Hey everybody, it's Dr. Jo! Today I'm going to show you how to stretch your quadricep
tendon in several different ways because you can have strains, sprains, and automobiles...that's
not right. Let's get started. I'm going to show you how to do some on your stomach first.
So once you get on your stomach, if you're not flexible enough to just grab your foot
or ankle and pull it, you can grab a belt or a dog leash that has a loop, and put it
around your foot. This will give you a little pull so you don't have to stretch your upper
body as much. Make sure you relax your body, so you don't stress out your back. You're
going to pull the belt as far as you can, and hold the stretch for 30 seconds, and then
you're gonna relax, and do that 3 times. If you're not comfortable on your stomach, like
if your stomach bothers you, you can actually turn over on to your side as well and do the
same thing. Still taking the belt, and pulling your heel back towards your bottom. Now the
key with this one is to make sure not to bring your hip forward. If you're doing this, you're
not really stretching that quad muscle. You want to make sure that your knee is pointing
down or even slightly back behind you. So more of this motion. Again if you do this,
you're not actually going to stretch that quad muscle. If both of those are too hard
to do, or if you want a little bit more of a stretch here, you can come up. Once you
get onto your knees, you're going to bring the leg forward that you are NOT stretching.
So bring it out to about a 90 degree angle, and the quad you want to stretch is going
to have the knee down on the ground. Now if you've got knee problems too, you might want
to take a pillow or something soft, and prop you knee on it so you don't have a lot of
pressure on your knee. Once you get your knee in this position, bring your heel up, and
again pull it up toward your bottom. Same kind of thing, you want to stretch for 30
seconds, and do that 3 times. If you need more of a stretch, if this isn't quite getting
the stretch that you want, you can bring the front foot forward more, and lean a little
bit. So once the hip starts going backwards into some extension, you're going to get a
lot more stretch on that quad muscle or that quad tendon. So the last stretch is going
to be standing up. If you have good balance, you don't have to hold onto anything, but
I'm going to show you holding on to something because you want to focus on your stretching
and not necessarily your balancing. When you're standing, again you're just going to grab
your ankle, and bring your heel towards your bottom. But again, it's very important to
make sure the top part of your leg is not going forward like this. That's not going
to stretch your quad muscle. So you want to make sure that your knee is pointed downwards
or even slightly back a little bit, and that will give you that extra stretch in there.
Again, you want to hold it for 30 seconds. Do it 3 times. If you have a sprain or a strain
in the quad muscle or quad tendon, you probably want to do this 2-3 times a day, and after
it gets feeling better, you can do it once every day. So those were several different
ways to stretch your quad muscle or your quad tendon. If you have any questions, leave them
in the comments section. If you would like to check out some more videos, please go to
askdoctorjo.com And remember be safe, have fun, and I hope you feel better soon!