Do you have lower Back Pain? You may have weakness in your glute med muscle! This exercise is great for strengthening that and help support your low back. Begin by lying on your left side to strengthen your left Gluteus medius “Butt” muscles. Keep your right hip stacked on top of your left and place your right hand on your right hip. Then bring your right foot on the ground in front of your left knee and bend the left knee to 90 degrees. Bring your left foot up, while maintaining the ninety degree bend in your knee. Hold this for 10 seconds; Do 3 sets of 10 repetitions.

This simple exercise works the gluteus medius muscle of your hip if it’s really weak! Start by leaning your forearm into the wall and have your outside hip flared out. With your inner core engaged and your posture tall flex your inside knee up to your chest . Start by squeezing the outside hip in and drive across to the other hip and upwards. Bring the outside hip in line with the knee and foot below. Then release and drop your hip back out and repeat. Do 10 repetitions for 3 sets. This is a close-chain exercise to strengthen the Gluteus Medius Muscle which can dynamically stabilize your hip and pelvis and help decrease low back pain when doing weight bearing activities like running, any running sports or even walking and hiking.

This exercise is to stretch out the external oblique muscles. Start by placing the arm of the side to be stretched out to the side on the ground. You can hold a weight or dumbbell in your hand to anchor yourself down. Then bring both knees up to your chest and twist them down to the opposite side. Use your other hand to hold your knees down. Hold the stretch for 30 seconds for 3 sets for both sides. If you are experiencing any acute or sharp pain consult your Physiotherapist before trying this exercise. 

Starting with tall posture, engage your core below the belly button by drawing the inner core muscles toward the spine without arching the low back. With arms in a ready position do a two legged squat with your body weight distributed equally over both feet. Stay in Spine neutral. Don’t go any lower than a ninety degree bend in the knees, keeping your knees in alignment with your second toe and over your heels as much as possible. Hold for a good long second and then straighten back up with your butt muscles to the start. Do three sets of ten repetitions daily. The two legged squat is a great exercise for strengthening the quad and posterior hip muscles with the core to help strengthen the lower back. The key is to keep your inner core low back stabilizing muscles engaged by making yourself skinnier at the waistline while you keep breathing. This will help you build more low back core strength with your thighs and legs.

Starting with tall posture, engage your core muscles below the belly button by drawing the lower abs inwards toward the spine. Avoid arching the low back. With arms in a ready position do a one-legged squat with your body weight distributed equally over the foot. Don’t go any lower than a ninety degree bend in the knees, keeping your knees in alignment with your second toe and over your heel as much as possible. Hold for a good long second and then straighten back up with your butt muscles to the start. Do three sets of 10 repetitions daily. The one-legged squat is a great exercise that’s effective in strengthening the quad and posterior hip muscles with the core and balance and proprioception to help further strengthen the lower back. The key is to keep your inner core low back stabilizing muscles engaged by making yourself skinnier at the waistline while you keep breathing. This will help you build increasingly higher level of low back core strength with your thighs and legs. 

Hi I’m Natalie, Natalie Hernandez from INSYNC PHYSIOTHERAPY here in North Burnaby. And today we are going to show with Patrizio how to stretch out the front of your thigh and the front of your hip which are your hip flexors; And this is usually really helpful for runners as well as people who sit a lot at work and can be something to do at the end of the day to help out that back as well. So to do that hip flexor stretch we’ll go over it in sequence. To start off with the hip flexors it’s always good to know how to “Landmark yourself”. You can get a feel for that bony area there and during the stretch just make sure that it’s always in symmetry. So there… can you feel that? Yeah? Since this is a stretch it’s always good to feel supported so that we don’t go off balance. So the first thing is, since we’re landmarking the area, is to think of is to pull that tail bone in or tighten that butt right! And if you’re tight you’ll automatically feel that stretch there. Just make sure you keep that spine nice and straight and try not to lean back too much… and you can now support yourself over here. So if you feel there’s a stretch in this position then hold that stretch for a twenty seconds hold to a … thirty seconds hold. Obviously you want to do this on both sides. You can do three repetitions of it end of the day or the start of the day two to three times per day. The next step if this gets easier for you what I want you to focus on is actually keeping that core in, spine straight, pulling that butt in… you’re going to try bringing that knee towards the front and you will feel a deeper stretch on that left side of your hip …. yeah … that works out?… And same thing… do it on both sides. And I find it that to get a deeper stretch in this position to use a block to hang on to it too or a stool and let your other hand hang out on the side and support your yourself on that one… let me just switch this. It can be easier this way. And keeping that spine nice and straight, core on and drive that forward while this hand is hanging low … imagine that you’re reaching for that opposite knee while keeping that nice and straight. So that’s a good progression for this stretch… and you hold that position. And then going back so the last end goal is a combination of your hip flexor as well as the front of that thigh which is your actual runner’s stretch. So if we we’re to try it, what you want to do is … you can use a belt if it gets really hard to reach for that foot; But the idea is the same… same here… keep that spine nice and straight, core on, pull that belly in or tuck your butt in, drive that knee forward… and if you can pull that up using a belt or your hand. So that’s the runner’s stretch and go deeper if you can. So for a stretch, stronger doesn’t mean better. Go to that comfortable range and try not to pull a muscle. So yeah… that’s our stretch for today. Thank you.

Bridging the Gap Between Medicine and Rehabilitation Workshop for Doctors: Evidence based Practice for Low Back Pain …. Dural tension and maybe disc issue and they would say, “Ok, let’s do a discectomy or maybe a lumbar fusion” and we found those people didn’t do that well. So we now use the slump test as a bit of a clue to the health of the nerve, the peripheral nerves from the lumbar spine down to the legs. So, we’re looking at the L1, L2 down to like the S1, S2 nerve roots and sort of how they combine with the peripheral nerves. So, what I’m going to get Iyad to do is to sort of tuck your chin down first and do it bits at a time to see if it reproduces any of his usual symptoms. So does that cause any unusual symptoms... So let's try going a bit farther down, so we're sort of... So we ask, we get them to hold there and just see what's happening, so is there any change in your... no change, no symptom still, so we would add another component of tension to the system, where we might say... straighten your leg like that and hold there... no. Anybody getting symptoms? No, good nice... oh, you need surgery Alice that's it [laughter] and then we might add one more component, so that and get some tension there and then what we might do there, is if we're trying to get very specific and maybe differentiate where it's coming from... we get him to do this, back and forth...does that change your symptoms at all? Ok we might kind of incur that it's part of this nerve tension or...

INSYNC PHYSIOTHERAPISTS can teach you how to engage your inner core muscles and how to activate your functional core to help you achieve your physical activity goals. Utilizing the inner core muscles of the transverses abdominus and diaphragmatic breathing to stabilize your Sacro-iliac joints, hip and lumbar spine (low back) joints and incorporating them into specific functional movement patterns to help you connect with how you really want to move again.

This exercise is for your core stability. You want to start off in four point, a neutral spine, you’re going to engage everything below the belly button which is your inner core, by pulling everything in towards the spine and making yourself skinnier. Then you’re going to bring your leg back, keeping the core engaged and extend that hip backwards, point the toes to the floor and keep the hips level. Next you’re going to bring the opposite arm up with the thumb facing up, connecting the heel to the fingertips and you have that left arm at about a 45 degree angle, you’re going to hold it for 10 seconds and do two sets of ten on each side.

Begin with tall neutral spine posture and engage the inner core muscles below the belly button. Next come off of your knees & roll out onto your belly on the ball with your hands in front. Keep the inner core muscles engaged and the spine in neutral & then reach one arm up in front with a pistol grip (thumb up) and arm at a slight angle. Hold it for a couple of seconds and repeat again with the same arm just to warm it up a little bit. Then bring the arm up again while extending the opposite heel back and hold for 5 seconds. Repeat this 10 times and then switch to the other arm and opposite leg. Do 3 sets of 10 on each side. You want to feel this one in the Glutes and the inner core below the belly button and not the back muscles as much. This a great strengthening exercise that can help with low back pain.