Back Pain Exercises For Ages 50 Plus

Transcript

Hi, today I am going to talk about a simple exercise program for people with lower back pain. My name is Kam Yan from Vancouver. I am a physiotherapist and an acupuncturist.

This program is specially designed for people who are over 50 years of age and who have morning pain or walking for half an hour, sitting for half an hour, they would experience pain.

It is not designed for people who has a broken back less than 6 months old. I am going to demonstrate some of these exercises for you to do at home.

The first exercise, you do it on your bed, lying down, with your knees bent. In the first exercise, you bring your knees up to your shoulder and then you put it down. You bring your other knee up to your shoulder, and then put it down. You can hold your knee up for 5 seconds before you put it down. You can repeat this 5 times on each side.

After you have finished this first exercise, the second exercise you can do is keeping your knees bent, and you roll your knees down to one side of the bed. Then you roll to the other side. And you can as far as you can. The more you do the better, but you do not have to force it beyond what your comfortable range is. You shall find gradually after a week or so, you can go further and further until your leg is touching the mattress. However, if you cannot do it that far, do not worry. Just do as much as you can.

On the third exercise, keep where your legs are, but put one leg down. Then you raise your leg up straight and you are level with your other knee. And you hold it for 5 seconds.

After which, you put it down, change over to the other leg, raise it up, 1.. 2.. 3.. 4.. 5. And then you put it down, relax and then put the other leg down and do the same thing and do the same thing 1.. 2.. 3.. 4.. 5. Hold it up for 5 seconds for each leg and you can do it 5 times on each side, and so on.

After you have done this 5 times, then you do the 4th exercise which is the more difficult exercise, and this is you raise your head up and hands up towards your knee. So your head is slightly off the pillow, and then you put it down. Then you take your break, take your air, do not rush, and then you raise it up. and then you put it down, and then you relax. Now, some people, when you get stronger, you can hold it up for 3 - 5 seconds. However, for those people who cannot do it, they can just raise it up, and put it down. Or some people even find it very difficult and you can just kind of raise it up and put it down. This is how you should start, and you can also do this 5 times, and can do this 3 times a day.

So, by the time you do these exercises for approximately 2 - 3 weeks, you will notice some improvement and if you continue to find it useful, you can continue to do it. However, if you at any time, you find these exercises hurt you more. Please go and see a physiotherapist. Thank you and have a good back!