4 Exercises EVERYONE with OSTEOPOROSIS Should Do Before it's Too LATE

Transcript

if you've been diagnosed with either osteopenia or osteoporosis in this video i'm going to talk about four exercises that i have all my osteoporosis patients do [Music] hey everyone welcome to the channel at debut physical therapist out of integrative physical therapy in bellingham washington if you've been diagnosed with either osteopenia or osteoporosis you know the importance of developing a good strengthening program when it comes to strengthening you really want to try to do this at least twice a week but preferably three times a week so maybe a monday wednesday friday you're getting your routine done here this covers balance lower extremity upper extremity and it's a great place to start especially if you've never really strength trained or it's been a long time and you're not sure what to do so these are four basic exercises that i have all my clients work on that have osteoporosis okay let's get into it first exercise we'll talk about is basically an air squat or a chair squat it's really important that you get the motion from your hips imagine ball and socket motion coming from your hips versus all coming from your lumbar spine so as you shift your weight forward notice how my lumbar spine is rounding we want to avoid that as well as my upper thoracic spine's rounding which we want to avoid if we have osteoporosis so the idea is is that nose over toes but i'm going to get the motion from my hips so nose over toes and then i'm going to come up and stand then i'm going to come back down and sit and back up again now as this starts to get easier what i can do is i can just do a touch and go so i can start in the standing position i can just touch my buns and come back out again now i'm using a rolling stool obviously at home you wouldn't use a rolling stool i'm in the clinic that's why i'm showing this to you but you could just use a chair or a firm surface and work on chair squats the next exercise is to get some upper body strength and so if you can do a regular push-up or even push-up on your knees that's great but many my clients especially if they're first-time strengtheners aren't going to be able to do that so what you want to do is come up against a wall your feet are about shoulder-width apart you're going to keep your hands a little bit lower than your shoulder to start so i don't want them way up here i don't want them way down here your hands about shoulder height you're going to keep your elbows tucked in i don't want your elbows out here so elbows are tucked in your chin is back you're engaging your core and you're just going to come down and push back up again come down and push back up again as that starts to get easier you will get lower and lower imagine if this was a kitchen counter i could come down even a little bit lower on my kitchen counter and start working on my push-ups that way and work your way down all these exercises need to challenge the muscle enough to where we get a growth response so in terms of repetitions you might be anywhere from eight to 15 or 20 repetitions based upon how strong you are to start but the last few repetitions need to be fatiguing now you don't have to go to complete muscle failure but i need you to really feel the muscles working and saying okay eight nine i'm getting a little fatigued and 10. obviously we don't want pain but muscle fatigue muscle burn that's okay because we have to have enough of a stimulus in order to have the muscle actually grow the third exercise is a heel raise now i'm using a half a foam roller right here what you can do is if you have any stairs at home you could even use the two by four whatever you need to do based upon the condition of your calves you may have to start with a double heel lift first we're going to stand up here and once again we're going to use this almost as a balance exercise as well too so just fingertips balance i don't want you hugging the wall drop your heels down come up and pause drop them down and come up and pause as soon as you can progress it i want you to progress to a single leg heel lift all my weights on my left leg i'm dropping down and i'm coming up and i'm holding it dropping down getting a little bit of a stretch coming up and holding it if you don't have a step or anything you can even do this on the floor if you need to and back down again something is definitely better than nothing if one side is weaker than the other make sure you give that weak side a little bit more work so if i'm doing three sets of maybe 10 but my left leg is quite a bit weaker i'm going to come back and give my left leg a fourth set because eventually you want to balance that out the last strengthening exercise is going to require some theraband you can get these online or you can check with your local physical therapist i have a little loop in one and a little knot in the other i'm going to work my right arm and basically it's a diagonal arm lift what we're doing is we're working the back of the shoulder as well as the scapular muscles and then our back extensor muscles that particularly tend to get weak i'm going to anchor it down with my left hand i'm going to put my hand in the loop here slight bending my knees engage my core scapula in the back pocket we talk about putting your shoulder blades in your back pocket so it's back and then down scapula in the back pocket and i'm just going to bring my arm up and i'm going to hold it and then back down again it's almost like i'm drawing my sword it's how i describe this you want to go nice and slow and you want to pause at the top if i'm starting to get shoulder pain this may not be the best exercise for you it does hurt my shoulder the first thing i'll do is try to lighten up the tension and also modify my position so for example i'm fine here but when i get up to here it starts to hurt well then i'm going to limit my range of motion to right about there to start with hopefully as i get stronger i'm able to go a little bit further if you find that this just hurts your shoulder too much an alternative that you can do is to bring your arms in thumbs up and pull it out this way pause and back in this is just a spinning motion my elbows stay close into my body this tends to be a little bit easier on your shoulder so if you find that the diagonals tend to bother your shoulder then do the alternative once again three sets anywhere from maybe 10 to 15 repetitions or until you start to get fatigued in the muscle group that you're working on three sets of each exercise reps anywhere from 10 to 15 until you feel the muscle contract and get a little bit fatigued as you get stronger make sure you either increase the repetitions or somehow make it a little bit more challenging all right guys if you have any questions please leave them down below if you found the video helpful please give it a thumbs up and remember to so you never miss another one of our videos alright take care we'll see if the next video