Roll Over

Let's talk about the rollover. The rollover is an intermediate exercise that focuses mostly on spinal articulation. In addition to the spinal articulation piece, you need some good abdominal support. You need, conscious work in the shoulder stabilizers, and it's also important that the lower back muscles have enough flexibility to be able to take the spine into flexion. So let's see.

To start the exercise, we begin lying down on the ground, the mat. The arms are close to the body and actively pressing down. The legs can come up one at a time for safety. And then we start with the legs on about a sixty degree angle from the ground. The initial movement is to lift the legs to a vertical position a ninety degree angle from the spine. And then we're gonna try and maintain the angle from the body to the legs as we take the shape over.

The next marker is to bring the legs parallel to the ground. At that point, the feet flex open. And if we can, we take them down a little lower. Then reaching actively through the legs, we roll the spine down one bone at a time until the pelvis is all the way down. In that moment, the feet point, the legs come down. Touch together and we're ready to go again.

So there's a lot of information in that and not a lot of tempo. Here is a better, example of the tempo, up and over, flex and open and down. And rolling down, active through the arms so that the shoulder blades stay in place, point come down, touch together, and inhale, and exhale to fold over onto the head and shoulders, flex, open, and keeping the spine still as the legs go down and roll down. Point down together, and we can finish just by bending the knees. So the rollover is a really beautiful exercise. It feels great. One thing to just keep in mind that if someone has a cervical spinal condition or, anything that's troubling in their neck area, maybe not such a good idea to put some weight over the neck.

5 or so is usually feels about right to me. More than 3, less than 10 is what I would suggest for repetitions. And you can just feel what feels right to you as you're teaching the rollover.