This week, we continue our surgery-specific exercises with two more techniques. As we go over these exercises, you'll notice that they accomplish two things.

They slowly stretch the soft tissue. This is so important for recovering from AND preparing for surgery. Particularly recovery. If you pull your soft tissue too hard after surgery, you can end up doing a lot of harm. So the gentle static techniques and movements are designed to create more flexibility and improved circulation gradually, not all at once.
They incorporate the whole trunk when done correctly. This is also key, particularly for surgery preparation. After surgery, certain areas of your body (muscles, ligaments, and other soft tissues) will not be as strong. In order to compensate for that, other areas of your body will do more work. So if you have surgery on your chest, your shoulders, abs, and arms will need to do more work while your chest is weak. Only preparing the exact area you are getting surgery on is not really preparing at all. Your whole upper-body needs to prepare for the experience and recovery process.

With that being said, let's check out this week's two exercises:

Push the Tablets is a great exercise for stretching the shoulders, upper-back, chest, and neck muscles. All the time you are breathing and stretching the small rib muscles, as well as rotating through the trunk which nourishes the organs and improves flexibility in the spine.

Another important part of preparing for surgery is getting maximum oxygen intake in the days leading up to the operation, and the days following. The Alphabet Stretches (M & T) are a great way to do this. These are the first two of four total stretches. We'll do the next two next week.

See you next week! Happy Stretching!