Top 5 Physical Therapy Exercises  

This article originally appears on : biomedj.org

After an operation, illness or injury, many people are ordered to visit a licensed physical therapy clinic to aid in the healing process. Physiotherapists, or licensed health professionals engaged in physical therapy, work to analyze your symptoms and create a plan to guide your therapy. If you live in a busy city like Tustin, physical therapy clinics can be found by an online search or through referrals from your doctor.

Between family and work responsibilities, it can be difficult to find the time and energy to stick to a Tustin physical therapy schedule. Worse yet, COVID-19 safety regulations such as social distancing and self-isolating have prompted a lot of people to forego their sessions. Because it’s important to keep up with your physical therapy schedule even while at home, here’s a list of five activities you can do now.

1. The Good Ol’ Power Pushups

Pushups are perhaps one of the best and most simple to do exercises for toning and building upper body strength. Push-ups work the shoulders, abdominal muscles, triceps, and pectoral muscles. If you’re suffering from conditions such as arthritis or Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, pushups can help relieve the pain from your hands and fingers.

You might want to start out on your knees if you’re in the beginning phase of a fitness regimen but if you’re consistent, you should be able to do push-ups from your toes within a short time. It’s best that you start with a small number of pushups and gradually increase the number as you proceed.

Additionally, pushups are highly versatile as they can be done in various hand and feet positions both to increase the intensity and to target different muscles. Once you feel you’ve perfected the regular pushup, you can try doing seal push-ups or diamond push-ups.

2. Do Some Bridges

Bridges are a great form of exercise that targets your lower body areas such as your hips and lower back. A basic bridge involves you laying on your back with your feet flat on the ground and your knees in a bent position. Make a fist and punch it into the ground as you squeeze your butt to lift it off the floor. Once you’re in that position, try and hold it for a while as you take several breaths to utilize the diaphragm.

This activity will help strengthen your glutes which help in standing, running, and jumping activities. For the best results, try and keep your knees wide as you put all your weight onto your heels which should be flat on the floor.

3. Leap for Joy by Doing Jumping Jacks

There’s a very good reason why boxers, military officers, and athletes use jumping jacks during their workout sessions. Jumping jacks are a very easy method of getting in a bit of cardio and can be done from anywhere. They are a form of jump training, which is a great way of combining resistance training and aerobic exercise.

Not only will jumping jacks help get your heart rate up, but they will also work on various areas of your body, especially your hip flexors, glutes, quadriceps, and abdominal muscles of which help in balancing. This exercise will also stretch out your shoulders since you’ll be lifting your arms over your head.

Feel free to challenge yourself but sticking with the basic style is a good way of burning calories, increasing your heart rate, and activating muscles across your body.

4. Make Squats Your Best Friend

Squats are a very efficient exercise that you should always try and do every day because of the many different muscles they work at once. When done in the right way, a good squat can work your hip abductors, glutes, calves, abdominals, hamstrings, and quads.

To do squats properly, make sure your feet are a bit wider than the width of shoulders as if you’re laying back on a chair. Try and keep your chest up and your hips and butt low to maintain good form. It may seem a strenuous exercise at first but with frequent practice, you should get used to it soon enough.

When you feel like you’re comfortable with a certain number of squats every day, you can increase the intensity by doing more reps or squatting lower. Some people opt to add weight by carrying a heavy object as they do their squats.

5. Walk the Plank

Planks are a highly effective abdominal exercise. Professionals actually consider them more effective than sit-ups and crunches as they don’t put as much pressure on your back area.

Planks help to reduce your chances of injury and will help improve both stability and mobility. They also strengthen the entire core and lower back by working the abs. Just like pushups, there is a wide variety of planks such as side plank, high plank, low plank, and shoulder taps.

Do your planks at least 3 to 5 times every day and hold each plank position for 30 seconds or a minute if you can. Feel free to look up different modifications for more benefits.

Start Your Home Physical Therapy Exercises Today

People of all ages can get physical therapy. It can be used to treat a series of health problems such as pain relief, recovery after birth, amputation of a limb, arthritis, or recovery from a stroke, accident, or sports injury. It can also be used to encourage an active lifestyle to improve your overall health and well-being.

Ask your physiotherapist about any of the home exercises listed above or any other that will help you function and move better so you can resume your normal life.