Exercises for Posture - Stabilizing the Lower Back

Dr Neil King: Hi, I am Dr. Neil King, founder of king Chiropractic with the offices in Gaithersburg, Potomac and Urbana Maryland. We are here at Philbin s Athletic Club in Gaithersburg Maryland reviewing how to do dynamic exercises for posture. We have already talked about some ways to stretch your upper body, now we are going to move in to some gentle strengthening maneuvers. I know the people that like weights, love them, we do weight training and we are going to do that today. But I want to tell you, this is going to be a light weight work and we are going using some stabilization ball. Now, the ball doesn t have to be this big but I actually do like them when they are larger like this, for what we are going to be doing. Again these are very, very light weight. These happen to be 12 pounds. Here is what you do. You stabilize yourself on the ball. Now, gentle stabilization, if you did nothing but you just sat on the ball, that would be actually very good for you because what it does is, it teaches your body to stabilizes itself.

We are going to couple that with some weight maneuvers and here is the first one, very simple, a front raise. Now look, all I am doing is just rotating my hand as we go to the front, can you see that? I am just rotating my hand. A lot of people have done this exercise and this is not good for your posture by doing it this way, this way that s not the way to do it. Here s how we are doing it for posture, you are rotating your hand and bringing it up. You are rotating your and bringing it up to your front, that works the muscles in the front part of your body. So, I want you to do that exercise about ten times, ten times very simple, rotate and raise.

The next exercise is a lateral raise. A lot of you have probably done this as well. You are seated on the ball, stabilization, elbows in raise to the side. See how I am doing that, just like that raise to the side. I want you to do about ten of those, the same thing. Let me try to move to the side so, you can see both of those. Here is the first one, you are rotating and you are raising, see I getting to shoulder level,, just like that raising, just like that and like that.

And the last one is you are seated and you are going up, up to the side, just like that, up to the side, you got it, excellent. I am going to move the ball away and I want to show an exercise that people really don t ever consider for posture and this is that exercise. You are like this, you are going to do two maneuvers. Abdominals in, I want you to do a shoulder shrug, where you come back and around and then push to the back, one, two, three and then relax back to posture.

Let me show you from the front. You are going to go up, back around and then to the posterior. One, two, three and relax. This couples a couple of exercises together. For years people have done shrug. This is how they have done them. Straight up, straight down, straight up, straight down, what we want you to focus on is, up and back and once you are in that posture, then you go to the posterior, one, two, three. I want to show you a couple of other key points. First of all, a regular shrug which a lot of you have probably done, is just straight up, this is up ,back and then back, but notice something, I am not going up back and then putting my head forward. Your head stays up and back. One, two, three and relax.

Light weights, do about ten to fifteen of those. Quick review, with the ball to the front, lateral raise and then the shrug, going to the posterior. Have a great a time with us. When we come back, we are going to be doing one last exercises standing and we are going to get on the floor and teach out how to stabilize that abdomen. Thank You!