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Transcription:
Dr. Sanders: Dr. Sanders of Voyage Direct Primary Care here to talk about a couple of muscle groups that are important to stretch. Number one is your pecs. Pecs affects your posture a lot. Our pec muscles are these muscles here, they move our shoulders forward and they can often lead to this phenomenon with our posture. So we have to stretch our pecs, we often forget to stretch these guys. Stretch our pecs, pull our shoulders back, our chin down to avoid that cervical neck problems that I see in a lot of people.
So pec stretch, here it is. Make sure you go at about 90 degrees, turn your body, you feel that nice little stretch here. I like to go up 45 degrees from there, and I like to go down 45 degrees from there, and that gets your full nice pec muscle. Make sure you get both sides, both sides.
Next, piriformis. These are your three P’s: pecs, piriformis and psoas. So your next one is your piriformis, you may have heard of sciatica, low-back pain. This is often caused by a tight piriformis. It’s one of the muscles in your glutes, it’s right here in your butt. So to stretch it, do a figure four. You’re sitting down and you just have a figure four look. I like to go towards my knee for 15 seconds, towards the middle for 15 seconds, towards my foot for 15 seconds. Do each of those three times, both sides. Towards your knee, towards the middle and towards your foot. You should feel a nice stretch in your butt, it’s going to really avoid that low-back pain in that piriformis, sciatica issues that a lot of people have. If you already have sciatica, do this stretch, it’ll help a ton.
Next, psoas. This is my favorite stretch. You may have seen Nacho Libre, this is one of my favorite poses on that movie. Nacho does this action, boom. So, make sure that your hip isn’t open. You close your hip down, your pelvis is forward. You take a nice, long stride out, and you just stretch. You’ll feel it stretch right in this region right here. So get both sides, do a nice lean forward and get that psoas.
Why is your psoas stretch so important? Your psoas, this muscle here, controls your pelvis. So if it’s tight, your pelvis will often tilt like this, it’ll tilt back like this if it’s too tight. So we want to stretch those guys so we can maintain a nice good, even pelvis and avoid that low-back sprain or strain that you’re going to set yourself up for with tight psoas muscles.
So, again: piriformis, pecs and psoas, the three P’s. It’s a good stretch regimen to do every day. Thanks.
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