Daily Tip #13 - Eye Stretches (Circles)

0:01 - Intro 

Good morning, everybody. It's Hump Day! If that's even still a thing these days. My name is Shane -- from MATRIX -- and I'm here to bring you your Week-Daily Tip #13. Yesterday we worked on squeezing the belly, squeezing the back, the core muscles and I told you that we were going to use that skill today. Well, I may have gotten a little bit ahead of myself. That's actually going to be tomorrow. So, if you did your homework and practiced the squeezes, great job! If you haven't done that yet, you've got an extra day to practice before we put them to use tomorrow.

0:35 – Tension in the Eyes 

In today's drill, what we're going to be doing is going back to the eyes and working on stretching them out. Now, as I've mentioned many times throughout these videos, I'm sure we're all spending a lot of time on our screens. And spending time on your screen is essentially like doing those squeezing exercises that we've done, for your eye muscles, for eight hours straight. In those drills I talked about only doing it for 3 to 5 seconds. So imagine what it would feel like if you had to do it all day long. There's a good reason why your eyes get pretty stressed out. We've previously gone over Eye Covers and Peripheral Walking, which help with that. But we're actually going to get the eyes of moving a little bit today. Specifically, with a drill called Eye Circles or Eye Stretches.

1:23 – Eye Circle Notes 

These are very simple to do. Oftentimes, when I do these with clients, I give them a stick with letters on it so they have a target that they can follow. But I always make sure to tell them that you always have your finger as well. It's always attached to you. So there's no excuses not to do these drills. One of the things that people might do wrong when they're doing Eye Circles is to not have a target. There are a couple of different kinds of eye movements. What we're going to be doing today is called a Smooth Pursuit. Another type is Saccade, which is a jump back and forth. If you don't have a target, it's almost impossible to Smooth Pursuit. So, make sure that you're using your thumb when we do these drills.

2:05 – Doing Eye Circles

Very simply, the exercise is just this. You want to keep your head as still as possible so the eyes do all the movement. I like to start overhead, taking my finger up to the sky. Eyes looking at my fingertip. And slowly just start to circle all the way around. When I get to the bottom, I like to switch hands. Following around. Back to the top. And then reversing. Now, you may have remembered this drill from the warm-up that I showed you in Tip #3. Now we're doing it a little bit more specifically, and with a little bit more purpose.

2:48 – Focus of Eye Circles

The purpose that you're going to add to this is making sure that you're moving slowly. And you're actually feeling the muscles around your eyes having to stretch as you go to big extremes. If you keep your window of circles very tight, they never actually get that stretch. I also want to mention that this drill is very powerful for people who wear glasses. You can imagine glasses are almost like cages for the eyes. The eyes never want to leave that area of clear vision through the glasses. They don't want to look out into the places where things are less clear. So they're always contained in that smaller area. Even if you're not at home all day staring at computer screens, if you do wear glasses, this is another really super drill that can help you out.

3:34 – One More Time Together

Let's just go through it one more time together. We're going to take one finger and bring it up high. Eyes look to the fingertip. Slowly circle around. You're actually feeling the eyes having to stretch. Finding their full range of motion. When you get to the bottom, switch fingers. Slowly come back up and around the other side. Trying to keep your head as still as you can. And then reverse direction. You can move a little bit quicker than we're going now. But you do want to take the time so that you can feel the stretch. And you don't want to go so fast that you move into that jumping action again.

4:11 - Recap

So that's it! Those are Eye Circles. They're a great stretch. If you stop and take a break on the computer and do just one of those, it's really beneficial. But I do recommend, again, doing between 3 to 5 repetitions when you're taking the time to do it. That's it for the tips today!

4:26 – Group Workout Intro

But I do have one other announcement. I am planning on creating a small group training or workout that's based on all of these different Tips. I'm going to be giving a demo of what that's going to be like on Friday, and there will be more information coming your way about that. So be sure to keep your eyes peeled, you can check it out.

4:47 - Farewell

That's it for today. I hope you have a wonderful Wednesday. Remember to stretch your eyes. Work on your squeezing drills for tomorrow. And I'll see you then at 11 o'clock.