Our top exercises for injury prevention

Here are some of our favourite exercises for injury prevention and to assist recovery from an injury. These are a mix of both mobility and strength. Stretching is wonderful, but we need to be strong. Being strong is what helps an injury from recurring.

The below examples can be used for other areas of the body, and are wonderful to do regardless, but for this information we are going to block them into a region. It is also on the assumption that it doesn’t cause pain and your ability to get into these positions is pain free.

NECK

Chin tucks

Chin tucks are a staple exercise, however a lot of people do this wrong! Let's make it more specific, so that you can actually feel this exercise.

The best way to do this is against something, so that you know you have the feedback of the object to work against. A few examples:

• Chin tuck against a wall

• Chin tuck against the headrest of the car

• Chin tuck on your pillow

• Chin tuck face down on your bed.

Our favourites are the chin tuck on the pillow and face down. Here you are really working the strength of your deep neck muscles, and you are going against gravity, which is more specific to daily life and desk work, helping your neck muscles get stronger.

Theraband (TB) neck isometrics

If you don't have a theraband, you can do this against the palm of your hand. This is like a “mini osteo” treatment. We want to contract against resistance for 3-5 seconds x3. You can possibly get further with every repetition. This is wonderful and another local strength exercise specifically for the neck muscles

Scapular retractions/bow and arrows - TB

If everyone ever did an exercise for the rest of their life it would be this for us. Bow and arrows - with a theraband or a low weighted dumb bell - is perfect for activating your rhomboids/shoulder blade muscles. This is specific for helping the postural muscles of desk work and general postural control. Having a strong middle back and shoulder is imperative to helping a neck. Our head and neck sits on top of the spine, so a strong and stable base is the aim here with strong shoulders. As mentioned above, other shoulder strengthening exercises will help the neck and vice versa!

Cat/Cow stretch

This is just wonderful. It's such nice mobility for the middle back, lower back and neck. Work with your ability and follow the pattern of your breathing. It's a 10/10 exercise and one that can be performed in a chair as well if you are sitting for a long period of time.

Trapezius (trap) & Scalene stretch

The trap stretch is our side neck stretching. We only want to do this if it feels like a stretch type discomfort rather than any pinching type pains. This is super achievable to do many times a day and can alleviate a lot of neck discomfort.

The scalene stretch is a nice stretch that maybe you haven't done before. This focuses on the front neck muscles that often get neglected in neck injuries. The scalenes help pull our neck forward - think driving, computer work, cooking/cleaning everything we do is in front of us. Our scalenes are working hard all the time. This stretch is one where we hold down the skin near the collar bone, and look up and away.

SHOULDER

Seated/bent over rows

Shoulder based exercises are wonderful for postural related issues and headache/migraine pains. These can be in combination with the above neck exercises as shoulders and necks work together. 

This particular exercise works on the shoulder blade squeeze. We can do this with a dumbbell in a bent over row or seated row type movement, or with a theraband holding this load.

Wall slides

Wall slides are where we put a theraband around your wrists, and line your wrist and elbow up against a wall. Working with keeping control of the hands as you slide up and down, this will engage middle back and rotator cuff muscles. Its a hard one, but a good one!

Banded external and internal rotation & single arm pulls

Using a theraband is wonderful for shoulder rehabilitation. Here we like the combination of external rotation exercises, either against a door knob, or with both hands pulling a theraband in banded “pull apart.” We can also work with single arm pulling against a doorbell, with a straight elbow and this works the shoulder blade and shoulder stabiliser muscles and triceps in one go!

Supermans

This is a wonderful mat based Pilates exercise. This exercise works the strength of your back muscles, whilst engaging the bottom and tummy to stay stable. You can add in leg kicks to this to challenge the core, however arm only exercises are more than enough here! Pretend you are Clark Kent flying through the air!

Triceps/biceps/trapezius shrugs

These muscle groups are really important especially in neck rehabilitation. The C67 nerve activates the triceps, the C56 nerve activates the bicep and C34 nerve activates the trapezius muscle.  These areas are commonly injured in the neck, so there may be some decrease in strength in these muscle groups with a neck injury too. So adding in these exercises of bicep and tricep curls and shoulder/trap shrugs can be quite beneficial.

Planks

One of the best all round exercises we can do. On your knees, on a chair, against a wall, we can regress or progress these exercises as necessary. 

LOWER BACK

Pelvic tilts/knees chest, knee side to side mobility.

These next few exercises are our go-to morning mobility for low back injuries. When you have been sleeping we are generally not really moving for quite a few hours. Doing some pelvic tilts and knees to chest/knees side to side exercises are a nice “warm up” of your back, before you get out of bed and start your day.

None of these exercises should be straining, however they might be a bit uncomfortable for a grumpy back. Go for a few repetitions first and then re-assess if this exercise is helpful and working your mobility/making you feel better. If you don’t feel wonderful doing this stretch we can add it in a weeks time, otherwise just make the range of movement smaller to be pain free.

These exercises are similar to you touching your toes and twisting your torso. We are using your legs as the leverage rather than your trunk bending. This can be really comforting and reassuring for a sore low back injury, and definitely one to keep remembering for lower back conditioning.

Bird dog

This is a great strengthening and coordination exercise for the lower back, abdominals and bottom muscles. It also works your balance system. This exercise is great and can help postural control of sitting at the desk, sitting in a car, and all other forms of sitting we do daily! It's a great Pilates exercise, but it can be tricky. Keeping your back neutral and using your abdominal muscles to lengthen the spine is the key to this exercise. Balance will come, the more you do it!

Dead bugs

Dead bugs is a variation of bird dog that is on the ground where our arms and legs are up. This is a stronger abdominal exercise comparatively to bird dog, but works on similar postural control mechanisms. We want to have a neutral spine, and lengthen to where our lower back can control the movement, with our abdominals not popping up into a dome.

This is a wonderful exercise that can be made more challenging with different arm and leg variations to get your heart rate up, and get a bit of a sweat on for abdominal exercises without injuring a low back.

Glute bridges

This is our second exercise we would love everyone to do forever! A glute bridge - also called a hip or shoulder bridge exercise - can have various ways to perform it for both low back mobility, glute strength or hamstring load. For the purpose of low back relief we will perform this one for lower back mobility.

A sore low back may struggle with bending forward. This is an exercise that encourages lumbar flexion under load, with an extra glute squeeze at the top. Glute bridge variations can be very beneficial for lower back pain management and general lower limb strengthening.

Variations include:

• Heels close to bottom, curling up to the top of the bridge (as described here)

• Glute squeezing at the top of the bridge

• Feet further out to load the hamstrings more

• Feet on a chair to load the hamstrings more.

• Single leg variations (explained below)

Side planks

As torturous as this is, it's a good strengthening exercise. Our oblique muscles work to do side to side movements. If you are a runner - we run in a straight line, lateral movement is foreign! BUT it needs to be done. You can also get some side glute muscle strengthening in this as well, and can be modified to be on your knees and help with shoulder strength too.

Child's pose

We like this decompression stretch of the low back. Everything we do is compressive. Did you know we are the tallest in the morning, and as the day goes on, we get shorter and shorter? Sitting is a big culprit of this. Child's pose is a nice lengthening stretch to help reverse the loading into the lower back. A variation of this is that it can be done on a table or chair to get some extra traction/length in the lower back if being on your knees is difficult.

HIP

Side glute strengthening

Side glute strengthening exercises are really specific exercises. We use these muscles to hold us up over the day and to go up/down stairs. They are highly functional and we think it’s imperative they are trained. Our gluteus medius and minimus muscles are used here and they are overworked and underloved!

Crab walks

This also works the gluteus medius and minimus muscles. Crab walks can be a bit of fun, try to keep your head down as you scoot across in one direction for 8-10 steps, and then go back in the other direction for 8-10 steps. 

Nordic quadricep/hamstring loading

Nordic curls - we love to hate them! This exercise does require you to be on your knees so place a cushion on your knees if you are OK to be here. Tucking the pelvis under, we can hook the feet under a couch or something low, and lean forwards for hamstring activation, and lean backwards for quadricep activation. This exercise works on the eccentric (lengthening under load) of your muscles that is quite helpful in reducing injury in these muscle groups - footballers need to be able to do a nordic curl before returning back to AFL levels!

Single leg glute bridges

We mentioned these above, but single leg variations are quite humbling! They work on one leg stability, try to keep the hips level when you do this!

Hip/hamstring neural floss

This is a great/strong exercise for particularly those getting referring pain into the leg. This is a nice mobility exercise on the ground where we move into hip stretch/runners lunge, and then go back to a hamstring stretch on your knee.

The neural floss element involves using the ankle and moving this up/down to get the nice delicious dural pull down the back of the leg. 

Pigeon pose

We love this stretch. Its a glute stretch working deep, and against ground reaction force so your hip has no where to hide! Work this stretch into the 2 minute mark, to feel a nervous system change. This is similar to Yin yoga practices where we are making your body melt into being uncomfortable.

Step ups

This is a brilliant functional exercise. Its learning to use the muscles we need to get up steps. This is great for knee pain as well, learning to control how the leg is in space.

These are our favourite exercises for different parts of the body. If you have any questions please don’t hesitate to contact us to help you understand which exercises are appropriate for you, your injury and your fitness level.

#burwoodosteoandrehab #staymoving