Quick Fit with Cassy

gentle music

Welcome to Quick Fit! I'm Cassy Vieth, and this is the class where you find relief and hope for your future. Today's class will be loaded with moves to bring relief to tight or frozen shoulders. If you have normal shoulders, this is still for you, to maintain good mobility. You can perform today's class standing or seated if necessary. Let's just begin with some nice single-arm swings across and out. If you have frozen or painful shoulders, focus on being completely relaxed and breathing deeply.

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This will encourage your muscles to lengthen and relax and stretch. And remember, never work into any sharp pains. This is about pain relief. It's not a competition. All right, focus on not moving your arm, letting gravity pull it back, okay? Bring it over and just let gravity flop it down. Super relaxed,

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all right.

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Now let's do some two-arm swings together. Once again, as relaxed as possible. Think of yourself as a rag doll, okay?

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Across and out,

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breathing, and then forward and back, forward and back. Think about being relaxed. I know that can be hard, especially if you're super tight or if you've traditionally had a lot of pain. So be as relaxed as possible. Now let's lift up a little higher if you can, and just let gravity pull them down.

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Good job. All right, back to the single-arm swings. If you're mirroring me, this will be your left arm. Across and open.

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Very nice. Now let's just slap the back of your shoulder. Let it fall down. Nice and easy. And then let's go to the opposite shoulder, getting a little bit more movement maybe than when we first started. And we'll do everything on the other side. Try to reach to the back of the shoulder. Other side, forward and back.

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And then across easily. We'll slap the back of the same shoulder, let the arm fall.

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And then all the way across. Hopefully you're already feeling a little looser. Hope that you can get past this thing. All right, now let's just slow it down briefly and we'll just kind of cut the air with your palm up. Then we're going to lift your elbow, palm facing forward, and push. Okay, we'll do that again. So you kind of cut, palm up. Then you will be pushing, palm forward, elbow up. Let's do a few more of those, and I'm widening my legs, I'm involving a little bit more of my torso and my upper back. Okay, 'cause frozen shoulders don't just involve shoulders. They involve your upper back, neck, all right?

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Getting into those ribs a little bit. And once again, you can still do this seated. Switching arms, we're kind of cutting, palm up, elbow up, palm forward, push.

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Now, let's get back to remembering about the breathing. Don't think about doing this pretty or exactly like me. Just move gently. That's the whole point. Loosening up those shoulders and improving your range of motion. All right, now we'll come up, and let's just do some circles right in front of your face. We'll get bigger and bigger with the circles, and if you cannot get bigger and bigger and go behind the head, don't worry. You just stick with doing circles wherever you can. At a height that does not cause you pain. We want the brain to forget about that pain.

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We don't want to keep remembering it. So work at a level that doesn't make any knife pains occur and doesn't make you cringe.

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Nice and big, deep breaths. Stirring that pot, drawing that halo a little bit more around the head. Think about using the back of the shoulders, upper back. All right, now let's use two arms. We'll have our hands on your shoulders and we'll do some nice circles. Good. As you do this, think about squeezing a pencil between your shoulder blades, okay? If you could squeeze your shoulder blades together with a pencil back there.

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inhales

Inhale, exhale.

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Now let's just do some swims, all right? One shoulder and then the other.

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Matching your breathing, and do me a favor, do extra long exhales, okay? Count to maybe five or six or seven or eight on the inhale, and same thing for the exhale, trying to get every last bit of air out of the lungs.

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All right. Finishing with those elbows back, nice wide arms, exhale.

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You get it a little further,

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bend those wrists, all right. Loosen up the head a little bit. One shoulder up and extend. One shoulder up and extend. Reaching as if you're in a box and you can't get out, but you can reach a little further through the shoulder. And lift, extend, and lift. Let's do the other arm. Start with that bent elbow, turn the other way. All right, face forward, lift through that shoulder, and extend. The body can't follow. Just the shoulder.

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Inhale, exhale.

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Good, let's extend that first arm again. Bend that wrist and look the other way. That just feels good. Let's bring that arm down and make a fist. And if you can bend that elbow and keep your-- Let's see, keep the elbow straight, bend the wrist. Okay, now I would like you to rotate towards you and away. Rotate towards you and away. This is a tricky one to do with your elbow straight and the wrist bent. Okay, keep turning that away.

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Big inhale, and I'd like you to look away, exhale.

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If you're like me, you hear things kind of crunching in there, and as long as nothing hurts, that's okay. As long as nothing hurts or catches. Let's do your right arm, if you're mirroring me. Make a fist. Bend that wrist, elbow straight. And now let's rotate the shoulder, you're moving that fist towards you, and straighten the elbow, twist everything, rotating away from you. Now let's look away. Okay, inhale, going to look

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towards your shoulder, inhale, exhale.

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Look away. And that one might take a few times before you're able to control everything that we have going on. All right, big wide arms, bend those wrists, little small circles where you're squeezing that upper back. Very nice. Pull. All right, can you make a 90 degree with your elbow? And then bend that wrist, and I'd like you to try to move the whole arm back and then push up. Not easy. All right. Maybe you have to do that from a lower position. Maybe you just have to be down by your side and open up and work on getting a little higher each time. So many wonderful moves we can do. All right, let's do the other arm. Bend that wrist. Let's try to pull back as far as you can, inhale,

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exhale,

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and press up. We'll do just that final move before we finish up here. And we'll make a fist at your side, open. Getting only as higher as you can. All right, how was that? Not bad, right? And super simple. You can repeat this class daily, but gently, until you've regained your former shoulder mobility. Then don't forget to add more of these classes for the rest of your body. You know where to find them, pbswisconsin.org/quickfit because a little daily effort goes a long way to prevent future injuries. See you next time.