Watch (or read) Dr. Kim’s mom demonstrate her commitment to her health and independence by foam rolling daily.

Transcription:

Dr. Kim: 
Hi, everybody. We’re back for another episode of how I try to help patients get more elasticity going on in their… mostly their thighs. Because I say the fountain of youth is in your thighs. It is tied to mortality in the sense that fall-risk, gait instability, these have direct relationships to mortality, and they’re targeting these measurements through questionnaires, that kind of thing in the doctor’s office.

And so I thought I’d bring my mom here so she could demonstrate some of the work that I do with patients. And I did not realize that my mom, who I had taught how to foam roll a few years ago, that my mom was doing it every day. 

Mom: 
Every day religiously. 

Dr. Kim: 
So my mom is… 

Mom: 
88! 

Dr. Kim: 
88 years young.

So I said, Mom, what do you think about being on a video to show people how to do it? You were like, “when!?” you were like, “when?!”, right? 

Mom: 
Uh huh. 

Dr. Kim: 
Okay. So, all right, Mom, you ready to demonstrate how you get it done? 

Mom: 
Uh huh. 

Dr. Kim: 
Okay. All right. So here we go.

Mom: 
Okay.

Dr. Kim: 
I got this. Your yoga mat here.

So now if she’s forgotten some parts about how to do it, you’re about to watch me, like, help her correct some of the things. 

Mom: 
Foam Roll? 

Dr. Kim: 
Yes, right. Get down on your elbow. This should be. There you go. Like this. There you go. Yeah. Look, you can do two legs together. 

Mom: 
Yeah, you can put one like this.

Dr. Kim: 
That’s amazing. 

Mom: 
Yeah, like that. 

Dr. Kim: 
Are you smiling? 

Mom: 
Don’t laugh at me! Yeah, like this? 

Dr. Kim: 
All right, that’s very good. 

Mom: 
And then you push it. Yeah, push kind of to the leg. Yeah. So it’s a little. A little harder. 

Dr. Kim: 
Yes. 

Mom: 
So it feels a little harder. So it feels better. 

Dr. Kim: 
Okay. 

Mom: 
Yeah. Not too light. 

Dr. Kim: 
Yes. 

Mom: 
Little push, when you roll it, push and push. 

Dr. Kim: 
Awesome. You want to go up higher so you get the lower part of your thigh to your knee.

Mom:
Higher?

Dr. Kim:
Yes, a little. Yeah. So you got to walk your elbow. Very good. And you do that so that you get the lower part of your thigh, not just the upper part. That’s really good. When you do this at the same time, can you bend and straighten this knee? 

Mom: 

Like this?

Dr. Kim:

Yeah. Yes. Just this. Just the bottom knee, the one you’re rolling on. Yes. Can you bend and straighten this one?

Mom: 
Like this? 

Dr. Kim: 
Yes. While you’re rolling, huh? Yeah. That’s more advanced. 

Mom: 
Oh, I never did that before. 

Dr. Kim: 
Oh, my God. I’m telling you not many 88 year-olds are able to do that. Not many 58 year-olds. 

All right. Very good. Hey, mom, okay, now can you turn on the front of your thigh and show us how you do on the front of your thigh?

Mom: 
You mean from both elbows? 

Dr. Kim: 
There you go. Yes, there you go. Like that. Then do one of your legs. Do one, yeah. You know, you can try to do one of your legs. You know, you could do both legs at the same time. Or you can just. Yeah, yeah. There you go. And see your contracting here a little.

Right. And you walk on your elbows, you got to hold your pee. So you’re not sagging, don’t sag here. Yeah, hold your pee. And you can walk your elbows up a little so you can get lower down on your knees. 

Mom: 
Like this?

Dr. Kim: 
Yes. Don’t sag. Try not to get your elbows that far in front of you because it strains your shoulder.

Mom:
Is this okay?

Dr. Kim:
Yes like this and then walk your elbows to do more. There you go. You can also bend and straighten your knee at the same time. Look, it hurts more. There you go. 

Mom: 
Oh this is there.

Dr. Kim: 
Hold your pee. Oh, the sofa.  Hold your p, wonderful. Keep these low. Keep these low. Move your elbows if you have to, you don’t have to leave them there.

Hold this up. It’s hard to do. It’s a whole body thing, move these elbows down. Move them now. There, walk them back. There you go. So you don’t strain your shoulder. Walk your elbows forward. Yes. There you go. Hold your pee the whole time. There you go. There you go. Wonderful. You got that? Awesome. That’s amazing.

And then let’s try and do the inside of your leg. 

Mom: 
Yeah. 

Dr. Kim: 
So ready, we’re going to show you how to do the inside of your leg. So ready. So come off of the foam roller and come off of here. There you go. Like this. So let’s have you do the inside. 

I know you were doing your right leg the whole time, but for purposes of the camera, let’s do this leg.

So come down here. Come off there. There you go. So bend this knee and come, like, take it out like this. There you go. And you’re going to do the inside side of your thigh. So we’re going to move it here. Can you lift up your leg a little more? Lift it up a little. Here you go. This has to be like this.

Mom: 
Yeah. 

Dr. Kim: 
Do you do the inside? 

Mom: 
Yeah. Like this. 

Dr. Kim: 
Do you do the inside like this? 

Mom: 
Yes, this feels really good. See here. 

Dr. Kim: 
Well, not everybody agrees, but it does after you’ve been working on it a while. When you first started, did it hurt and was it uncomfortable? Like, from the beginning? 

Mom: 
Beginning. Yeah, it hurt in the beginning. It feels better later.

Dr. Kim: 
Yes. So see how you’re doing that and then use your elbows, walk to the right, walk sideways so that this will do this more. 

Mom: 
This way? 

Dr. Kim: 
Yes. Yeah. Do you see how it gets more of your leg? Yeah. Like here. Yeah. So get more of your leg over here. So this is how we decrease your fall-risk, your gait instability. You won’t need a toilet seat riser. You’ll still be able to sit down on the toilet because your thighs are going to still be flexible to do that for you. 

Back Strengthening

Dr. Kim:
I taught you something else to do to try to help you. Do you remember when we had you do that Superman thing?  Lift up your leg a little.

You remember that Superman? Yeah. So I taught you how to do that. Do you remember why? 

Mom: 
Superman? . . . . My back maybe.

Dr. Kim: 
Yes, because I said if we help strengthen your back, that it will help keep you upright. So you won’t – you won’t be bending forward like an old person, right? You remember that? 

Mom: 
Yeah.

Dr. Kim:
Okay. So we’re going to put that all together just so we can see you. Now, how often do you do this one, mom? 

Mom: 
This one? Every morning. 

Dr. Kim: 
Every morning.

Mom: 
Every morning. Every day. 

Dr. Kim: 
Every day. 

Mom: 
Because this helps me. Every morning. 

Dr. Kim: 
That’s awesome, Mom. All right. Ready? So let’s see now if you’ve forgotten how to do parts of it, I’m going to… I’m going to try to make some changes for you.

Okay, so we’ll see . . .  So I call it modified Superman because I don’t want people hurting their shoulders because people tend to raise their arms up to get their arms out here. So I keep everybody’s forehead on their hands like this. Okay, so the goal is to remember that you’re not going to lift up very high.

Mom:
Mmhmm

Dr. Kim:
You only lift up like an inch – your feet barely, your forehead barely. And you don’t look forward, you just look at the floor, right? You remember that? Yeah. Okay. 

So the key part is that you’re laying like this, you’re relaxed like this, your forehead is on your hands. You kegel to give you strength to your core and you barely stretch to lift up, reach the balls of your feet and keep your forehead on your hands and you barely lift up.

This strengthens all your back to lift you up against gravity and you can hold it there for like three breaths.

Mom:
Mhmm

Dr. Kim:
And then you resist, resist, resist to let yourself down. That makes your back stretchy as you go down instead of just dumping it. 

Mom:
Three breaths.

Dr. Kim:
All right, ready to try? Okay, here we go. Ready set, go. Awesome! Really reach with the balls of your feet.

Wonderful. And three breathsEvery time you exhale, you kegel and keep these low, there. One more. Keep your forehead on your hands. And last one, and then resist, resist, resist to to lower, resist, resist, resist, all right. Great. Mom, that was fabulous. 

Mom: 
Thank you. 

Dr. Kim: 
Wow. All right, so you can now have you get up because that was fabulous.

Push on your heels. On your hands. Yes. Very good. Very good. 

Mom: 
And get up. 

Dr. Kim: 
Yeah, we’ll go like this, and we’ll say… so we’ll say… we’ll look at the camera. So everyone, I hope you can feel inspired by this. That it’s possible that she embraced it everyday. It was something that she could do everyday to keep herself independent and moving, even if it hurt at the beginning. And it doesn’t hurt to do it somewhat religiously. Thank you to everybody. For watching. And I hope you got a lot out of this. Thanks bye. 

Mom: 
Thank you.

3 Generations!

Dr. Kim: 
Okay. It’s bonus reel time! I thought it’d be funny… fun to see how we handle squatting. I worked a lot on my flexibility. You’d think it was in my genes, but it is not in my genes. It’s apparently just what you do habitually, right? Ready to try now. So we’ll see that there’s no race to the bottom here, so let’s just try.

Talia: 
I wasn’t trying to do it fast! 

Dr. Kim: 
There’s no racing here. So. Okay, so here you go. 

Mom: 
Relax! 

Dr. Kim: 
Relax into a squat. Okay. See what we get ready. Here you go.

Talia:
See what I can do? 

Dr. Kim:
I can get around here before I have to start to lift up. Lift up. Oh, you see that? You guys can go. 

Mom: 
I did all the way down.

Dr. Kim: 
I know! You’re better than me. 

Mom: 
We have to see the doctor! That’s what she does. 

Dr. Kim: 
Well this doctor can’t do it.

You know, some days are better than others. This week, I can tell. It wasn’t a good week or day to try it anyway. All right. There we go. It was a worthy attempt.