Spine Corrector Variations

Hi everyone. I'm here for a spine corrector, class or workout. If you have a foam arc, please use that instead. If you have the clearest spine corrector, I happen to be on the grass today. So any and all are useful is to move our body is to get a good workout in our abdominals, our hips, and our spine and our back muscles. Okay, prop you're going to need is a small squishy ball and a wooden dowel, or you can use a weighted dowel. If you have that. Let's go ahead and get started.

I want you to start right up on the edge and we actually want me this devil immediately, so just keep it nearby and I want you to get right up on top of your sit bones and place your hands in the front edge of your corrector. Lightly. Press your hands against so you feel your shoulders, your stabilizers kind of connect here. You can connect to that sense of axial elongation sitting tall. Let's take three to four breaths. Right now. I'm just trying to fill up the sides and back of your rib cage.

And as you exhale, go ahead and allow your weight to shift off of your sits bones just to the back of your sitz bones a little bit. And notice that lower abdominal activation that happens right away. Inhale, come right back up to sitting tall. You can press your hands lightly and exhale just a little shift off your sitz bone. Lower abdomen in and okay, inhale as we come to sit tall, taller and exhaling as we can tract. Ah, and two more. Just feeling that gentle weight shift and exhaling curl.

Wow. We're going to build onto this on this next inhale. Press your arms a bit more. Open your collarbone a little bit more and start to invite that upper back extension just a little bit here. Maybe aim your chest bone for the wall in front of you and up to the ceiling. And then on the exhale, reverse the curvature.

So I want you to let that chest bone kind of drop in and back, maybe a little bit more of a c shape and your spine. And let's just roll through that again. Inhale as we lift, gently pressing the hands to open up the chest and exhale, correct. Each one gets a little bit more luscious, little bit bigger range of motion. Lift and lengthen. An exhale as we curve making your back a little rounder. And last one, everyone that's kind of been waking up, lengthening, opening, connecting and exhale. Okay.

Okay, so we've gotten a little preliminary movement. Go ahead and your ankles together, knees together, grab your dowel and pull your hands on the dowel apart as if you're trying to pull the stick apart. And then what you'll be noticing again is how that really right away wakes up into your shoulders and around your stabilizers, your upper back. So let's take some regular rollbacks here. Breathing in to start. You've already done the part. Exhale, rolling back.

Let's just do three small ones. So get to your low back. Pause. Inhale, rolling up, reaching your arms, reaching your knuckles forward, sitting tall again, x too. Hovis back, lumbar spine. Starting to widen and open. Breathing in and exhale, pulling it open on the stick. Try to pull it apart. Activate those shoulder muscles. One more little basic one. Inhale, pause, exhale, round.

Let's make it a little bit bigger. So I'm going to take us down. Keep going to until you get to your shoulder blades, and then go ahead and lift your arms straight up. Lift your face and look straight up to the ceiling. So you've got two straight arms up. You've got two shoulder blades that are on the, on the mat or on the top of the corrector.

Start to move forward with your arms and chest. Exhale and as like you're reaching your knuckles forward, right into space. They're breathing in, you're pulling the stick apart. Exhale all the way through. Feel the articulation. Pause for a moment. Breathe. That's curl.

Reach your arms forward and left. So two or three more here. Make any adjustments that you need to spacing wise on your barrel. Inhale as before would flex the spine. Exhale, pull that stick apart and set up a little bit taller. And then again, feel more length in between. Each segment of your spine is your over the top. Inhale. As you reach forward, exhale deep in those abs. Pull them way back and lift tall.

One more and roll back. Articulate and mobilize this spine. And Inhale, head, neck and chest. Pull that bar apart. Exhale and roll up. Okay, let's add a change of the foot and leg positions. I've just separated my, my knees and ankles about a fist with the or so. And I want you to rotate your spine either to the right or left.

I'm going right so I can face you and let's rotate again or articulate down on the right side or whatever side you're on of your back until you get to that shoulder blade. So I'm slightly at a diagonal here. Okay. And then rolling up. Let's do the same side a total of five times. So an inhale, exhale, two tickets back and an inhale in and exhale to bring us forward. Now think about the legs. We don't want them to drift side to side. So almost imagine your right knee leaning towards your left knee a little bit.

If it feels better, actually step your legs all the way together. I'll show a couple like that. Please do that, but I want you to keep your legs centered. You're just taking your trunk in a bit of a rotation. Okay, one more time. So I'm tracking down the right side of my spine to the shoulder blade. The arms are lifted. I'm in upper back extension, just lengthening, not hyper and all the way up. Okay, so to the other side, and start with the feet separated.

If you want to go back to the beginning there, you're rotating on your axis. Here we go. Inhale. Exhale. Get to that shoulder blade. Inhale, begin to lift. Exhale all the way up. You're going to feel a transfer of work from the abdominals to your back and spinal muscles to your abdominals and your back and your spine pulling out on the stick with your arms, keeping your shoulders involved and they're low. Can bring your feet and knees together. We've got two more here.

Hopefully you're feeling your oblique, your twist muscles, leaning your left knee against your right knee. One more, and inhale, exhale, returning forward. Inhale and exhale up. Okay. Center, and just give your arms rest. That's a long time to hold your arms up and feel free to always take a break if you need to. As you probably do that. Okay, so let's just do this guys. I take yourself and just do a little bit of side-to-side and just basic, okay, you just did that. Now add this movement with your arms. You're going to rotate one direction, elevate your arms, make a little arch down on the other side and center.

Don't do the other way. Some rotating left elevator. Extend the arm, flex the shoulders up, turn arms down in center. Once again, rotate arms up, turn to the other side, arms down and center. Now go left. So this arm pattern, there's going to be an added into your ad pattern that you just did. So we turn, you go down the right side of this spine. You're taking yourself to your shoulder blade there. Here's how it goes. Up and over to the other shoulder blade. Use those abdominals.

Then use your back to help you up and center. Other way left. Exhale just to your shoulder blade. You don't have to get very far up and over to the right. Press off the barrel. Use your back to help you up. Okay? Again, it's feeling this flow from your right body across the shoulder blades to the left body lift and return center. Last one like this twist, really getting some deep mobilization of your back.

Hopefully feeling deep abdominal work here and all the way to center. Bring your feet and knees together if they weren't already stretched them out long. And let's take a full roll back everybody. So as you're taking yourself all the way over, I do want your arms to go further than they have yet. Take your upper spine over. I love to have the back of your head on your barrel because if it's just hanging there in mid space, not so safe, not so good. So if you need to move yourself, please take that moment down to do so that the back of your head is touching your barrel. Okay, now just your arms.

I want them to come up and towards your pelvis or thighs and up to the ceiling and back overhead. There'll be total of four of those. That was your first one. Inhale to the ceiling. Exhale, lower your arms. Go. Remember when you're trying to pull that stick apart. Inhale up and over. Okay, last two. I promise. Inhale.

[inaudible]. So all those are this wonderful hydrating movement for the shoulder girdle, upper spine. Think forward in all of the programming of your exercises, and this is really your swan in a way. This upper back extension, right? You all know, okay, now holding there, stretch yourself even longer. Take more space through the room. Lift the arms. Once again, straight up to the sky. Now we invite the head and the upper body in.

We curl and want you to reach your arms toward their wall in front of you. Pick up your legs and yes, we pumped into three, four, five. Exhale. Three, four, five. You're pulling the stick apart. Trying. You're squeezing your legs together. Use your hips and pull those together. Think about your stomach muscles, right?

Those deep abdominals pulling in to the back of the barrel through the barrel. It's a thought. Of course, it's not realistic. Pull yourself back. Okay. He picking up those legs. You don't want them lower than the edge of the uh, spine corrector right now. Two more breath cycles. Last one in. Exhale, three, four.

Place your feet. Roll yourself up and return just a beautiful vertical sit position. Okay, wonderful. Let's move on. So place your stick down. Let's go into some lateral work. So I'm turning towards you. This is where the ball is going to come in. Play in just a moment, but I want you first as you're seated, there's two ways you can sit with your front foot, a relaxed foot here, completely fine, or you can come up onto the ball of that foot.

That's a little bit more traditional of an approach. It's a nice way to stabilize your ankle. This, although it appears to be resting, might make some of your calf muscles contract in a way that feels like a cramp. So just be mindful. This is actually a really nice way to be. This is what I'll choose. Now I want you to take your hand. The other leg is bent for now.

Take your hand to this hip and press your hip forward, okay? And as you do that, your whole pelvis is rotating a bit toward the curve of the barrel and then just return it to level or side-by-side. Okay? Just do that maybe five times total. But I want you to activate your glutes, your hips, to press your hip forward and then bring it back last to contract and press your hip and bring it back and contract and press your hip. You will get more on that in just a second. The other hand for now, place on the front of your ribs, this hand, they want you to gently press your ribs into you so that you're not flaring or fluting them forward. And then the other hand is here in your pelvis.

And just feel those two places kind of meeting toward one another here in your abdomen. Okay? You'll probably start to feel it around your lower back as well. That's good part of your part of your body. Okay? Now lean toward the barrel. Lightly tap your elbow. This is a small range movement. And then exhale, come right back up. But I want you to keep these cues, your head, your pelvis is slightly forward, your ribs are slightly back, so you're very much isolating right in here. Okay, we'll do five. Here's the third one. Inhale, exhaling up.

Try to keep your knee on the floor if you can. It's more about what I want you to feel here anyway, and your last one. Inhaling over and exhaling up. Okay? Going back over to the barrel. See if you can keep those things connected, those cues, and lightly press your elbow down. Okay. Now I happen to be bare footed on a hardwood floor. This feels fine for me.

What I'm about to to do, if this doesn't work for you, pause for a second. Put a sock on or put a towel underneath your foot. But what I want us to start moving that that leg that was bent into hip extension, so I'm okay with my bare foot rubbing the floor. It's not incredibly comfortable. That's okay. All right. Light on this elbow.

Very active in this part of your body and reach and reach and we'll find a breath that supports you. So you might like to inhale and extension. Exhale, inflection. That's my choice. You could do the other way and I want you to get a little more length each time. We've got three more to go. Lengthen and fold and feeling your glutes right, those big muscles in the back of the hip, helping extend.

And then you're going to hold here. Take this arm in front, somewhere in front of you. Doesn't have to be specific and I want you to take a breath and as you exhale, you're going to rotate your rib cage. Try to keep that hip where it is. Just rotate your ribs. Oh, and then come out. Let's do five of those and rotate round and open and exhale and twist. So I have a biased, elongated, extended spine right now in rotation.

I'm not doing a flection in my spine last to rotate. Is your legs still extended behind you or are you still active in your glutes? Of course we are. Hintern oh, I feels so good and open and then lower your arm and re bend your knee. Just take a little break. Okay. Now here's where the ball comes in handy, picked up all up and put it behind you. Your foot's going to go on there. Some of you may not need the ball, but you don't have to use it, but I'm choosing to use that ball and lightly again onto your elbow, focusing on these hip extensors. Now to mobilize the hip into turnout.

So right now our leg is in parallel. If you press your foot against the ball and elevate your legs, so you're doing a clam, you're going to feel those very directly, that hit muscles. Let's do eight. Okay, so a few more than we just did. Keep that musculature alive here though, that we started connecting to, right? So your pelvis is forward, your ribs are back. Press your foot against that ball. As you progress, you don't need the ball.

You'd have your foot on the ground and your leg would easily lift and lower and lift. You keep going. I'll show you what that looks like and you just press and you lower. One more press and lower. Okay, let's do a nice, easy rotation. Guys, turn yourself to your arc, place your hands down, and now you can go with a little rounded spine. You can place your hands lower. Take a few deep breaths.

I'm still trying to see kind of hollow in and create a lot of negative or hollowed space here in the front of you. Shoulders Square, your lats are engaged. Letting the weight of the head hang. It's enjoying the stretch in your spine and shoulders. Okay? Of course we have to do all that on the other side. Walk your hands up. Here we go. I'm turning around so you can turn your corrector to see, see me or just follow my voice. I'll do the best I can with queuing. So we began with that front foot either rested or up on the ball of the foot.

The other leg, knee is bent, and your thighs just resting on the on the floor. Take the outside hand to your pelvis. And we began with just working that, that feeling of rotating the pelvis forward and moving it back and exhale as you use your glutes to press that pelvis forward and press it back three more. [inaudible] you could try to keep your shoulders and upper body absolutely still. I don't know if it's possible. They think when there's a rotation down below, there's a little bit of occurrence of twist that continues, but you can endeavor to keep fairly still if you'd like and just work a deeper hip isolation there. Okay. That was our five. So keeping that hand on your hip, put the other hand on the front of your low rib cage there and again, you're gently pressing your hands against your body and when doing so, you should feel that really dynamic contraction on that side of your abdomen.

Okay, so we're taking them and leaning toward the corrector. Gently touching that elbow. Exhale and bring yourself up. It's almost like just tipping over to the side. You're just leaning and coming back up. So hip forward, ribs back. Yeah.

Last two on this inhale, a little tip. Exhaling up. It's a very soft oblique exercise. Really not that intense and exhaling up. Okay, so now you're going to keep that feeling. One Hand comes up on the arc. I'm going to keep my hand on that pelvis. This is where that leg extension occurs.

So I'm taking that back leg and reaching to a straight line. So the hip is really fully extended. It's not a, it's not as important to get your knees straight, although it will be straight. Probably it's your hip energy reaching towards your foot and then bring it back in and reach. And then I did eight of these, so kind of noticing the ball of the foot on the floor. If it hurts, like I said, put a sock on or a towel. But I want you to really maximize your glutes right there and extend that hip.

You got three more now and reach [inaudible] last one. You're going to stay there. Take this arm, inhale, and we went into rotation. So exhale as you rotate your torso, lightly touching your hand to the floor. Keep that back leg alive. Inhale, return five times. Exhale [inaudible] and inhale and exhale. It's definitely not a forceful rotation. No need to look for any cracks or snaps or pops. Lengthen your spine and rotate it gently.

Keep your back leg alive. One more time. Here's your five, okay. And lift, lower your arm and bring your leg in. Okay, we went to the ball, so place it back behind you. Put your foot on it. Okay. Lightly lean down on this elbow and then you just take that back knee first and just drop it down. Here we go. You're doing your clam series and down.

Now what I need to do, everybody's will watch. I need to adjust the ball. It's not far enough behind me. Clearly I should have. Yup. B, what would you really want to make sure is that this thigh on these clam series is a little bit behind your pelvis. If it's in front of you like that, you're going to be more in your hip flexors and less than your hip extensors. Okay, so make sure that size a little bit behind you. Here we go. I'm going to pick it back up. Three and four. Five.

Keep those abs working and six and seven and you know if you wanted to take the ball away, you could. We just did eight and let's rest right there. Okay. I think you've sufficiently worked those tips right there. Let's move into some back extension. Okay. So just try yourself around and just clothing if you need come down on your stomach and let's just for size things up where I want you to start out on your barrel far enough that your knees are not on that side of the, the uh, step, but on this side. So you've got to climb forward. Something like that, but you won't have weight on your knees.

It's just a way to kind of indicate where to go. Space-Wise okay. Balance on your arms, get your organization, engage your hamstrings, lengthen your legs. Now engage your glutes a little more. Get your spa, your spine in extension and lift your chest. So I'm trying to go in through a little swan dive here. Oh yeah. Lift your back to lowering your legs.

Lift your legs to lower your chest. Still looking forward. Lift your back to lower your legs. Let's do five of them legs and then back, back, and then legs last two legs and then chest and chest legs. One more time. Legs, chest, chest and legs. Some heel beats. Stomach is up.

Pause. Come halfway down into that swan dive. Look now at the floor, bend your knees. We're going to do a little bit of grasshopper work. So pick up your stomach, collect that in, open the legs. And then three leg movements. One, two, three chess comes down. We bend and open those legs. And one, two, three more to go. Lower. Open and up to three. Two more.

Reach for the walls. Lift the back of your back. Last one just in time. My hands are getting sweaty on the floor. Three and melt over your barrel. All right, so we're in our melting moment. It's an active melt. I mean there's continue to breathe in a focused way through the back of your rib cage, the sides of your rib cage, maybe three to four times.

Okay. Okay, good. So then one more section that I have for us and how I learned it with, you know, to describe it, it was called hips on the Ark. So hips on top, the way to get in is you have slither, you can get to slither down. So roll yourself back. Stay as close to the barrel as you can, and that even includes your neck and your head. This was the, you never do this with your deck right here. Okay? Keep yourself in close to your body. Start reaching for these handles. You have to step yourself backwards.

Stay close to that corrector there and see you're on the ground now your hips are on the arch, your head and your shoulders are on your floor or on your mat. And just take a moment here and let's just check in. Okay? So some of us out in the world have tight leg muscles or hip flexor muscles here, or they feel like they really need a stretch. This is a perfect place to be. Great place to be. If you're not feeling a lot of that, or maybe that's fine too.

Some people really don't need that or feel that it's all okay. But what I want everyone to do here, notice where your feet are and see if there's an edge a little bit more you can play with meaning to thing. Walk your feet in together and knees together. What'd you feel there? I felt a lot more activation in my adductors. That's a good thing.

And around my hamstrings and a little bit up into my hips here. That's good. I know that if you do that though and you feel like you go into more back arch, you're not ready to bring your legs together. Okay. So just remember, take your time. The other thing is, the choice you could try is could your feet come back at all down into that, right into that, the crevice that also might you more sensation of length, more activation in your hip extensors. That's a good thing. Things to avoid though. If you feel any knee pain, you go up there and you go wider. Okay? So there's a lot of has to do with stretching this front bodies a muscular tr out enough to then minimize their body position. Okay, moving on. Take a knee to table top. The other one up. Both legs are gonna come up slowly. Stretch.

Be like a periscope coming up out of the water. Use that length. Use that feeling of stretch. Right? And then we're going to just do easy movement, meaning down and up. But notice how much abdominal activation occurs when you take your legs down and then exhaling up. So I want us to inhale down. Here we go. The exhale initiates your leg. Lift.

Lift three more times. So it's an inhale. You're lengthening. Exhale, energize your feet please. Only as low as you feel like you can hold with control and exhaling up. It's very good for your abs. That one. Okay. Externally, rotate your legs. Same thing. Find how low you can go. You're going to stay there for a moment. Okay, now I want you to flex ankles and extend your ankles. Inhale, flex and exhale, stretch. Three more.

Inhale, flex and stretch. My inner size are so connected. If someone tried to come and pull my legs apart, they could not even get near doing that cause I'm so pulled in really strong. Let's add some frogs. Inhale, frog. Find me. Feels easy. I met in heel coming in. Exhale, push the opposite wall away. Inhale, push.

Pull it in. Push him out. Let's take one more. I love heel beats because it's good for the legs and we in two, three, four, five, exhale, three, four, two, three, four or five x, one more set. Notice the legs are on that knife's diagonal. Throughout that series parallel, let's go to leg circles. Three each way is going to just be fine today. Again, explore where can you go?

You want to get to that low level. Turn your legs out open. Go for range. If you'd like. I'm going to take mine a little bit, my pelvis, a little out of neutral and then find neutral again down externally, rotate, open. Go ahead, let that pelvis move. It's okay. Join the legs. Come together using your back. Stability abdominals for stability and around. Okay. Yeah, reversing it.

So you're going to notice I do let my pelvis come up off that barrel and the externally rotate. Now on the way down, you want to achieve getting that pelvis to neutral or on top again, use the back of your leg. Yes and left over X. Externally. Rotate and sweep your legs down. Use those inner thighs again to bring them together and lift. Last one over. Reach for the walls.

Reach for the wall in front of you. Now keep them turned out. Let's go into eight little scissors. They don't have to be fast. Focus on keeping the pelvis square. So it's this like down. It's this leg is also adjusting. It's your top pelvis adjusting so your hip isn't swinging out here to the side somewhere. You really wrapping that under. So here's four, three, two, a little further and last one into bicycles. So Ben, that bottom knee, feel that step. These are juicy, long strides.

That's the goal. Okay. Take up more space with the movement of your legs. That gesture of your leg. Take up more space. Reach through eight times the other way. Feel that barrel. Reach away from it. Feel the barrel. Reach away from it.

Three remember, take up space reached for that. It's almost like I'm thinking reaching to the floor right there. I would never get to it, but oh, last two. I have some colleagues who can, their legs are so long. Okay. Vendor anyth. We're done with class. You guys. Here's the way I want you to finish. Slide your barrel away, your bodies on the floor.

Use this barrel for your legs. Open your arms. Take three to five breaths here. Don't rush away. Enjoy this time and I feel the tingle and the vibration that through your body. Ah, thanks for joining me. We'll leave some comments if you like this work. Some of you really love the spine corrector like I do, so that's for you. Thanks guys.