Flexibility Training

Speaker 1: The material contained in this video presentation provides general information on the management of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. This information is for reference purposes only and should not be considered medical advice. Before beginning or modifying any exercise program, please consult your medical provider to ensure that the activities demonstrated in this video presentation are appropriate for your specific health condition.

Janice Smeigh: Hi, I'm Janice Smeigh, Doctor of Physical Therapy. I'm going to talk to you about flexibility training today. Our objectives today are going to be to understand the difference between stretching and flexibility, the FITT principle for stretching, learn different stretches for our upper and lower extremities.

Some of the disclaimers we'd like to discuss is that you should always seek medical clearance from your doctor prior to starting an exercise program. Take all medications and oxygen as prescribed. Use an assistive device as needed. If you feel faint during exercise, please stop and rest. If it's a medical emergency, please call 911.

In order to elongate the muscles or to increase flexibility, we need to stretch for at least 30 seconds, up to two minutes, and I like to do three reps of each. If you're stretching prior to an activity, we don't want to hold very long, we'd rather have three to four seconds between each rep.

While we're exercising or becoming more flexible, we'd like to concentrate on breathing. We want to have the frequency of daily when we stretch. We want a mild discomfort. You should never have any pain while you're stretching. We'll hold for about 30 seconds, up to two minutes. And we want to stretch any tight muscles or anything that feels uncomfortable.

When we talk about our cervical spine or our neck, a lot of the shallow breathing that some people can do can cause tightness in these areas in the neck. We're going to learn how to stretch the overused accessory muscles, and shortened muscles, and improve our posture, the forward head, the rounded shoulders and the kyphosis in your spine. We're going to learn how to stretch the upper trapezius, the scalenes and the sternocleidomastoid.

The first stretch we're going to go over is the upper trap stretch, or the upper trapezius stretch. We're going to sit up nice and tall at the edge of our seat. We're going to side bend and we're going to bring our ear to our shoulder, feeling the stretch right along our neck.

The next muscle is the scalenes. The scalenes is located in the front of the neck. We're going to side bend again, and we're going to turn up towards the ceiling to feel the stretch on the side of our neck.

Sitting at the edge of your chair, we're going to stretch the sternocleidomastoid. We're going to side bend. We'll bring our hand to our collarbone, and then we're going to rotate upward, looking up and over our shoulder to feel the stretch on the front of your neck.

When we have poor posture we have inability to use our diaphragm and our abdominals correctly. Two different scenarios:

One is where your hips are behind you and our shoulders are rounded forward and our head is up, or when our hips are tucked underneath us too far and we still get that forward posture with our shoulders and our abdominals tucked in. So standing up nice and tall. I always say there's a string above your head. You can see that now I can get a nice deep breath in using my diaphragm and my abdominals.

Next, I'm going to show you how we're going to stretch the front of our chest and our abdominals out. We're going to sit back in our chair. We're going to bring our arms up behind our neck. I like to interlace the fingers. We're going to look up and lean back, stretching the top of our stomach.

Now we're going to stretch the opposite muscles; our back muscles. What we're going to do is we're going to sit up nice and tall on our chair. Bring our hands forward as we're giving a bear a hug, while diving into the ocean, letting your neck come forward slightly.

Next, we're going to stretch out our sides and our obliques. We're going to bring both hands up and overhead. We're going to stretch to our side until we feel a good stretch on the right side. We're going to come up nice and tall, and then we're going to switch sides.

Now we're going to stretch out our legs a little bit. This muscle becomes very tight from being seated all the time usually with our occupations. What you're going to do is you're going to come to the edge of your chair, reach back your back leg, come up nice and tall, and then you can feel the stretch in the front of your thigh.

We're going to stretch out the other side of the muscle now; the hamstrings. We're going to sit at the edge of our chair, bring one foot forward, sit up nice and tall. And if we feel like we need a better stretch in the back of our legs, we're just going to gently fold at the hips.

Next, we're going to stretch out our gastrocnemius; the muscle at the bottom of the leg. We're going to bring a band and it could be any kind of band. It could be a dog leash or a towel. We're going to sit up nice and tall and pull the strap towards you so that you feel it more in your ankle.

Thank you.