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Hey, Dr. McNamara here coming at you with a Wellness Wednesday. I am in the gym here at McLaughlin Care, and I wanted to give you guys some exercises to build up some core, hip, and shoulder stability as well just overall stability. The weather is starting to change and it's getting nice out so everyone's starting to get outside. We're starting to pick up some of those hobbies we like to do as far as physical fitness and athletic types of games and goals and all that kind of stuff. This will be a nice foundation for the sport or activity that you'd like to perform to support whatever you're doing.
First thing we're going to talk about for building our core stability is building the anchor point, that's abdominal bracing. So what we're going to do, and I talk about this a lot with my patients is we're going to start with an inhale and we're just going to do some normal diaphragmatic breathing.
So I'm going to inhale and then exhale. As I inhale my stomach is going to expand. And as I exhale, my stomach's going to retract just like that. Now to brace what i'm going to do is I want to inhale and I'm going to brace it as soon as it's fully expanded. So now I have a nice cylinder full of air, keeping my abdominal pressure steady throughout any type of movement, whether I'm lifting my legs, I have a nice, strong core.
Our first exercise, we're going to work on hip stability and mobility with a walking lunge. This one's really simple. I got my core nice and tight. I'm going to lunge into it. And for this one, I'm going to really focus on that stretch on that back of my leg for those hip flexors, then bring it up and then bring the next leg down and really try to flex through that glute and get a good stretch. This is really good for hip health. And then we're going to just walk forward. And you can do two, three sets of 10 steps, each leg, whatever feels good for you.
The next exercise I want to do is a shoulder stabilizer. And we're just going to use a kettlebell. Essentially, you can use any type of weighted object. You could use some dumbbells. If you're at home and you don't have anything, you can grab a gallon of milk or something if you have to, but I'm going to show you the bottom up press, you could do regular presses if let's say you got a gallon of milk. For this one, we're going to do the bottom-up press because it's going to stabilize my wrist as well.
Since it's uneven at the top, I really have to use my grip strength to hold that steady. And you can do it dynamic just like that, you know, work in that shoulder press movement, or you can just do it statically and just hold it working on the isometric strength, stability of the shoulder.
The next thing I want to do is a single leg Romanian deadlift. So this is a great exercise to work on our hip hinge and just full body control. So what I'm going to do is I'll show you with my left leg down first weights in the right arm. I'm just gonna extend back. I'm hinging at the hips. I'm getting my spine in a neutral position, and then I'm just bringing it right back up. This is a good stretch of the hamstrings as well as working on that hip flexion movement which is known as the hip hinge. If you want a little extra out of this little shoulder stability, we can again do that bell up press and do the same thing, but try to keep everything in a straight line as possible. This is a lot more difficult. So don't do this unless you're a little bit more advanced and have done this before,
The last exercise I want to work on is a kettlebell windmill. This is going to work some of our bleaks and a lot of our core musculature. So we're going to start with that bell up press again. And then what you're going to do is just going to have your arms straight ahead, and you're going to rotate until your hands flat on the ground. We get back up, then we'll switch sides. Bell up press, we're going to rotate. My left shoulder is not as strong as you can see. I lost grip on that one. So I'm going to work more on my left shoulder.
I want you guys to give this a try. This is a great stability routine. So go ahead, add this to your routine and let's get moving this spring and have a great spring and summer.
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