Three Neck Pain Relief Exercises | Chiropractor for Neck Pain in Mt Dora, FL
All right. Thanks for joining us again, for another video of tips. This one has three exercises you can do at your desk to alleviate that neck pain and upper back discomfort or tightness.
Protraction and Retraction Neck Exercises
First one is protraction. And retraction. So really simple. Of course, let me just back up, there’s a lot more than three you can do. But this is just to get you going. So what do you tend to do? What’s your posture at the desk, right? You tend to be you know, your head goes towards the screen, your arms are rolling forward to the keypad, and we’re kind of get bunched up. So what you want to do is, sit back in your chair, get nice posture, and you’re simply going to be pushing that head forward, and bringing it right back, just protraction and retraction. And as you’re doing all of these, just think about breathing, think about relaxing, just stop your work for a minute or so and just back and out. Okay, so not only will you be getting motion in the joints, getting some mobility, some fluid to the joints, but also just reducing the stress.
Neck Rotation Exercise
The next one really simply is just rotation. So again, nice, good posture sitting up on your chair, or better yet, get out of your chair just for a minute, get your legs and hips moving. And then just get some motion back into the spine. Because you’ve been glued to your computer for however long, maybe even hours, try to get 10 each side and again, nice deep breathing as you’re going just to get some mobility and some blood flow and movement back into those joints again. And then the chest openers, this is my favorite.
So again, you’ve been like this right down at the computer. So you want to start opening this up. So here your hands are rotated forward in front of you on the keyboard, we’re going to do the opposite, we’re going to open up the hands. And you’re going to just pull kind of imagine you’re doing a W with your arms and you’re going to breathe in. Pull those shoulders back, thumbs back. And then as you exhale, bring those shoulders for and just do 10 of those not only is that going to help reduce pain and stress in your neck and upper back, but it’s also just going to help reinvigorate you by oxygenating. And moving kind of give you a second winds like a natural caffeine hit for you. All right.
The Importance of Ergonomics While at Your Desk
Now I just want to briefly discuss ergonomics at your desk. Ideally, you may or may not have control depending on where you work. If you work from home, no brainer, you have complete control. If you work at a company, maybe talk to your manager or the business owner, if you can get a standing or versatile or very desk so you can have a choice to sit or stand. Generally speaking, standing is going to be better because you can just move right you’re already on your feet you know, grab things go to the printer much better for you than just sitting sitting is very static sitting actually loads your spine 33% More than standing does, okay.
So if you can get a convertible desk, so if your feet get tired after a while, you can sit for a little bit. And you can go from sitting to standing and so on the other hand is going to be really important with your ergonomics as you want to fix your monitor.
Proper Posture and Head Position at Your Desk
So if you’re looking straight ahead with good posture, you’re looking at the bottom third of your monitor. Okay, if you’re having to look down at your screen, we’re off to a bad start. And then secondarily, you want your keyboard. You don’t want your keyboard too high, because your arm elbow and wrists are going to be poor ergonomics, right. So you want to be where you’re just level. So if you just put your arms to your side, arms out at 90 degrees here, that’s where your keyboard should end up. Okay, and you can hack if you have to, you can just get a cardboard box or fashion a piece of wood or just something to lift and move the heights of your keyboard or monitor get creative. But when you start adding up the hours the days weeks, months years, those ergonomics make a huge difference. It’s called repetitive strain injury or micro trauma. Okay, so start with your ergonomics and make sure you take a break every 30 to 45 minutes.
Do these exercises get some deep breathing get rejuvenated, you’ll feel better, you’ll do better quality work. Again, I’m Dr. Todd from Mount Dora Family Chiropractic.
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