Tag: stretching

How Breathing Affects Posture and Spinal Flexibility

As long as we are alive, we are breathing! So it is very useful to understand how breathing affects both our posture and our spinal flexibility. Many different muscles participate in the breathing process, and breathing is one of the few physical functions that is both automatic and under our control. While there is no wrong way to breathe, taking control of our breath and learning to strengthen our central breathing muscles like the diaphragm is a great tool to improve many aspects of our physical and emotional state, including posture and spinal flexibility.

How We Breathe Affects our Posture

The spine is designed to be extremely mobile, able to move forwards, backwards, twist, and side bend. For more information on spinal mobility check out this blog post on spinal anatomy for back benders.

The ability of our spine to take advantage of this exquisite range of motion depends in part on our posture. If we habitually stand and move in ways that force our back muscles to become tight and over-worked, we will find ourselves with tension, even pain. The muscles in our back and neck can become resentful and stressed out. The way we breath can either help or hinder our back’s ability to relax and feel full mobility.

Breathing Can Relax the Spinal Muscles

One of the most important skills we need in order to relax our spinal muscles is the full exhale. When we exhale all the way our rib cage drops down away from our chin and our diaphragm relaxes, created a dome shape up inside our rib cage. This big, muscular dome, even relaxed, provides a lot of support for the rib cage (called the zone of apposition), so when we exhale fully our upper back and neck muscles get a little break, lengthen out, and the rib cage just floats on that diaphragm.

Surprisingly, many of us don’t do a great job of exhaling. As I explain in my blog post on core muscles and how they coordinate together, a full exhale and relaxation of the diaphragm requires a corresponding increase in participation from the “meat corset” muscles that wrap around your waist (the transversus abdominus, the internal obliques, and the external obliques) as well as the pelvic floor muscles.

If we have neglected to develop our relationship with this group of core muscles, it will be hard for the diaphragm to relax and therefore we will never get that corresponding relaxation in our upper back and neck muscles.

10 Minutes of Breathing to Improve Posture and Spinal Flexibility

I created a 10 minute series of exercises that guide your body through a coordinated breathing routine that facilitates these long, complete exhales while encouraging your waist muscles to participate while your neck and spinal muscles to relax. It is a series of four exercises in increasing levels of challenge, each one building on the last to develop the deep awareness of both diaphragmatic relaxation and core engagement, with a little spinal flexion thrown in since this is the first direction that we want to spine to go if we are working to increase spinal mobility.

All you need to try it out is a spot on the floor and a few pillows to get comfy. No previous fitness experience or flexibility is needed to do this. It is an exercise for any body. If, as the exercises progress, you find yourself feeling tension in your back or unable to find the meat corset muscles, just go back to the first exercise for a while.

This series is a good way to start to strengthen your core muscles if traditional ab strengtheners like crunches feel awkward and miserable, or cause your neck and back to over work. It is also an excellent warm up for a core workout like Pilates, or for anything involving spinal flexibility like contortion, pole, dance, or yoga.

Happy Bendings!

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Tight Hip Flexors? Try These Lunge Variations for Better Results

The humble lunge is a staple of flexibility training designed to target the front of the hips. With lunges, small details in alignment and positioning can make a huge difference in outcome, and we can use that to our advantage.

Understanding how lunge alignment emphasizes different muscles in the hips can help you target the muscles that really need the stretch.

Get to Know the 6 Primary Hip Flexors

First, let’s define our terms. There are multiple hip flexors, but six of them do most of the work and are our primary focus when we talk about stretching. These are the psoas, iliacus, pectineus, tensor fasciae latae, sartorius, and rectus femoris. To learn more about each of these muscles, where they live and what they do, please check out this blog post on hip flexor anatomy.

Once you know where your muscles are and how they work it’s much easier to delve into the mysterious habits of your own hips.

Find Your Square Lunge

Before tinkering with our lunge position, let’s start by finding a lovely, square lunge. The hips are square when both hip bones and the pubic bone are on the same plane, so the hips are not twisting, one hip bone is not higher than the other, and the pubic bone is not behind the hip bones. Your back leg should be coming straight back behind you, and your front leg straight out in front.

You can read more about square hips and why they are important in this blog post on square splits. And this workout video has some great basic lunges so you can get the hang of it.

I’m compelled to remind you (and myself) that doing square lunges means that you will not go as deep into the stretch. They may feel awkward if you are used to letting the pelvis do its own thing. If you like to arch your back or if your hips aren’t used to supporting this position, a square lunge could feel more like a workout than a stretch. It’s ok. Keep doing it anyway, it will get easier over time. I promise it’s worth it.

This square lunge gives a pretty even stretch across the front of the pelvis, not targeting any specific hip flexor but not leaving anyone out. If you allow the pelvis to tilt or twist or the back to arch you will start to skip some of the hip flexors (usually the tightest ones that most need the stretch). For you naturally bendy people this is especially important to keep your pelvis healthy. After years of extravagant over-stretching, this is now my pelvic theme song: Hip to Be Square…

Emphasize the Satorius and Rectus Femoris

The satorius and rectus femoris are the two muscles that cross both the hip joint and the knee joint. That makes it very easy to emphasize them in your lunge: just bend your knee. You can either do this in the traditional couch stretch, with your shin up against the wall, or by just reaching back and grabbing your foot and bringing it in towards your butt.

I don’t teach this lunge variation in my beginner/intermediate videos because it can be so hard on the knees, but there is a more gentle version of this stretch in the Happy Hips workout.

However you do it, please put some nice padding under your knee and stop if you feel any knee pain. And of course, keep those hips square.

Emphasize the Tensor Fasciae Latae

The TFL attaches to the outside front of the hip, so in order to emphasize that muscle you will want to externally rotate your back leg. The tricky thing here is to rotate the thigh bone but keep the hip bones square. For most of us, that means that the amount of external rotation will be quite small, so if you look back and the back leg has barely moved off center, don’t worry.

The front leg can externally rotate a little bit too, if that helps with the balance.

The TFL can be targeted a little more by shifting the pelvis slightly off center in the direction of the back leg, and leaning away from the hip. That means if my left leg is back and I am stretching my left hip, I will slide my pelvis slightly to the left and lean slightly to the right. No twisting in the hips though, both hip bones pointed straight ahead like headlights on a foggy night.

For you visual learners please check out the video at the end of this post!

Emphasize the Psoas and Iliacus (Iliopsoas)

These deep hip flexors are often both tight and weak because most of us sit too much, and these muscles hate sitting. When they work well, they are our most powerful hip flexors and stabilizers, but when they are tight they can lead to a very cranky pelvis, back spasms, and tight hips.

This lunge is one of my favorites because the iliopsoas difficult to target but terribly important. If this lunge variation feels challenging… yay! You’ve found something that could be very useful for improving your hip health.

To emphasize the psoas you will internally rotate your back leg. The front leg still comes directly forward and the hips stay square. Just like with the TFL lunge, the hips slide out to the side in the directly of the back leg, and the body leans opposite. Again, check out the video below for a visual.

Keep in mind that if your iliopsoas muscles are very tight, it might be challenging to get them to stretch. If you don’t feel a stretch, don’t be discouraged. Keep playing with the position, building the strength in the supporting muscles, and working into the lunge over time. When I first started it, this lunge felt like a lot of work with no payoff but it’s made a massive difference in my hip functionality over time.

The Sets and Reps for Lunges

A lunge is a mixture between a passive static and an active stretch. I do a million different variations to get the results I want in a particular session.

Lunges with the knee on the floor tend to be more passive, and unless you have knee issues I recommend these if you are just starting out with square lunges and lunge variations. An emphasis on static passive stretching and isometric contraction of the supporting muscles can be a very effective way to start to shift hip alignment.

I recommend doing all 3 lunges, 3 sets of 30 seconds each (9 lunges total on each side). Over time you can vary the number of sets of each lunge variety according to what your body needs most. For example I only do 2 sets of quad/sartorius stretching but 4 sets of iliopsoas stretching because that’s where I am most tight.

Feel the support from the butt muscles and torso muscles, building strength and control. Alignment is more important than depth. You can build depth over time but it is very hard to fix alignment once you are deep.

Happy hips come from consistent investigations into pelvic alignment and imbalances. The better you know your hips, the better you can tailor your training to your body’s needs.

Happy Bendings everyone!

 

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Step by Step Introduction to Back Bridge/Wheel Pose

Back Bridge, or Wheel Pose as it is called in yoga, is a beautiful foundational element of the back bender’s practice. There are so many benefits to this position in strengthening the entire back of the body while opening the hips, chest, and shoulders.

I also love Back Bridge because it requires your body to reconfigure itself and learn some new skills. So much of what you need to do to have a comfortable Back Bridge feels counter-intuitive. 

We are so used to a forward-facing orientation with our body. We push with the front of our body and pull with the back of our body. In Back Bridge we have to push with the back of our body, which is where so many new back-benders get stuck. If you try to push up into Back Bridge with the front of your body, it will feel pretty much impossible.

Here are two preparatory exercises that you can do, before you are upside down and bent over backwards, so that your body has some idea of where to engage and how to behave in Back Bridge. These are both isometric holds, which are very useful for re-training your nervous system to create new patterns of muscular contractions. I recommend holding each of these for about 30-60 seconds for 3 sets if you are new to Back Bridge or feeling stuck, prior to pushing up into Back Bridge.

For the visual learners, please check out the video at the end of this post.

 

Lower Back Bend Isometric Hold

This hold will look very familiar to most of you. It is a simple shoulder bridge, focused on the muscle groups that you will need in Back Bridge. Both knees are bent, hip width apart with feet parallel, and the heels are close to the butt (exact distance will vary but find something comfortable for you).

They key components of this hold are:

  • Start by pulling your heels and butt towards each other to fire the muscles in the backs of your legs
  • Extend your hip flexors by using the lower glutes to lift just the tailbone up off the floor, keeping the rest of the back flat
  • Make sure that the hip flexors stay in the lengthened position as you lift higher off he floor (for more info on why it’s important to lengthen the hip flexors to protect your lower back see this blog post on back pain in backbends)
  • For bonus points extend the arms up overhead and press them gently down into the floor while keeping the chest opened

Hold for 30-60 seconds, repeat 2-3 times

 

Upper Back Bend Isometric Hold

The upper body hold is often less familiar to the body, which makes it especially important. This hold does require a certain amount of wrist flexion, so if your wrists are tight I definitely recommend a good wrist warm-up and the addition of yoga blocks under your hands to help mitigate the pressure on your wrists (see the video at the end for a visual, the blocks come in at  4:03).

The key components of this hold are:

  • Place your palms flat on the floor or on the yoga blocks just above your shoulders, spread out your fingers to engage your wrist muscles, and make sure your fingers are pointing towards your shoulders not out to the sides
  • Forearms are parallel to each other, not opening out to the side like little wings, while the elbows reach back past the ends to upwardly rotate the shoulders and decrease pressure on the wrists
  • Keep your head and hips resting on the floor while just your upper back lifts, opening the chest towards the ceiling
  • The dream is to feel the engagement in your upper back, not your neck, chest, or shoulders. If you are not feeling your back muscles, keep your upper back on the floor and just work on pressing your hands down until you get acquainted with those back muscles

Hold for 30-60 seconds, repeat 2-3 times

 

Pushing Up Into Back Bridge

After doing these isometrics, you are ready to attempt pushing up into your Back Bridge! The push up happens in three stages.

  • First, start your lower body isometric hold.
  • Second, start your upper body isometric hold but this time continue to push up until your head starts to lift, pausing with the top of the head gently resting on the floor (make sure that most of your weight is in your hands, not pushing down into your delicate neck vertebrae).
  • Align your arms so that your forearms are parallel and re-engage those same back muscles you felt in your isometrics, then use them to push your arms straight.

Ideally, this should feel like a lot of work on the back side of your body while the front side of your body gets to open up. If it doesn’t feel that way, it’s ok! Keep working on your isometrics and the muscles will start to learn their new jobs.

Check out the video below for a visual guide to walk through the exercises, and happy Back Bendings!

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Got a Bendy Back and Tight Hip Flexors? Try this Short Workout

Five years ago I wrote a blog post titled The Curse of the Bendy Lower Back that laid out many of the difficulties facing people with a naturally bendy lumbar spine. One of the most unpleasant consequences is shortened, weak, painful hip flexor muscles.

This phenomenon has been well documented. In 1979 Dr Vladimir Janda coined the term “Lower Crossed Syndrome” to describe the postural condition where the back arches and the pelvis tilts forward. This results from and further contributes to tight muscles in the lower back and the front of the hips, and lengthened muscles in the abdominals and glutes/hamstrings.

At the root of the problem is inefficiency. Our bodies are designed to move from a stacked spine where the S-curve rests directly on top of a vertical pelvis and very little muscle is required to hold us up. When our spine is not neatly stacked the muscles and connective tissue have to work much harder to hold us up, resulting in angry, resentful, tight muscles.

In the case of the bendy lower back, the spine pulls the pelvis into a forward tilt (and sometimes the pelvis pulls the spine). This makes the back muscles have to work very hard to hold up our upper bodies, and compresses our illiopsoas, the largest and deepest set of hip flexor muscles. It also aligns us in a way that makes it our quadriceps muscles over work and makes it harder to use our abdominal muscles and glutes. Left unchecked over time this creates chronic postural problems, tightness, and pain.

I’ve had a pretty severe case of Lower Crossed Syndrome for most of my life. I do exercises every day to counter its effects and it has decreased my back and hip pain and increased my hip mobility. I’ve also seen these exercises help other people with the same issues, so if you’re in the same boat, perhaps they will prove useful for you too!

The video below contains specific exercises that I find useful, but here are some guiding principals that can help you design your own workouts and adapt your current workouts to make sure that you aren’t reinforcing your imbalances.

1. Know Your Dominant Muscles and Try to De-emphasize Them

For many folks with bendy back issue, the quadriceps muscles are bossy as hell. When designing your exercises, find ways to reduce input from the quads in favor of the illiopsoas, glutes, hamstrings, and core muscles. Basically, anyone but the quads. It may mean going lighter with your effort in order to find those quieter, shyer muscles.

2. Just Because a Muscles is Tight Doesn’t Mean it’s Strong

The back and hip flexors do not want to lengthen. They may feel tight as a bridge cable, but that doesn’t mean those muscles are good at contracting either. Often those muscles are just stuck at one length, not getting shorter or longer. When that happens, I recommend working on contracting the muscles first, before trying to stretch them. It is easier to make a muscle contract than relax, and once you get them to contract they gain some confidence and are more amenable to relaxing and stretching.

3. Just Because a Muscle is Long Doesn’t Mean it’s Weak

Those glutes and abs may be stuck in a long position, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t strong in a long position. When I was doing backbends all day my abs were very strong, they just didn’t want to get shorter. The key to making sustainable change was to get away from the crunches that I was used to and find exercises that forced me to use my abs when they were in a shortened position, with my spine in forward flexion. This resulted in lots of shaking, and some sustainable improvement in my bendy back issue. Putting a squishy ball or pillow under the hips for ab work is a great way to start.

4. Changing Posture is a Daily Practice

Posture doesn’t change overnight. It’s likely you’ve had this posture imbalance for much of your life so doing exercises once in a while isn’t going to make a noticeable difference. Changing posture and maintaining that change means doing exercises to address the imbalance almost every day, possibly for the rest of your life. But hey, at least you’ll always have something to do.

For my fellow hyperlordotic (bendy lower back) friends, I hope that some of these tips and exercises are useful for you. I know many of you may be dealing with back and hip pain, and all I can say is that there is hope for relief with consistent dedication to this small, undramatic, exercises.

Happy Bendings!

 

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Spinal Anatomy for Back Benders

Back bending is one of the most challenging areas of the flexibility arts. The spine is an extremely complex structure consisting of bones, cartilage, connective tissue, and tons of nerves. You are essentially bending your brain’s tail.

Back bending is also special because most of the flexibility gains come from shortening the muscles of your back. Most flexibility training focuses on lengthening muscles. That is why back bending feels so different than other types of stretching and why it requires a specialized, primarily active (strength-based) approach. For ideas on strength-based spinal mobility check out the Video Club series.

Back bending is intense! Moving those bones and nerves around can create all sorts of unexpected responses. Dizzyness, euphoria, nausea, headaches, intense emotion, muscle spasms, and exhaustion are all common responses to back bends. My coach used to say that one hour of backbending taxes the nervous system like eight hours of normal exercises.

And of course back bending can be dangerous. Overtraining risks the possibility of fractured vertebrae, herniated discs, pinched nerves, and chronic pain.

Lest I sound like a total downer, I still love to teach and practice back bending. I just have strong feelings about the need for education and safety around the pursuit of the back bend. So let’s start with understanding the basics of how the spine is constructed.

 

The Three Segments of the Spine

Outline of the Spinal Anatomy

The spine is made up of 24 boney chunks (vertebrae) that are hollow in the middle to allow the spinal cord to pass through. In between each vertebrae is a squishy disc to allow for movement and protection, and there are tough cords of ligaments that keep everything held together. To nerd out more deeply on the anatomy of the spine check out this good introductory article from the University of Maryland Medical Center.

Vertebrae change shape as they go up the spine. Based on that shape the spine can be divided into three different sections. Each section has a different kind of movement function.

Lumbar Spine

The Lumbar SpineThe lumbar spine starts at the sacrum, a flat shield-shaped bone that attaches to the pelvis. The five lumbar vertebrae (some people have six) are the largest of the three sections and naturally curve into a back bend shape. Some people have a lot of natural curve, some people have less.

The primary muscles supporting the lumbar spine are the illiopsoas, transverse abdominus, obliques, and the pelvic floor muscles. The muscles in the back that need to shorten for backbends are the multifidi, quadratus laborum, and the large muscles on either side of the spine that connect the spine and the ribs.

The shape of the lumbar vertebrae makes them more mobile going forwards and backwards although they also allow for twisting and side bending. Your lower back is part of the support system for your entire upper body, so it is important to keep it strong and mobile even if backbends aren’t your passion.

If back bends are your passion, beware over-using your lumbar spine. Because it has a natural back bend curve it’s easy to dump into your lower back, especially if you have a lot of natural curve and/or tight hips and upper back.

 

Thoracic Spine

The Thoracic SpineThe thoracic spine is the longest section of the spine, starting in the mid back and extending up to the base of the neck. The shape of the vertebrae differs considerably from the lumbar spine allowing for less mobility. The thoracic vertebrae are also the anchors for the ribcage, further limiting movement potential.

The muscles that support the thoracic spine in backbends are primarily upper back muscles including the lower and mid trapezius, the serratus anterior, and the rhomboids. The diaphragm is also involved in upper back bending and a tight diaphragm can limit upper back mobility.

The thoracic spine has a natural forward bend that is often exaggerated by modern posture. This is why learning how to find a backbend in the thoracic area is valuable even if you aren’t a back bender. And if you are a back bender it is extremely important to develop the muscles that reverse the natural curve of the thoracic spine to avoid over-using the lower back and neck.

The thoracic spine is very good at twisting, so one entry point it to work on twisting motions.

Cervical Spine

The cervical spine is in the neck, providing the bridge between the skull and torso. There are seven cervical vertebrae designed for maximal movement in all

Cervical Spine Illustration

directions: forward, back, tilting, and twisting. This is necessary for us to have the mobility we need but it does mean that back benders (and everyone else) need to take very good care of our necks.

Like the lumbar spine, the cervical spine also has a natural backbend shape. That makes the neck another vulnerable place for back benders. I often teach backbending without including the neck at all until some amount of thoracic bend is present to lessen the pressure on the cervical vertebrae. Strengthening the neck muscles is also essential, especially for those planning to practice chest stands (locust pose) or shoulder stands.

 

It is important to strengthen all of the neck muscles evenly because it is so mobile. Don’t just work the back bending range, work forward, tilt and twist with resistance. That head weighs about 11 lbs. It’s heavy!

 

 

Know Your Bend

Understanding the sections of the spine and how they work will aid you in improving the beauty and ease of your backbend and making sure that your back stays healthy and pain-free.

Pro Tip:
Take some photos of your backbend. Notice where you are bending: which areas of your spine are doing the work? If you notice that you are only bending in a few spots and other areas of the spine are not bending at all, or eve bending forwards, this is a good indication that you should focus your training on evening out that bend before going deeper into your flexibility.

Please watch the video below for you visual learners, and check out our video workouts and workshops for ideas on how to safely approach back bending.

Happy Bendings!

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