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(light music) Stretching is one of the most valuable measures we can take to prevent needless injury from moving and handling objects or persons. We're gonna go from head to toe and show you some of the techniques that are common for stretching tendons, ligaments, and muscles so as to help prevent needless injury and harm. You know, we've had one study with a manufacturing company that showed that after they implemented a pre-work stretching program, where they utilized three to five minutes of stretching before they had to do any type of manufacturing, they reduced their soft-tissue injuries by greater than 60% within three months. It was a very effective study and can save you a lot of pain and a lot of injuries as well. The first one that we're going to begin with, as we head from the head to the toes, is the neck stretch. It's gonna be important for you to realize two different things. One, you would never want to implement any type of fitness or stretching program prior to checking with your own personal medical professional or doctor to make sure that you can do that well without injuring or harming yourself. Secondly, you're going to want to incorporate stretching into something that makes sense with your lifestyle. In my case, stretching while showering sometimes works better than taking an additional five minutes out of an already busy day. I'm already moving from my head to my toes in the warm shower. The warmth from the water is helping my blood vessels to dilate and helping me to be able to limber up. It's a perfect time for me to implement my stretching exercises. The first exercise we're going to do is our neck. And we're gonna do that by gently touching chin to chest and holding for approximately 12 seconds. Then carefully, without getting dizzy or losing our balance, we'll look up at the ceiling. If at any time that you feel pain or dizziness, you are to stop doing any of the stretches and consult your medical professional. Then we're gonna do a right, what is my right, lateral, ear-to-shoulder stretch. One of the things that's important is that we do not bounce or hyper-extend any part of our body while stretching. All of the movements will be smooth, slow, and careful. We wanna stretch to the point where we feel a little bit of tension, but not pain. If at any time you feel pain, stop the stretch. Now after the next stretch, and you can repeat that as often as you'd like, and you can also repeat it for as long as your budgeted amount of time allows you. We're going to now move to the next part, which is our shoulders. We can do this by standing with our feet about shoulder-width apart. And with our arms relaxed, we're going to begin to rotate our shoulders in a clockwise formation, forward with big circles for approximately 10 times, and then small circles for about 10 times. We can then reverse the roll for 10 to 12 times, and then small circles for 10 to 12 times. In between these different individual stretching exercises, it's always allowable to take a deep breath (inhales audibly) (exhales audibly) and blow out the carbon dioxide and relax. The next stretch we're going to show you is the chest or pectoralis stretch. It's going to be important that as we place our hands behind our head, it is important to note that we're not putting pressure on our head or our neck. We're simply placing our hands so that they look like they're behind our head. And you could even remind yourself by just simply touching your ears. We're going to bring our posture inline, and then our elbows are going to flex back behind us until we feel a good stretch across the chest. Holding for 10 to 12 seconds, we relax. Right from that motion, we bring our hands together. Keeping our palms together, we bring our palms down towards the center of our stomach, or our bellybutton or umbilicus. And this is gonna stretch the underarm forearm. This is great for stretching the wrists. The people that use computers a lot, or repetitive motions where their fingers might go numb, this is a great way to stretch the wrist and help prevent that swelling and tightness from causing those side effects. From here, we bring our arms straight down, hands in a light gripping position. We bring 'em down to our sides and then bring our wrists up as if we're trying to touch the ceiling with our hands. Holding for 10 to 12 seconds, you can feel the stretch on the tops of the forearms. The rotator cuff can be stretched easily by putting our hands behind our back and beginning to lift them up. You can do this with assistance or alone. Holding for 10 to 12 seconds, we release. Another way to stretch the chest or pectoralis muscle as well as the tricep and bicep is to place our hand in a stop motion, palm flexed up, and then look away from the arm. Stretching for 10 to 12 seconds, we repeat on the opposite side and look away from that arm. And last, for the shoulders, you can bring your hand straight up, drop it behind your head. Grabbing the elbow, pull the arm inline for a great tricep and shoulder stretch. To reverse sides, just do the same on the opposite side, holding for 10 to 12 seconds each. Time to take a breath (inhales audibly). And let it out (exhales audibly). Now we're gonna move down to the abdomen. Hands on the lower lumbar, upper part of the buttocks, we're now going to lean back just slightly till you feel the stretch on your abdomen, 10 to 12 seconds, and then we can slide right into what we nicknamed the cat stretch. This is where we place our hands on our knees, looking straight forward, we bring our chin to our chest and tuck your pelvis in, bowing your back up. And then return back to the neutral chin-up position. We can do that five to 10 times. Take a deep breath in. This are big muscle structures that you're stretching now. Now we're releasing a lot of acid from our muscles that we've built up by using those muscles. It's good to take that cleansing breath (exhales audibly) and blow it out, and shake it out. Now we're moving down. You could use a chair to assist you. I'm gonna use this stool just to balance myself as I do the big quadricep stretch. If you cannot reach your ankle to do this stretch, you could use the cuff of your trousers to be able to stretch that up until you gain some flexibility and can move to a point where you're able to grab the top of your foot or your ankle to complete this stretch. For an extreme stretch, you can put your knee inline with the other one and maximize that stretching behavior. After 10 to 12 seconds, you can repeat on the other side for 10 to 12 seconds. Now there's been a lot of studies on lower lumbar injuries and stretching of the hamstrings, the back of these big thigh muscles. One of the stretches I like to do now so that I don't hurt my lower back in bending over is to bring my leg up to a surface and then slightly lean forward to stretch that hamstring, the back of the leg. Be careful not to hyper-flex the knee by pushing it down too far as you practice this stretch. Again, we're holding for 10 to 12 seconds, relaxing this hamstring, which is one of the strongest combined with the quadricep, one of the strongest lifting muscles we have. We must keep these limber if we want to have a nice, relaxed, lower lumbar, because the hamstring is connected to the gluteus maximus muscle, which is also connected to the lumbar muscles. And all of that tightens and spasms to cause lower lumbar fatigue, aching, and pain. After 10 to 12 seconds, we can reverse the stretch and do the same on the opposite side. Now we move to the calf muscles. And we can do this easily by either leaning against a wall or by simply leaning against the forward leg, keeping the heel on the floor, stretching that right calf, 10 to 12 seconds, switch places, leaning forward, stretching the left calf 10 to 12 seconds. Now we just simply finish with a very, very easy ankle roll. This will help us to recover from rolling the ankle with sprains and strains. We can rotate our foot to the right, clockwise, 10 to 12 rotations, 10 to 12 rotations the counterclockwise, with small circles and big circles. Repeat the same with the opposite foot. Again, you could grab something to help you balance if you need to and repeat the stretches. I guarantee that if you practice these normal, natural, healthy, stretching instruments, you're gonna feel great. And you're gonna feel more flexible. And studies have shown us we're going to reduce injuries when we lift properly, eat properly, drink plenty of fluids, and incorporate a good, full-body stretching behavior.
Stretching is one of the most valuable measure you can take to help reduce injuries in the workplace. Implement a basic routine that fits into your lifestyle and your physical abilities. Learn several examples of stretching each muscle group individually from head to toe.