Stuart McGill is a well-known back pain researcher and clinician who has been doing the podcast circuit as of late. His “big 3” exercises have helped my lower back pain (which I believe is muscular in origin due to an old ankle injury + surgeries that resulted in essentially one leg being shorter than the other which throws everything above it askew). He recommends doing them daily in his book Back Mechanic. I don’t do them nearly that often and they’ve still been very helpful. They’re part of my routine now. I recommend that book for anyone interested in their long term back health.
I happened upon a pnf storefront (literally) earlier this year and watched the trainer do the contract-relax stretching on someone for about 20 minutes. It made sense to me. But it also felt like I would need to pay someone to do it regularly. Because the idea is it’s difficult for someone to force themselves into this over-stretch? Well, you seem to have trained yourself in any case @sammasamadhi!
Yes that’s one weird trick for sure! If you could see how many different pillows I have all over the place for sitting in various chairs…which is why I have so few chairs. We would be swimming in pillows.
Yes I count one of these in my pillow arsenal
Wow!
Yes I did about three months with a physical therapist earlier this year. That’s where I learned about using a kettlebell. I’m going to cycle back with the Qi Gong video and resurrect my ambition to practice this daily.
Also I have done this new stretch recently and it seems super-helpful for my right hip issues.
I learned the bird dog exercise with my PT and it’s amazing how challenging it is…but how quickly I started building the core muscles involved. I might try out #2 – the half plank.
I’ll give that one a go. According to my physio, I’m too flexible (ex gymnast) for my own good and have loose ligaments - so most stretches just don’t work on me - even if I turn myself in to a pretzel - but that looks counter intuitive to normal motion direction so might be a winner in creating some resistance/ stretch/ effect.
I’m in a L3,4,5 and left hip flare up at the moment so great time to test it
Yes that’s one weird trick for sure! If you could see how many different pillows I have all over the place for sitting in various chairs…which is why I have so few chairs. We would be swimming in pillows.
