Hi, welcome back to tip number three. How do you bend over? Let's learn on how to bend over and pick items up safely off of the floor. Let me show you two things not to do. And one way of how to do it that we suggest. What I'm going to share with you now is what we call the hip hinge.

It's a fundamental human movement that assists us in picking up objects from the floor by strengthening and using the musculature of our lower bodies or our legs and our hips and our glutes. So in this area of our body is stronger than it supports the spine because these muscles are like shock absorbers for all the activities that we do. So one thing that we want to avoid is bending. So we call that spinal flexion and rotation twisting at the same time, especially While picking something up, for example, if you had a heavy box or your groceries or an object you want to pick up from the floor, this is what we would avoid is bending over reaching for something that's a bit out of reach, and then lifting up. Just doing that hurts my back since I've had a vulnerable back for a long time. So I've learned how to move and how to bend safely to keep my back in check so I can can do continue doing all the stuff I love to do.

So we want to avoid bending and twisting, especially with a heavy object. We also want to avoid bending with straight legs. So reaching straight down. If you have the flexibility to do that, and lifting something up right away that string goes to the lumbar spine. So the idea regardless of what you're picking up from the floor, even if it's just a Kleenex, we can use our legs or with the hip hinge the hip hinge is we come back into our neutral posture. This is what we learned in the power posture exercise to means you're respecting the natural curves of your entire spine, the knees are unlocked and we initiate the movements from the hips as opposed to the knees.

So instead of bending this way to pick something up, we would send the hips back in a hinge while maintaining our neutral spine. Okay, so bending over, not rounded, picking something up, and not just initiating with the knees to pick something up, but soft knees, send the hips back, use the strength of the hips, just like we did in that tip number two, the squat exercise to start strengthening the legs. Okay, so hip hinge come down. The item is in front of me close to my body. I can pick it up, keep it close to my body, and then I can move with it. One of the safest ways to bend and lift up objects off the floor to keep your back safe.