Maiela sits down with Laura to show three simple exercises to help with back pain associated with post pregnancy. Give us a call to schedule your free pain consultation and be on the lookout for more videos.

Transcript:

Hello everyone, I’m Maiela and this is Laura. you may remember her from one of our last videos where she was a few months pregnant. but now she’s got this little guy. Before, when she was pregnant, she was having a little bit of back pain, and from time to time, even though she’s already had a baby, she still gets a little back pain here and there.

We want to show you today are three really good exercises to help tighten everything up after the baby, and help eliminate any back pain that you might have been having postpartum.

The first exercise we’re going to show you is called ta activation, TA stands for the transverse abdominis, that’s just a fancy name for your ab muscles here. The best position to do this exercise is laying flat on your back, with your knees bent, and what you want to do is put your hands on your belly here, this is going to help give you some feedback so that you know if you’re actually contracting those muscles that you should. What you want to do with your hands here, you want to take a deep breath in, and as you exhale, you’re going to tighten your belly muscles. and your hands here will help you feel if you’re actually contracting those muscles there. Good, let’s try that one more time, inhale in and as you exhale and try and hold that for 5 seconds 3 4 5, and relax. Very good. This exercise is an easy one that can be done laying on the floor, on a yoga mat, or laying on the bed. you can start with 5 Second holds and as you get a little better, increase to 10-30 second holds.

Another exercise that we’re going to show you it’s called the sideline clam exercise. Sideline means you’re lying on your side, and you’re going to be working the muscle that’s on the top tier. Laura is in a good position here. ankles together, knees bent, knees together, and to start this exercise, you want to make sure that your hips are in the right place, by doing that you want to make sure you have a good line from your shoulder to your hip, to your ankle here.

Everything has to be in line. If the hips are too far forward, or too far back, then you’re not in a good starting position. Once you get that really good starting position, you have your bottom half, nice and relaxed, your top hands on your side here, just relax, there, resting. What you want to do, this is going to work the glutes. You’re going to keep your ankles together. Lift up the top knee, and you’re going to feel right here on the side of those glute muscles contracting, and go ahead and bring down, good.

You can start with sets of 10, and each set that you do, you want to hold for at least 3 seconds. Go ahead and bring it up. Holds 1, 2, 3, and slowly lower it down. What you want to avoid, is also going too fast. If you start kind of flapping the legs like this, you’re not really working the muscle properly. Okay. Again, this is called the sideline clam exercise to help strengthen up the hips, the glutes, and the back.

Another exercise that we’re going to show you, it’s called quad leg extension. I’m going to show Laura how to get into the position for this exercise. Quad is short for quadrupeds, and what that means is, on all fours and on your hands and knees. Go ahead Laura.

For this exercise I recommend doing it, either on the floor, if you have a yoga mat, or on a soft mat like this, if you have one of these at home. Now that Laura is in the proper starting position, you want to make sure that your back is straight, and that your hips and your knees are in line. Move back, just a little bit here. Hands are shoulder width apart and you have a good stable base. From here what you’re going to do is start with one leg, and then the other. We’ll start with your left leg here Laura. You want to stabilize the back. Use the core muscles, and extend the leg here. She’s got nice long legs, and then slowly brings it back. Key things to remember here, is to keep your back straight, keep your hips in line. You want to avoid any swing here. Let’s do the right, here. good. She’s engaging the back muscles, engaging the core muscles, and also the glutes here. And then slowly bring it back. This exercise can be done in three sets of 10, with 5 second holds, and then as you get a little more comfortable with this exercise, you can always increase the number of reps, and increase the seconds, on the hold there. This is a quadruped leg extension exercise.