Transcript:
Hi! This is Mark and Stephen Gray from TheDVCC.com,
The place to be if you want to lose fat and increase your muscle tone.
Today, we’re going to give you a little workout that’s going to help you decrease pain in your back and help strengthen the muscles that support your spine.
So as Mark says, we meet with a lot of people that have back issues.
Now, these are often caused by everyday life.
So what I mean by that is when we’re sitting in the car, when we’re at work, what we find is that we’re in this flexed position.
So, the muscles on the front of our body around our hip area become very tight and very taut.
What this means is that the muscles on the opposite side of the body – in this case, the Gluteus Max, and so the bum, becomes weak or inactive.
Now, what your bum is supposed to do is to take a lot of stress and a lot of pressure off your back. It’s supposed to do a lot of the work that your back ends up doing when your bum is not functioning correctly.
So, what I’m going to do is show you two exercises. One that’s going to stretch and lengthen the muscles on the front of your hip. The other one that’s going to actually strengthen and fire up those glutes.
So what I’m going to ask Mark to do is get down onto one knee. This is a Hip Flexor Stretch. He’s going to come out to about 90 degrees with his other leg. And in this case, he’s stretching his right hip.
He’s going to push forward and he can squeeze his glute on the right side. So squeeze his bum on the right side, which will give him a bit of an added stretch, and he is going to keep his stomach nice and tight.
And if you find you’re not getting as good a stretch as you can do on the front of your hip, just lift your right arm up in this case and slightly rotate. And you’ll find that – Mark’s, I can see, is getting a nice stretch along there.
So he’s going to hold it for about 20 to 30 seconds and he’s going to really keep pushing forward, trying to actually lengthen those muscles.
So he’s then going to swap over to the other side. It’s very important you do both sides.
If one side is tighter than the other, make sure you do that side first. So he’s going to push forward and he’s going to tighten his glute muscle and really push forward and get a long stretch there, again for about 20 to 30 seconds.
And you want to do that 3 times. So just one side to the other, 3 times.
He’s then going to go onto his back. Now, if you have a bad back, obviously, be careful when you’re doing this. But I’m sure you’ll know that.
He’s going to put his feet about shoulder width apart, just about 90 degrees at his knee. And from this position, he will turn his palms over facing the sky and he’s going to squeeze from his bum and he’s going to raise his hips up.
Now, what you can find is that to start with, you might not be very used to squeezing your bum and lifting up. So Mark, can you just come up and hold? So what you might need to do is kind of punch your bum muscles.
So just by poking them and basically telling them to wake up, you’ll find that you’re actually better able to strengthen those muscles. So he’s going to come up, squeeze as hard as he can in his bum, and then come down slowly. Squeeze his bum again and raise up as high as he can, really keeping tight in your bum, and you’re going to do that about 10 to 12 times.
And all the way down, nice and slowly down. Squeeze your bum again. Raise up. Squeeze and hold for a second or two, and then back down slowly. And you’re going to do that for 12 reps. You’re going to have a break of about 30 seconds and you’re going to repeat 3 times.
Just by doing those two simple exercises, you’re going to find that your bum’s a lot stronger, which means that your back is taking a lot less stress, which means your posture is going to be better and you’re going to feel a lot looser a lot longer because you’re not going to be in that flexed position in your hip and you’re going to find your back issues will improve, if not be gone altogether.
