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Hi. I'd like to spend a few minutes talking about an exercise called the bird dog.
The bird dog is something that's used frequently in the gym setting, but it's also used frequently
here in the physical therapy setting. It's a great exercise for mutual strengthening
of the spine. Mutual strengthening is often something needed towards the end of a rehab
stay in a physical therapy setting. It's a good strengthening exercise. It also puts
the spine in what we call a mutual position, which is great for a balance of forces on
the tissue.
So I'd like you to come on up to all fours. This is called quadruped and just want to
realign. Just put your hands a little more on your knees. Your shoulders there. Perfect.
The key here is to try to force a neutral position through here so you want to roll
that down a little and hold that. And now you just kind of pretend there's a glass of
water on your back and at the same time you're going to extend your opposite arm and leg.
So I want you to do that for me. And you're just going to hold.
By doing this exercise, she's working exclusively on some core muscles in the center here as
well as the back. But also getting a lot of work for her gluts and her scapular muscles
as well. Switch. Come back the other way. The key that I find with these exercise when
it's done right is to make sure that the knee's fully, fully extending and not bending at
all. When the knee's extended, it allows the patient to use their hip and their back more
as opposed to their hamstring muscle. So come on down and switch again.
I like using this exercise a lot sort of after I do some things facing down on the table,
such as a swimming exercise, because the patient does have to go from a flex position to an
extended position. A little more challenging than just being extended the whole time. Last
one. I often teach this for patients to do as sort of repetitions in nature. Also sustaining
the load. You can hold it for 30 seconds to a minute as a goal or you can just do repetitions,
like 30 repetitions or so.