How To Prep Your Back For Transporting Packages This Holiday Season
With the holidays just around the corner, more and more gifts will be traveling back and forth all around the world. While this holds a wonderful sentiment, it also means that mail services are busier than ever handling and transporting packages. If you’re one of the ladies or gentlemen doing the heavy lifting, here are two major ways to help prevent yourself from sustaining a back injury this holiday season:
Stretch It Out
Whenever we lift heavy objects, we immediately put ourselves at risk for injury. However, if we prep our bodies for these moments, we’re much less likely to strain or sprain our muscles. To warm your back muscles up, begin with a few spinal stretches. Our Next Level Wellness team recommends cat/cow, low back rotation, or downward gazing stretches.
Cat/cow involves getting down on all fours and rotating between sucking your stomach in to bring your back upwards and releasing it to allow your stomach to hang low. Both of these movements specifically target a majority of the areas that can be adversely affected when you lift objects; lower back, neck, hips, and abdomen. Cat/cow also helps improve posture and balance, strengthens the spine and neck, and increases coordination.
Photo Credit: Prevention Magazine
Low back rotations are simple yet very effective. You can either sit in a chair or on the ground when you perform this stretch. When you’re seated, simply twist your body from one side to the other. Go only as far as you can comfortably. You’ll begin to feel the pull from your lower back up to the middle of your back. Some people may even experience a painless crack, but that’s completely normal. It’s just a sign that the joints are beginning to open up.
Photo Credit: Shape Magazine
Downward gazing stretches can be done standing up or sitting down. In both positions, you’ll always want your legs shoulder width apart. Then, you’ll simply bring your head down and reach your hands towards your toes. This stretch helps elongate your muscles and can help your body prepare for quick movements while moving hefty objects.
Photo Credit: Shape Magazine
F.I.T.
Fascial Integrative Treatment, or F.I.T., is an innovative and advanced soft-tissue system that treats problems with muscles, tendons, ligaments, fascia, nerves, and joints. It is a manual, hands-on therapy that corrects the dysfunctions that these soft-tissues can undergo.
By using F.I.T., our chiropractors will be able to re-instate normal tissue flexibility and restore balance and stability to the injured area. We can also assess and correct problems in other areas of the kinetic chain, which are often contributing factors to the problem. All of the areas of soft tissue that have become dysfunctional and are contributing to the specific injury are addressed, even if they have not yet developed pain.
Our chiropractic team of wellness doctors, Vasili Gatsinaris, DC, QME, James Kim, DC, Adam Abulghualya, DC, BS, ART and Caprice Leonard, MA, ATC specialize in chiropractic and wellness care, especially for workplace injuries. Our Irvine chiropractic office is located near John Wayne Airport, convenient for people living in Newport Beach, Costa Mesa, Tustin, Santa Ana and other surrounding Orange County communities.
Let our Orange County chiropractic team make a plan and treat your injury so that you are not restricted from your active lifestyle. To learn more about our variety of services or to schedule an appointment, take advantage of our Facebook new patient special and contact us or call 949-263-9003 today.