Lower Back Stretching Exercises

Video Transcript

"Hi, Terri Lynne here on behalf of Expert Village. And in this segment on stretching we're going to be working on our lower back. And this is an area where a lot of people carry a lot of tension. And where most people get problems is in their lower back. So this is a great stretch that you can do in the office. If you've been working on the computer for a long time, you just want to take five minutes out and do a couple of quick stretches, this is a great one. And you can do it almost anywhere because it doesn't take a lot of space. There's two stretches. One, you want to keep your legs quite far apart, for the first stretch; much wider than the shoulder width. You just want to drop down. Again when you drop down, don't put any tension in your upper body. Just let it hang loose like a rag doll. And what you want to do is you want to try to stretch down as far as you can. You want to just fold yourself right in half. Flop right down. And then you just want to hold there. Now there are two types of stretching: you can hold the stretch or you can do a slight bouncing. And that will, if you're experiencing some pain in your lower back, to get into that lower stretch; you just want to bounce a little bit. Kind of like this. Instead of just holding it, you can just bounce down. Keep your legs straight when you're doing this stretch. Do not bend them at all. Do not bend your knees. The second stretch is very similar, it's just your feet are going to be together. And your arms are going to be grabbing your ankles. So same stretch but you're much closer together, so you are working on a different part of your lower back on this stretch. So again, down, grab your ankles, and go as far as you can. The goal there is to actually try to touch your head, or your forehead or your face to your legs. Again keeping your legs nice and straight and hold. So try to hold those for at least fifteen to twenty seconds. If you're in a lot of pain, cause you have a really sore back. Or bad back problems hold it for a little shorter. And then every time you do it, try to hold it for a little longer every time. Until eventually you can hold it for a good fifteen to twenty seconds."