Rehabilitation Stretches

Rehabilitation Stretches

Rehabilitating your spine can be easy if you understand a simple model.

Joints, muscles and ligaments combine with precision balance to provide motion and stability. However, when a joint is injured (the elbow for example), its primary movers (the biceps) become short to protect the injured joint. Muscles moving the joint in the opposite direction of the biceps (the triceps), become stretched out or longer allowing the biceps to shorten. This phenomenon is called reflex inhibition.

A joint (spinal joint, knee, elbow), can be injured in many ways. One overlooked cause of injury is chronic poor posture. There are two common postural problems seen today, one in the upper body (called upper crossed syndrome) and one in the lower body (called lower crossed syndrome). The goal of spinal rehabilitation is to achieve the balance between motion, flexibility and stability.

There are 3 steps in rehabilitating the spine from these incorrect postural conditions.

1. Adjusting
Creating proper motion within the involved joint is best accomplished with specific chiropractic manipulation (CMT or "Adjusting")

2. Stretching
Specific stretches for the shortened muscles comes next. Although there are numerous protocols for stretching, 3 sets holding 15 seconds works well.

3. Exercises
Finally, specific exercises are performed to strengthen the weakened muscles. Again, many exercise protocols exist, 3 sets of 12 repititions is appropriate.

source: Chiropractic Wellness Volume 7, Issue 3

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