to about 45 degrees up past this, this point right here. And then we’ll start to lean into it. I’ll use this wall as an example. Dr. Emery just go ahead and grab one your arms up there, bring it up to about 45 degrees past parallel, so I’ve just a bit and then just get closer to the wall here. And then we’re just going to lean and sag into that position. So we’re opening up all these shoulder muscles in here and stretching those out so that we can start to get the shoulders back into this better posture. So our head is in to a better position there. This one might not go the full 30 seconds, we might only want to do this one for about 15 seconds. If you start to feel numbness in your hands or any stretching of the nerve tissue, then go ahead and settle down and and do it for a little bit less time than that five seconds last. So 10 to 15 seconds for this one. Do both sides. Make sure you get both of them. And you can do this one again for about three sets before we start to rest and move on to the next stretch.
So I hope these have helped. These are great things that I give for recommendations to all of my patients throughout the day, to help not only improve their posture, but to bring some more blood flow into those muscles to help undo some of the effects of gravity.
