Video Transcript: Foam Roller Exercises to Help Neck, Shoulder, and Upper Back Pain | Pain Science Physical Therapy

Video Transcript:

So it was asked by a patient this week if there can be some instruction on different exercises that can be done on a foam roller.

She has it and it takes up a lot of space in her house and she would love to know what are all the exercises you could do with a foam roller. So we kind of joked a little bit about how well there might be hundreds of ways to do exercises on a foam roller. We're going to start with five.

So when you lay down on the foam roller what you want to make sure you're doing is that you try to keep your tailbone kind of towards the edge of the foam roller and that your head is supported so that your head is supported on the foam roller as well. Right, so the tailbone and your head and your shoulder blades are on either side of the foam roller. So then what you want to make sure you're doing is that your feet are not way, way, way out apart.

All right so you want to try to keep your feet in a little bit closer together so they're about shoulder-width apart. Next thing to do is find what we call a neutral pelvis. You want to make sure your back is not arched way up high on the roller. You also want to make sure that your back is not totally flattened on the roller. So you want to go somewhere in the middle of that and that should give you what we call a neutral pelvis position. So you're somewhere in the middle of the pelvis being tilted this way and the pelvis being tilted this way. Hopefully you're about horizontal to the ground.

Next thing you move up the chain and you want to make sure that your shoulder blades are on either side of the foam roller and the foam roller should be just kissing through the center part of your spine right where your thoracic spine is in the middle of your back. And then you want your head supported. When you come up to the head what you want to make sure you're doing is that you gently tuck the head just a little bit. So you don't want to be up here looking back at what's happening behind you. You want to just be your head tilted in a nice neutral position so that you're able to look up and actually be flat on the roller. So this is your starting position when you do an exercise on the foam roller.

The next thing you're going to do is what's called a ceiling punch. And this is to build a little bit of strength in the muscles around the shoulder blade.

What you're going to do is, you're going to bring your arms down so you bring the backs of your shoulder blades down so that they're touching either side in the foam roller. And then you just gently punch your hands up towards the ceiling. Now you don't want to round through your back. You want your back to stay nice and neutral. But you just bring your fingertips up and then you let your shoulder blades come down so that they hug on each side of the foam roller. You bring your fingertips up and then you bring your shoulder blades back down so that they hug on each side of the roller. You do anywhere from five to 10 repetitions each time keeping the movement nice, slow, and controlled.

The next exercise theat I'm going to show you is what we call a snow angel. Now this is an exercise that really is not something that should be done for every single patient. So if you've ever been told that you're very, very stretchy or mobile or even hypermobile you want to be careful with this exercise because it is an exercise that brings your arms way out to the side. And if you have a lot of flexibility in your joints, this could really over stretch the front of your shoulder and cause pain or problems later on. So if you are somebody that has been told you're very, very flexible or very mobile, you kind of want to keep your hands a little bit more in the plane that is equal to where your body is rather than behind.

But, for the rest of you, if you're not very, very flexible you can start with your hands down your side palms facing up. And what you're going to do is you want to try and slide your hands all the way up as far as they'll go and you can see that I can't go very far before I'm stopped and what I’m stopped by is stretching through the front of my pec muscles along the front of my arms. So I can only snow angel my arms up so far. So I'm going to go as far as I feel comfortable going. I'm going to get a nice gentle stretch and then I'm going to bring my hands back down to center. I'm going to do this one more time. I'm going to go ahead and bring my hands up and I'm going to snow angel, get a nice gentle stretch, and then I'm going to bring my hands back down again. And I'll probably do somewhere in the neighborhood of two to five repetitions. You don't need to do a lot of these each time. You want to hold the stretch for somewhere in the neighborhood of 15 to 30 seconds so you get a nice gentle stretch through the front of your shoulders.

The next exercise that we're going to do is an exercise in which you learn how to move your shoulder blade and your arms a little bit independently. A lot of times when we have upper body pain and we have pain in the shoulders, what’s happening is the shoulder blade and the humerus, the arm bones, are working and moving together rather than working as a relationship which means that they're supposed to working a little bit separately. They're not supposed to move as a unit all the time. So what you're going to do you're going to drop your shoulder blades down so it's just like the first part of that shoulder blade punch exercise. I'm going to drop the shoulder blades down and then you're going to scissor. You're going to bring your arms as far as you can. One is going to come up above, the other is going to come down below. And then you're going to bring the hands back to neutral. Again all the while your shoulder blades should be hugging on either side of the foam roller. And then you go back the other direction. And then you come back up and scissor again and this gives you a nice gentle stretch through the arms. It should not be painful. And repeat anywhere from five to 10 repetitions for each of those exercises. Okay? Or each of those movements rather and the entire time that were doing this I am making sure to keep my pelvis in a neutral position. I'm not tucking under to try and gain stability.

So a big part of what is great about working on a foam roller or is that you're actually doing a lot in terms of strengthening the muscles that stabilize and hold your body in a nice neutral position. So this is great for your abdominal muscles and your back muscles just to learn to stay stable.

The last exercise is actually a neck exercise. This is called a chin tuck and you take your head and while you're keeping your spine in neutral position you just do a little bit of a tuck down and then back up. Do a little tuck down and back up. And what this does is, it starts to build strength in those deep neck muscles that we don't use enough of when we are sitting in front of our computers all day long.

Now if you get really good at that exercise and you want to up the challenge, you would do a chin tuck with a head left. Now make sure to watch what's happening down here. My low back is not flattening out as I do this. So I do a chin tuck, head lift. I keep everything neutral I keep my ribs down and I lower myself down. Chin tuck, head lift. Again everything stays neutral here and my chin tuck is maintained and then I lower back down. I'm going to give you one more just like that. Chin tuck, head lift and then back down. That exercise is particularly good if you're dealing with headaches and neck pain and you want to build up the strength and the neck muscles in the front of the neck. Again make sure that if you're going to do any of those exercises you check with your physical therapist first and let me know how it goes. Thanks, bye!