Juice Your Joints

This month let’s talk about your joints.

Do your joints pop, creak, bubble or make any number of sounds? Our joints are important and keeping them functioning is even more important, especially as we get older.

Often you’ll hear about healthy range of motion (ROM). This has to do with all the ways your body can move and adapt to different body positions. Our joint health or joint mobility is important when it comes to range of motion. Our joints move in a number of different directions: flexion, extension, rotation, lateral flexion and lateral extension, internal rotation and external rotation. Joint mobility basically refers to your joints’ range of motion.

For example, you might explore flexion and extension at your knee joint. Bend and straighten your leg from a standing position. Can you straighten all the way? Or how far can you reach your arm overhead before your shoulder joint says, “that’s enough?”

Often some of our joints have a lot of mobility and others not so much. As we get older we often lose the mobility in our joints.

This doesn’t have to happen. Remember, motion is lotion.

AND, some motions are better than others.

As we get older we want to work with functional range of motion. Meaning, can you reach under the kitchen sink to get something out or can you reach up into a cabinet to retrieve a cup or bowl?

If you find tightness, stiffness or discomfort keeping you from doing your day-to-day tasks or activities you enjoy, your range of motion might be limited.

Try incorporating the following movements into your day. Think of breathing in for a count of 4 and out to a count of 4 as you go through each movement. Repeat each movement 4-8 times.

Cat & Cow

This combination of postures moves through all the vertebrae from your coccyx at the bottom of the spine to your atlas at the top of the spine.

Cat Posture

Start sitting tall in a chair. Exhale and draw your tailbone toward the floor. Slowly roll your spine toward the back of your chair (like a frightened cat), end with your chin coming in toward your chest. Pause for 1 breath here and then inhale and lift your tailbone and let the rest of the vertebrae move one after another, pulling the ribs forward and opening the front of the throat (arching the back). Pause for a breath here. Repeat.

Cow posture

Hip Circles

This movement is not only good for your hips, low back and pelvis, it’s also fun.

Start from a standing position with the legs wide, knees slightly bent. Place your hands on your hips or in front of you on a counter or chair. Exhale and hinge forward slightly as you send your buttocks slightly behind you. Circle to the right, inhale and circle forward and then to the left. Continue circling in one direction for 6-8 breaths then pause and repeat going the other direction.