Adapting at home: New work routine causing pain? Irmo trainer has tips to help

This is part of a series by The State visual journalist Joshua Boucher that features local businesses adapting to the coronavirus and provides resources for those staying at home.

Transitioning to working from home isn’t easy for most businesses, but Tina Wilkerson faced a unique problem. Her business, Elite Personal Training Studio, does personal training for everyone from athletes to people with limited mobility. The type of focus she has on her students is hard to translate to the small screen.

Wilkerson is a corrective exercise specialist. While not physical therapy, corrective exercise intends to prevent injury by noticing how clients compensate for imbalances in their body and help them strengthen to overcome that imbalance. Even in small group classes, Wilkerson watches her students carefully to make sure they are doing the exercises correctly.

Since nonessential businesses were shut down to help stop the spread of the coronavirus, Wilkerson has had to rewrite her curriculum. In addition to small group trainings over video chat, she has created hours of online tutorials for her students, which she says will be an added value for customers even after the shutdown.

he is also dealing with a common problem: She is sitting and looking at a computer screen more than usual.

Here are some quick suggestions that those working from home can do without any specialized equipment.

▪ Get up and walk: “When we talk positions like sitting constantly, what ends up happening is certain muscles get way underused and therefore get very loose. Other muscles get overused and overtaxed, and often become very tight. What ends up happening is, you get a system that doesn’t have equal balance and counter balance.”

“When you can, you need to just get up and walk around. You want to be working against gravity as much as possible because that’s when your muscles have to support the weight of your skeletal frame.”

▪ A stretch for the back and chest: “Stand up and put the arms behind the body. Pull the shoulders back and down. Just try and get the shoulders away from the ear. Try and get the shoulder blades back and down.”

▪ Plank: “If you are sitting at a chair and you’re able to just get up, you can use the chair to brace your body weight into a plank position. You’ll feel the spine having to straighten up.”

▪ Engage the core: “To keep the core engaged, just do anything challenges your ability to balance. Simple things like marching in place, where you just bringing one knee up and then bringing it down, anything that challenges your ability to balance is going to help engage that core.”

This story was originally published April 27, 2020 at 1:32 PM.