The 3 Most Important Muscles to Stretch (Ages 50+)

there are three muscles in the body that can cause a lot of problems when they get tight and in today's video I'm going to reveal what those muscles are and how to stretch them effectively if you don't know who I am my name is will harow and I'm the over 50s specialist physio here at HT physio INF farum today we're going to be talking about the three most important stretches for people over the age of 50 I'm going to show you the stretches in just a moment but I just wanted to let you know that these stretches are not suitable for everyone do get checked out before you give them a try just to make sure they're suitable for you avoid them if they cause you any pain and don't do them against the advice of your healthare practitioner anyway let's have a look at the exercises now now the most important muscle to stretch in my opinion is the calf muscle and your calves are made up actually of two different muscles one of them is called the gastrus which is the bigger one and the other one is called the cus which is slightly lower down just underneath the gastronomia so this is the gastrus this is the cus and the reason I think these are the most important muscle group to stretch is because they cause so many problems when they become tight tight carves can cause stress on the knee they can make knee injuries more likely they can aggravate arthritis which is already there and they can also lead to a whole host of ankle and foot problems as well plop fasciitis is a big one Achilles tendonopathy or tendonitis is another big one it can cause stress and tension all over the foot which can make foot arthritis worse the list goes on and on and on and this is actually the number one stretch I find myself recommending in the clinic partly because it has such a high return on investment and also partly because it's so easy to do so I'm going to show you it now it's the calf stretch you've seen me do this before in other videos but I'm going to show you again all you needed something to put two hands against we're going to stretch the leg that goes at the back like this this this foot is going to go flat at the back with the heel down on the floor the other foot is going to go in front in this kind of lunged position and both feet are pointing parallel in the same direction now what we're going to do is keep our back leg nice and straight and then we're going to bend that front knee keeping the heel down at the back my cars are really tight today because I trained them yesterday in the gym so I'm really feeling this so I'm going to hold this stretch for a nice 30 second hold and something you can do that makes this more effective is push your toes down into the floor as if you're Contracting your toes against the floor you're pushing down as you stretch the calf and what this is doing is it's adding a little bit of intention to the stretch and it's also activating something called proceptive neuromuscular facilitation or PNF for short and this is actually going to make your stretches more effective over time if you can contract against them as long as it's safe for you to do so so hold that 30 second stretch you can contract against it for 5 seconds and then relax keep doing that over and over again for a grand total of 30 seconds and then once you've done that you can move onto the other leg so for this one nothing changes we put the other foot at the back the other one comes to the for so the right's at the front left's at the back the left heel is down on the floor we're going to bend that front knee keeping the back one straight that's really tight today and then holding when we get that stretch for 30 seconds we can also push down into the floor as I said which will just help us to stretch it just a little bit further hold that for five four 3 2 one and then relax keep the stretch on and then we can contract again pushing down into the floor five 4 3 2 one and then relaxing keep doing that for 30 seconds and coming back to this stretch of few times a day is the best way to do it I recommend most people do this at least three or four times per day when they're getting started and when you start to get into that position and you don't feel a stretch anymore congratulations you've achieved the goal and you can do the stretch a lot less just to maintain it but to get it there in the beginning takes quite a bit of work so it's well worth the work up front to prevent all of those things that tight carves can cause before we go any further I just want to tell you about three tip Friday three tip Friday is my weekly email that I send out to my list and it features three of the most interesting things I found that week it could be a health tip it could be a piece of research I'm reading or it could be a new tool that I found to be really useful for helping people get more mobile it's totally free I just send it out once a week There's No annoying promos inside and you can sign up for it by going down below this video and entering your email in the three tip Friday link the next really important important muscle group to stretch are your hip flexors and they're a group of muscles that live at the front of your hip on both sides and their job is to bring your knee up like this by pulling up on the femur now they're made up predominantly of three different muscles you've got your elius you've got your soas major and you've got your rectus for morus now the hip flexes attached to the front of the hip and if they become tight they can pull the pelvis into this kind of position which we call an anterior pelvic tilt now this position can put a lot of stress on the lower back so having tight hip flexors can lead to lower back pain it's actually one of the leading causes and many many people have tight hip flexors because we spend a lot of our day sitting and sitting is a hip flexion position which means our hip flexes are short they become tight over time and then they start to pull on the pelvis so stretching them luckily again is quite easy I'll show you my favorite hip flexor stretch it's very easy to do you just need to get your feet down like this so you can put one knee down on the floor I've got my left knee down at the moment so it's my left leg that's going to be stretched we're going to start really tall because that brings our pelvis back into the right position and it brings our spine out of the equation and then we're just going to contract the buttocks imagine you've got a pencil between your bum cheeks and you're trying to squeeze it to contract the bum cheeks roll the pelvis underneath you so as if you've got a tail and you're trying to tuck it between your legs and you should start to feel a stretch right here and it should come all the way down the front of the leg now if you feel it deep in your hip that's probably your elius and your soas which are being tight and stretched and if you feel it quite near the front of the leg and it goes right the way down that's probably your rectus for morus which is much closer to the surface and it's also one of your quads so if you feel the stretch coming down here you've probably also got tight quads so it would be worthwhile stretching those as well so again we're going to hold that contraction so this is an active stretch we're Contracting the glutes which means our hip flexors are having to switch off and they're lengthening as a result we hold for 30 seconds with this good posture and then swap to the other side now if you've got bad knees and you can't put your knees down on the floor you could try doing it on a soft carpet and if that's not enough you can put a nice padded uh tow fold it over a couple of times to cushion your knee as well so I'm going to show you on the right side so again my right knee is down I'm going to squeeze that pencil or ready I can feel the stretch and then I'm just going to roll my pelvis underneath me whilst keeping a nice tall posture squeezing the busics with intention the more intention you put into a stretch the more effective it's going to be it's just like that with everything in life the more intention that goes into it the better the result so if you can really pay attention to squeezing those GL glutes really pay attention to tucking the pelvis underneath you and really trying to find the position that gives you the most intense stretch at the front of the hip you're going to do so much better than someone who just does this absent-mindedly so hold that for 30 seconds a couple of times on each side each day you only need to do one at a time but keep coming back to it if you found it was tight and it's going to really help you with hip flexor tightness over time there's one more muscle group that I think is incredibly important for everyone to stretch but before I show you what it is I just wanted to let you know that 88% of people who watch these videos have not yet subscribed to the channel so if that's you scroll down hit the Subscribe button it's absolutely free but then you'll be the first to hear about our videos when they come out anyway let's have a look at this muscle group and the muscle group we're talking about here are our shoulder lateral rotators so our shoulder lateral rotators are group of muscles that do this action here they take the arm from here to here or they take it from here to to here and if they become tight they limit medial rotation which is this medial rotation is also reaching behind your back trying to reach for that bra strap if you happen to wear a bra or if you're trying to put your hand through a uh through a coat and you're going back like this you're trying to put your hand in the sleeve and you can't do it that's also a lack of medial rotation a lot of people have this problem including myself the reason I've got it is because of a past shoulder injury but many people have it just over time and if you get very very tight lateral rotators and you can't medially rotate that's been correlated with a higher risk of rotator cuff problems and other shoulder injuries not very nice Definitely things you want to avoid and thankfully there's a nice stretch to help you do that so this is called the sleeper stretch this isn't going to be suitable for everyone because it can be quite aggressive on the shoulder but if you can tolerate it it's a great thing to do regularly so I'm going to show you how it works you're going to lie on your side with the side to be stretched being the one on the bottom you're going to lie down like this with your arm in front of you like this so I'm lying here resting on my shoulder and this shoulder the one to be stretched all I'm going to do with my arm in front of me is keep the elbow at 90° and just rotate the arm down as far as I feel comfortable so the goal here really is imagine you're trying to get your palm flat on the bed and you're going to stop when you start to feel some t tightness so I feel the tightness here so I'm going to stop here I'm going to take my other hand I'm just going to put it on the top of my wrist like this and very very gently increase that stretch without letting my shoulder pop up towards my ear I want to keep the shoulder down and relaxed and then just rotate the arm down until I've intensified that stretch now we're going to add a little bit of PNF magic into this stretch to make it more effective so what we're going to do very gently 20% of your effort you're just going to push the top of your hand here into the bottom of this hand so you're going to push up into the top hand hold for five or six seconds only 20% effort we're not trying to really strain it and then relax the shoulder and as we relax it we're going to increase the stretch by just a couple of degrees then we're going to just allow our body to get used to it so another two or three 3 seconds in this position once it's used to it we're going to push again so I'm trying to do this action with my arm so I'm pushing up into my hand my hand is blocking the movement my right hand here is blocking hold for five or six seconds and relax and just again slightly increase the stretch you can see here that my arm's going further and further Towards the bed and again push up into the hand contract contract contract it's getting Tighter and Tighter now but it's kind of a good stretch it's an intense stretch but it's good hold for five and relax and do one more slight increase just relax the hand for a second and then bring the arm back and that feels like quite an intense stretch but after you've done it the flexibility of your shoulder will almost be instantly improved I can almost get my hand all the way down like that and there's no way I would have been able to do that before I just did that stretch so it's a really Rapid Way of improving your shoulder Mobility if you already have a rotator CU problem probably not a good idea because it can aggravate it but if your shoulder is pretty good but it's just stiff this is a brilliant exercise for you again try and do it a couple of times a day for the first couple of weeks as it gets better you can do it less and less just to maintain it but doing it regularly to begin with is key hopefully that can improve your shoulder mobility and ward off many of the common shoulder problems too so those are the three most important muscles to stretch in my opinion of course I give these stretches out all the time for people over the age of 50 and many of them report less pain better mobility and improved function within just a few weeks so if you give them a try I hope they help if you found it useful do drop a comment below because I love to read your thoughts about my videos and if you want to get more from me you can pick up a copy of my book School thriving Beyond 50 and you can find it on Amazon using the link below anyway thank you for watching I appreciate your time time and I'll speak to you on the next video

Channel: HT Physio – Over-Fifties Specialist Physio

Views: 471,356

Keywords: Physiotherapy, Knee Pain, Health, Exercise, Wellness, senior health, Over fifty, total knee replacement, physical therapy, physical therapy (medical specialty), knee ache, bob and brad, athlean X, core strength, improve mobility, exercises for seniors, stronger core, build muscle, back pain, abdominals, sciatica, bulging disc, back health, upper body strength, seniors, over fifty, upper body, arms, chair exercises, stretches, stretching, flexibility, muscles

Id: 9VXa3PY-yt0

Length: 13min 31sec (811 seconds)

Published: Wed May 01 2024