At-Home Exercises for Rehab and Strength

Pirformis Stretch

This exercise helps resolve a source of sciatica and hip pain by stretching the pirformis muscle.

Seated Piriformis Stretch

A variation of the piriformis stretch which can be performed by office workers who are suffering from tight hips and sciatica.

Cobra Exercise

The Cobra Exercise is a safe lower back stabilization exercise. Make sure to perform in a slow and controlled manner. Please avoid to pushing through the motion if you experience pain.

Neck Posture

In this Quick Tip video, Dr. Welch describes how to align your neck for better posture. If your work requires you to reach forward, such as sitting at a computer, you can naturally start to draw the head forward. This exercise helps you draw your head and neck back, realigning your spine for better posture.

How to Self-Evaluate Your Posture

In this Quick Tip video, Dr. Welch shows us how to evaluate our own posture. How your hands fall and the placement of your thumbs is a good indicator of how good or not-so-good your posture is. If you see rotation in your hands toward the body, then you know you need to roll your shoulders back several times to reset your posture and relieve pain in the upper back and shoulders.

Work-from-Home Exercises

In the age of COVID, we are all working from home a lot more. Your home office set-up may be your kitchen table and not your ergonomic chair that you are used to at the office. These work-from-home accommodations can wreak havoc on the lower back and posture. In this video, Dr. Welch shows us four simple exercises you can do while working from home to keep your pelvis loose and avoid lower back pain.

Tech Neck

This stretch provides a quick fix for relieving poor head carriage when using our mobile devices. Use this technique to teach children and teens good habits to develop proper posture.

Carpal Tunnel Stretch

Excellent stretch to alleviate symptoms of carpal tunnel and avoid surgery. Hold the stretch for at least 20 seconds, or 5 breaths, on each wrist.

Press Up Exercise to Relieve Lower Back Pain

Dr. Welch demonstrates how to do a gentle and easy press up to create a bend in the lower back. Creating this arch and then breathing through the exercise helps relieve sharp lower back pain and is also a good movement to combat sciatica pain. Do this until some of the pain starts to melt away, and then you can progress in to more advanced exercises for lower back pain.

Advanced Press Up Exercise to Further Relieve Back Pain

Here, Dr. Welch shows us how to do an advanced press up. This exercise is good for people who have lower back pain, but are past the acute stage of pain and further into rehabilitation. Go to what you can tolerate – it should feel like you are relieving stiffness, not a sharp pain. Doing 10 reps of the advanced press ups about five times a day will really help relieve the lower back pain and any descending pain into the legs.

Dead Bug

A excellent core strengthening exercise, allowing quicker recovery from lower back injuries.

Pelvic Tilt

A critically important exercise for rehabilitating the lower back in order to prevent back injuries.

Epley Maneuver

A time-tested maneuver to help with benign positional vertigo. Examination by your physician is recommended prior to performing the maneuver. It is not uncommon to have aggravated symptoms when initially starting the Epley maneuver.

Golfer’s Elbow

The Golfer’s Elbow stretch provides quick pain relief for tight forearm muscles that cause pain in the hands and wrist. You will know if you need to do this stretch if it hurts on the inside of your elbow when you go to grip of lift a heavy object.

Tennis Elbow

This stretch helps to alleviate the pain from tennis elbow (lateral epicondylitis), a repetitive strain injury resulting in tenderness in the tendons on the outside of the elbow.

Pectoral Stretch

This stretch is great for people who work in an office at a computer or individuals constantly in a hunched forward position. It is important to engage mid-back muscles to increase the depth of the stretch.

Office Relief Posture

This is Bruegger’s relief posture, which helps to combat fatigued postural muscles while seated. Performing this exercise a few times a day will get rid of “slump position”.

Pelvic Bridge

The Pelvic Bridge is an abdominal strengthening exercise with the intent of stabilizing the lower back for rehabilitation of an unstable lumbar spine.

Pelvic Bridge with Leg Kick

This is an excellent exercise to build strength in the lower back and hips.

It requires abdominal muscles to be coordinated as you extend the leg. This exercise will rehabilitate weak abdominal muscles and strengthen your lower back so that you get fewer episodes of back spasms.

YTW Exercise for Shoulder Strengthening

This is a good exercise to help strengthen the posterior capsule of the shoulder. This stabilization routine will help target the rotator cuff muscles, a main culprit in shoulder pain. This safe exercise routine doesn’t need added resistance initially, but can be made more difficult with light hand weights under the guidance of your chiropractor.

Superman Exercise for a Strong Back and Core

In this Quick Tip video, Dr. Welch demonstrates how to strengthen the entire back by doing the Superman exercise. It is a good exercise to stabilize the core after patients are out of pain and is an especially good exercise to strengthen the body for winter sports, like skiing.