 How to Movement Matters on Think Tech Hawaii. I'm Christine Linders, your host and physical therapy orthopedic clinical specialist. I'm broadcasting remotely again today during this challenging time as we continue to hunker down to slow the spread of COVID-19 in our community here in Hawaii and worldwide. I've been home and out of the office now for two and a half weeks and I've been making excellent use of my time doing some final edits to my book that will be out hopefully at the end of this month. I've been extremely productive but I've been spending so much time sitting, which is something I rarely do when I'm working in the office treating patients. What about you? Are you at home sitting more than you usually would or actually more active, taking walks or being out with your family to get out of the house? Regardless, I'll be speaking with Todd Boudreau, published author and specialist in biotech startups about how not to hurt yourself at home whether you are less or more active during this quarantine restriction. We'll be giving you 10 expert tips to stay pain-free whether you are working or working out at home. Welcome Todd and thank you for joining us today on Movement Matters. Thank you Christine. By the way, if I could add junk for a moment, I will be giving no expert tips, okay? You will be giving the expert tips, I'll just tell you what I've been doing. I think you will because you and I were talking last week about how to not, I mentioned how I did an article for how not to hurt your neck and back while you're working from home in a different environment and you made a good point. You said, how can I not get injured while I'm being more active because the routine changed. I think you said you're mostly sitting in the car and sitting at your desk and now you're actually getting out and taking walks and doing some yard work. How has your routine changed? These are unprecedented times and being that we're in quarantine and trying to do social distancing, I'm normally on the road, I'm going in and out of hospitals and multiple cities throughout my area and that is not happening now but the one, the hospitals don't want you to, I'm hesitant to go into these environments because I don't want to bring it home to my family. Thank God for primary responders. The routine has changed so as opposed to being up and down and moving and walking, I've been very sedentary and this has been going on for almost a month now. My wife and I started about a month ago taking walks every day and just doing things we wouldn't normally do and it's different. It's much different than a routine and I was noticing my ankles a couple of weeks ago, I was noticing my back from the walks and I had to go back to my Christine Linder's training that she gave me years ago about how to stay flexible. So that's what I've been doing. So that's the beginning of it. So you tell me, what are you thinking in terms of how's it changed? I've gone from being very work sedentary to very life sedentary, if that makes sense. And now I'm trying to do something about it. You want to do something about it? Yeah. And so that's why I want to do this show. And that's why I liked your point about how not to hurt yourself if you're being more active now. And so I asked Dave, my brother, I said, Hey, what are you guys doing? They were in New York City and they went out to Connecticut to stay so that they would be out of the city where everything, everything was happening. It's just terrifying. Not so dense of that. They have a hilly area. So he said they've been taking, his wife and his two kids have been taking two to three mile walks every day because there's no one that lives where they live. There's like 50 people. So you're never seeing anybody or running anywhere near them. And he said he's also been running two to three miles three times a week. And so my concern and me too myself, like if you normally go to a gym and now you're at home and you really want to exercise, what do you do? You could hurt your ankles and feet, your back, because you're doing something different. It's out of your routine, even if you're being more active. And so one of the biggest things that I like to talk about when people are doing walking or running or the videos, which sometimes involve often involve a lot of jumping or jumping jacks or things like that is you need to stretch your calves because one of the surefire ways to get foot and ankle problems is tight calves. I learned that when I lived in New York City. I did a study on all my patients, whether they had neck pain, shoulder pain, back pain, I checked their calf length and you need 20 degrees of bend, which this is not, and they had like minus five or 10. And I said, no wonder why you're having plantar fasciitis, Achilles tendonitis, knee pain, all these other things. And so if Eric, if you want to pull up the calf stretch, that's a very simple stretch that you can do anywhere. You could be washing your hands at the sink. You put one foot in front of the other, make sure that the back leg, which is a leg that you're stretching is pointed directly straight. Look down because a lot of people tend to turn it out to the side. You want it directly straight. You put it straight and you bend the front leg to stretch the calf. You can oscillate back and forth if you need to. And that's a great thing. Now, Todd, you also mentioned the back to Kristian Linders. You're doing ankle ABCs every morning as well, right? Absolutely, and it's helped tremendously from doing the walks. Remember, I said a couple of weeks after doing the walks, I noticed my ankles were hurting. I have a bone chip on one of my ankles. And you told me years ago, the last time, probably two times ago when you were up, do you do the ABCs with your ankles? And no, and it's just laying on your back and doing the ABCs with your toes on your feet. And I do it to overstretch them before I get out of bed. And I have not had any ankle pain since. I do that. And another thing, another Kristian Linders bit of advice that's worked is I roll a tennis ball under the palms of my feet for the plantar fascia. Hope I'm not jumping forward on you, but those are good. No, that's great because when you said that to me the other day, the tennis ball, I said, oh, I didn't bring it up today. I said, oh, I use a golf ball. And you were thinking about which you use a lacrosse ball. Yes, I do. I like the lacrosse ball because it doesn't have as much give as the tennis ball. The tennis ball is almost too forgiving. But the lacrosse ball gets in and it works. The tendons, I'm doing this in the wrong spot, but it works the tendons in the palm of your foot. So I like that a lot. Again, I haven't had any plantar fasciitis for those that are watching. I weigh 300 pounds, all right? And I used to do triathlons, which I haven't done in a couple of years. So I noticed I was having more ankle, foot, calf problems. And since I started, when I do those, it's much less of an issue. Much. So I think it's great. We were talking about this yesterday because you mentioned you wanted to start running. And I was saying how the structures in your foot, they need to be able to handle the load of landing like that. And so if you were going to start running, you said you wanted to lose weight, but you're not there yet. I was saying, then if you're going to run, do a run walk and don't do it more than once every 10 days or so because your foot needs to adapt to the load landing on it like that. So you'll have to strengthen up the muscles in your arch before you end up getting plantar fasciitis. And then you rub it out, and that's great. But it still could strain it. Let's say you were running three times a week like Dave said he's doing, he's been running. And Orange Theory and all that in the city with his wife in the morning, they go do the workout. So he's been doing that for a while, his body's used to it. But if you're going to start a program like that, which is my concern for people at home, I want them to stay pain-free and safe while they're avoiding the coronavirus. I want to make sure you don't hurt yourself because it's an impact on your mind and your body to be at home. And on the body with sitting, that's a huge thing. So I've been sitting editing my book and I've been setting myself up correctly because I know how and I have had neck and back pain in the past. I have photos to show in a minute, but Todd, are you setting yourself up at your home office well so that you can have the proper posture? Or is that why you're back hurt when you walk? My back hurt. Oh my God. Okay, so those are the folks that are listening. They don't know how well we've known each other over the years. And I've get these posture lessons from Christine every time that either I see her visiting or she comes visiting our family. So I'm always caught, of course, when she's away, I'm not thinking about it and I'm slouching in my chair. But when she's here, there's a proper way to sit at your chair to do work and you want to sit both upright. You want your elbows in by your body. I don't think to do these things until I hear her voice in my head when I'm slouching and I can feel my back and I'm like, okay, yeah, right. I've been told this already. So yeah, I do. I thought it was very cognizant as a matter of fact, I have my elbows pads on my chair right next to my body so I can reach out. That's perfect. I look like a Tyrannosaurus rex kind of reaching out right in front of me. And it's, but that's those are your words. Those are your lessons. I didn't know how to do that until you told me. So I try to be cognizant of it. My posture and like the walking thing with the thumbs we were talking about. You want to tell them about that? Oh yeah, yeah. We were talking about the pumpkin pads a few years back and I was walking behind you and I said something that I've said to so many businessmen when I was working in New York City that like to sit with their hands kind of on there. I'll scoot back a little bit with their hands kind of on their hips with their palms facing this way. It causes a little bit of a hunch, right? When you do that. So I said, hey, if you're gonna be sitting touch your elbows to your side and go palms up and you see how it changes my posture. And that just brings it in here like Todd was mentioning. Instead of being here, you're here. And the elbows touching side made me. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt Christine. I'm sorry, go on. Okay. I said, I think actually when you corrected me. Oh, I think they keep your elbows in. Yeah, when you corrected me at the pumpkin fest that time I think the term you used were you're walking like an orangutan, okay? Put your thumbs out and open up your shoulders and quit slouching. And I looked at it like I'm not slouching until I did that. And something as simple as that it opens you right up. It does. It opens you right up. You're down by yourself. And you would never know. You would never know. I never would have known until you said something. I never would have known. You do look very well. What's that? You do look very good sitting up straight. Cause I'm in front of my teacher so I'm not gonna mess it up. But two, I actually feel better. And I've been hours in this chair on conference calls and the whole nine yards in the last month. So if I'm gonna be here, I don't wanna leave here all bent over and my back bother me. And it helps between my, it helps my shoulders and between my shoulder blades which is a problem spot for me when I do sit upright. It's funny, I'm sitting here with my hands on each side of my laptop with my thumbs pointing out at a 45 degree angle. And it's just opening up my chest completely. It's opening up my back. It's a big difference. So for those of you that can't see Todd's hand it's thumbs up or palms up. Now my favorite exercise if you could pop up this picture is whether you use an exercise band or not you go palms up with a band or not. I picked the wrong color band for my shirt today but you open up your hands and squeeze your shoulder blades. And so you do not need a band. You can do it five or 10 times if you catch yourself slouching at your desk. You just rotate your hands out. The next favorite one that I love is the stick them up I call it or somebody said the surrender where you just put your hands on either side and you squeeze back. That's another great one. You don't need an exercise band. You don't need a whole lot of anything but it's a great thing if you catch yourself slouching or like me I've been working on my laptop I'm sitting up properly like we'll show in the picture of the sofa sitting properly on your laptop on the sofa. I'm sitting up properly. I have a large pillow behind my back and one in the middle, right? Just above my bra strap just below the angle of my shoulder blades. So I'm sitting perfectly my ears over my shoulder my elbow is right below my shoulder but I'm using the muscles in the front of my body so I need to then do the stick them up or do the moving my hands apart so that you activate those muscles that Todd mentioned between the shoulder blades and also something I've done probably three times a day is the chest stretch where you stand in the doorway and you put your hands wide one foot in front of the other and then you lunge forward. That's another great stretch because if you're sitting at your sofa at your kitchen table on your desk and it maybe is not the proper chair set up that you need you wanna make sure you stretch these muscles so you don't get hurt in the compromised positions that you're gonna be in while you work from home. Is that helpful Todd? Yes, I'm sorry. Yes, it's very, very helpful. I was just completely distracted and here's why you don't invite a guy from New Hampshire to come on your show. I don't know if you guys can see this. That bear just ran through my yard two minutes ago. My wife just sent me that picture and I was looking out the back window for him. Do you wanna know someone who could use some stretching? How's that? That just happened. One know someone who could use stretching is that bear. He's been asleep. He's been in hibernation now all winter. He could do some stretching, I'm telling you now. Let's look at him again. Let's see how his posture is. Let's see that photo again. It's terrifying. I looked like that at the pumpkin fest when Christine yelled at me. He's looking at a little bit of a posterior pelvic tilt but I think that's a function of the bear, right? Kind of like a German shepherd. The bear just ran through my yard. Unbelievable. Yeah, sorry about that. So you know, I wasn't saying what you're saying because all of your posture, things that you were talking about, it's funny, the one where you're sitting, you put your hands up. My wife said, it looks like you're saying, what do you want, what do you want? You know, like when your son goes, what do you want, you put your hands up. Yeah, what do you want? That's what she was calling, when I do it. That's it, it works, it works. I love the one, my shoulders are tight. So the one where you're stretching your hands out in the doorway, I mean, like you were saying, you can do that anywhere. You don't need to go to a gym to do these things. You can do them right in your home. I like how you pointed out that you can do the cow stretch while you're doing the dishes, while you're doing anything. It's how long, how long do you do the stretch for? 20 seconds, 10 seconds, 30 seconds each. Yeah, there was research that came out of years, decades ago, a decade and a half ago or something that said, you know, it's best to do a stretch for 90 seconds because the way the filaments overlap, if you stretch for 30 seconds, they stretch a little bit and then after like a couple of minutes, they go back. If you stretch for 60 seconds, they overlap, maybe about this much, they un-overlap and then they only go back to say this much. And if you stretch for 90 seconds, they go like here and they only go back a little bit like this. So I tell my patients or friends, hey, listen, it's better if you only have 90 seconds to stretch, I'd rather you stretch five times a day for a shorter period of time than only once a day for the longer period of time because if your calves are short, you need to stretch them more frequently. You're not gonna gain the length that you need by stretching them once a day. So stretch it while you're washing the dishes, stretch it while you're brushing your teeth, stretch it while you're having a phone call, whenever you can stretch it, stretch it. And that for me personally and for my patients, that clinical expertise piece, that works way better for my calves, for my patient calves in gaining length than if they just stretched it once a day for 90 seconds. Yep, that makes sense. That makes a lot of sense. You know, once a day for 90 seconds, it's all over. Wait, you say that again? I said once a day for 90 seconds and it's all over. So but if you're saying if you do it multiple times a day, keeping a loose and limber, that makes perfect sense. Yeah, you'll loosen up a little bit better and actually it's way more comfortable to stretch that way than to just pin your calf down and stretch it for 90 seconds. It's way more comfortable. There's no strain involved in that where sometimes if someone's calf is really tight, they can't just stretch it for 90 seconds because it doesn't just feel tight. It starts to hurt and I don't want that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm with it. Before we get off, I do want to show the two different ways to set yourself up. I showed you the sofa and I was complimenting on myself and how I am sitting up so straight. So also if you're sitting at your kitchen table on a laptop, there's ways to set it up. Again, I use the vertical pillow that goes all the way down to my buttock region and then a small little square pillow that's in my low back. The key is to keep, like Todd was saying, your elbows in and the hand supported on the laptop and to keep that spine up so that you don't end up rounding down. Now, if you want to take a break from sitting because it's great not to sit for more than 20 or 30 minutes at a time without getting up, it's not good for your body to sit that long, stand at your table, stand at your countertop. It's more of a countertop. I put a huge box of, I don't know if that's celtzer or something underneath my laptop. So now you could see my arm ratio is pretty good and I am knotting my chin down so I don't have to bend my head forward. It is a little bit forward because there's no way to handle a situation like that at home, but I'm trying to show you ways to make it the most optimal so that you don't have neck pain or shoulder pain or back pain while we're trying to keep everybody safe by doing our part and staying at home. That makes sense. It's funny, I see a lot of those in offices when I'm in, people will have desks that they can stand up at. This whole contraption kind of rolls their desk up so if they're sitting too long, I'll see them standing for the next hour doing their work at their desk. But they're cheating, you know how you said you hunch forward? So they're hunching forward. You just tuck your chin and look down. I do notice they're all kind of cheating on it while they're doing it. I didn't know the right way to do it. All I know is that they were standing for half an hour to whack at the desk. Then it rolled it back down. So it's a, they said it was easier than it was when they were doing it. So now I want to bring up a point. I just made a note yesterday when we were chatting. You had mentioned that you and the kids and Carlo were out doing some yard work the other day. Is that right? Yes, yes. And so I said what I always say to everybody, which is, did you suck it in? And what did you tell me? Being that I'm as out of shape as I am, I have to do things with perfect form if I'm going to be lifting anything heavy, anything above really 20 pounds, I've got to kind of keep my stomach, my back and alignment, my shoulders, my hips underneath me, but I always suck in my gut when I do it. One, because I have a big gut. But two, I like my core to be, if I lift in big weight, or bigger weights, more than 20 pounds, I like it all drawn in and it's healthier for me. It's being heavy. That makes sense. That's what I do. Oh, yes, I wish. I wish I did it all the time. I do it all the time, but probably 70% of the time, 80% of the time, when I think of it, I absolutely, I'll brace for it. That way I'm not bending it for weights, you know. That's right. That's what you said. You said, I always suck it in and bend it my hips, which now you can bend it, because I think you've been doing some exercises with that too, but you said, I don't want to bend it my waist and mess up my back. And I thought, oh, I want to say that today because people right now are not just doing yard work. I mean, in Hawaii, a lot of people I'm sure are doing yard work. It's beautiful out there, constantly trimming the yard. It's spring, everything's blooming and the plume areas are gracing the ground with their beautiful presence. So people are putting them in bowls inside and all those things to make you feel good at this difficult time, but you don't want to bend at your waist. You want to bend at your hips. You want to keep your back straight, your chest up and suck your stomach in to protect your back. While you're out there having the time to do more gardening or yard work or playing with your pants, playing with your kids, it's so critical. It's to your point, exactly. I mean, it's spring time here. And there's been snow on the ground. It's been a cold winter. So people are just getting active and you see people in their yards, everybody's distancing and they're all doing yard work and yanking and pulling the stuff. And you see like, oh, boy, oh, and they're all complaining, oh, my back's killing me. My shoulders are killing me because they're just doing it. Not that I know, if it wasn't for you, I'd be doing it all wrong, too. Absolutely. Well, thank you. I'm lucky, seriously, though. I'm lucky that I know a physical therapist well. So that, but it's, you see people doing it like Mr. Bear here that just ran by, it's spring. Everybody's getting out and getting moving for the first time in a long time. So it's simple yard work stuff. Well, most people, they blow their backs out. What, getting out of bed or something like that? How do most people do their back? Getting out of bed, picking up your shoe, bending to pick up a fork that fell. It's usually the small, like you said earlier, little things that make a difference. It's also the little things that can be the thing that triggers a bad injury because you're, if you're gonna pick something heavy, if you do think about it first, like, okay, how do I, even if you don't do it right, you think about it first to try to brace yourself to lift something heavy because you know it's going to be difficult. But when you bend over to pick up something light, your pet, your kid, your shoe, you don't think about it. So you could easily bend as a waste to pick that up. I had a very good friend who was the captain of his hockey team in college. No, we're not in college anymore. That's 20, 30 years ago. And the guy was a stud, but he bent over to pick up a pamphlet off a table and his knees let out this buckle. He was like, oh my God, I just blew out my back. And it was such a simple everyday moment. And that's the thing that caught him. And this guy was an, I actually had to walk him to his car. When he could sit upright in his car and lean against the seat up, bolt upright. It's the only way he could get. So two year point, that is exactly how I saw it happen. And this guy's fit. He just did it wrong. Did it wrong for one moment. One simple thing that caught him. You know what that was? That was the straw that brought the camels back. I have it in my book. It's often not the activity that you just did that hurt your back. But it was all those little things that led up to that point where sitting poorly in your chair, sitting poorly on the sofa, standing poorly while you're waiting for a bus or a train or in line. All those little things that you don't even know which is why I do this show so that you can learn that accumulate and then you go to bend something up very small, pick something small up and boom, the straw broke the camels back and you're an injury. So that's excellent. So you talked about too, all these people gardening and my neck hurts, my shoulder hurts, my back hurts. That's why you and I are here to deliver the 10 expert tips. If you pain free while you're at home, we're going to go to a short break. Yep. Let's hear it when we get back. I'm looking for, I've heard them so I know people are going to want to hear it. No, but this is great. I'm Christine Litters. This is Todd Boudreau. We're going to take a very short break. We'll be back in a minute. Stay tuned. Aloha, my name is Daration. I am the host of Finding a Future here on Think Tech Hawaii. I'm here every other Tuesday from 1 to 1.30 p.m. Here on this show, I cover issues around sustainability, global issues that matter for young people for future generations and other social justice issues. So please join us. It's live streamed on Think Tech Hawaii and also uploaded on YouTube. This is Christine Lenders and Movement Matters. I'm speaking with Todd Boudreau to give you the 10 expert tips on how to stay pain free while you're hunkering down at home. So Todd, you just showed me a picture of a bear stretching. Can you please show me that? I can't believe it. Yes. So this is another picture in a series that my wife just sent me. Look at that, Mr. Bear. He's listening to Christine now. He's doing his stretches coming out of the cave. What are you doing? I think he's getting ready to do that. Stick him up. How's his alignment, by the way? Yeah, how's it see that? He's got the elbows tucked in. He's listening. He's got the elbows tucked in. He's got a good nice neck curve and he's a little bit rounded in his low back and that's maybe what we'll talk about in a couple of days. So I want to show one more stretch, Todd, because we talked about this stretch. You said you were having trouble with your hips and I know we only have a few minutes left. We could pop up the lunge stretch. This is a great stretch and I don't even know. I might be able to demonstrate it for you. If you're going to do this stretch, you want to put one foot in front of the other and hold onto your thigh. And you can't really see with my shirt there, but you want to lean forward here so you can stretch this whole front of your body and you can reach your arm up to give a stretch. It tends to stretch out just the front of you when you've been sitting a little bit more, which we all, I think, have been doing, sitting, bending, cleaning the house while we've been home. So that's the final almost pearl of wisdom until we go in the closing. And Todd, is there anything that you want to give us a pearl of wisdom while the bear is doing calisthenics in your backyard? My pearls of wisdom are, you know, it's not, the stretches I do in the morning, maybe last five minutes and they set up the rest of my day. They really do. They don't do a 90 seconds worth, so hey, maybe it'll double. So if I do it for 10 minutes, that still gives me 23 hours and 50 minutes of a day that I've set up for myself to move well. And if I can do them, anybody can do them. So that's, I call my flexor size in the morning. I think that's a great point. I had said I was going to write a book called Seven Minutes to Pain Free because I was trying to get one of my patients in New York to do their exercises because they don't have time. Everybody's busy. They got families, they got jobs, they got commuting and I get it. You want to work out, do your yoga, whatever you have to do to stay sane while you're so busy. But I was telling them if you could just set a timer for like three minutes, five minutes, seven minutes, whatever you have, set a timer, get done, any of the things you can get done and then you've done something great for your body and it will make a difference. It doesn't have to be 15 minutes. It doesn't have to be 10 minutes. So that's such an awesome point to make. Yeah, thanks. It's think about it. Now I've loosened myself up to, I've given myself the best chance to start the day and continue the day well. So it's in only, again, five to 10 minutes, that gives you 23 hours and 50 minutes left of your day. So take the 10 minutes, you'll do yourself a favor. Do yourself a favor and you know, as I always say, life is better when you listen to your physical therapist or this case, Todd Boudreaux. So. I don't know about that. Yes, thanks, you give me too much credit. We are out of time. I'm listening to my physical therapist. Listen to me, thank you. I really am honored, I'm honored. But thank you so much, Todd and everyone for joining us today. And thank you, Think Tech Hawaii, our sponsors and donors for allowing us to bring this to you. In light of this very difficult time due to the coronavirus, I urge you all to stay safe, sit up straight, perform these exercises daily. They don't take long and do something enjoyable to keep your mood elevated during the stressful time. Call an old friend or family member, watch something funny, do a project that you haven't had time for but now maybe you do. Being happy releases endorphins which improves our immune system function and can help us fight any thing that's coming our way. And as I mentioned always, life is better when you listen to your physical therapist. I hope you enjoyed it. Please like us and subscribe. Stay safe and see you in two weeks. Aloha, everyone.