Stay Loose in the Winter
During the winter it can be difficult to stay flexible and loose. We tend to spend more time on the couch or in our bed and less time moving around. In addition, many of us still find ourselves working from home in not-so-ideal working environments. This can cause aches and pains throughout our body by the end of the day. How do we break up the stiffness and get through the work day in the winter? Most people will say start incorporating stretching to your daily routine. However, not all stretches provide the quality movement that our body craves when feeling stiff. These three stretches will give you the most bang for your stretch routine!
We’ll start things off with one of my all-time favorite stretches known to many chiropractors and physical therapists as the world’s greatest stretch. Start in a lunge position and place both your hands inside your front foot. Then rotate to the side of front of the foot while keeping one hand on the ground. Keep rotating until you feel a catching-point or cannot rotate further. Hold here and breathe 3 times from the abdomen. Then move back to the starting position. Again rotate to the side of the front-foot but see if you can move a little further. Repeat this three times.
The next exercise focuses on providing more extension in our mid-back. Start on your knees and place your elbows on either a couch or bench. Next try to push your mid-back down towards the ground focusing on adding as much extension as you can in that area. Once you feel like you cannot extend anymore, drive your elbows into whatever surface you have them on and hold that contraction for about 8 to 10 seconds. Then see if you can sink a little bit further in to extension and again hold that contraction.
This last stretch is for your hip flexor and commonly called the couch stretch. Start by placing your knee down on a chair or couch and place your leg against the backing. Then bend at the hips trying to put as much extension into the hip against the chair as you can. When you feel that you can no longer move forward or have tension in the hip, hold in that position for 1-2 seconds and move back to the starting position. Repeat this movement 8-10 times to decrease tension at the hip flexors.
Alec Domjan, D.C.