Hi, I'm Michelle, and today we're going to use the foam roller. I'm gonna show you some
nice little foam roller techniques for stretching out the joints and the muscles in your back. Now,
just before we get started now a little routine, going to use a large foam roller.
If your back gets really stiff and sore using the large roller, you might like
to start off with a small roller and you can really easily make these with a pool needle,
and just use a bread knife and cut it in half, you can get those from for a couple of dollars.
So that's a nice cheap way or inexpensive way of actually starting with a roller. And if that's
too hard on your back, you can also do some of these exercises with a rolled up towel. So
you can catch my rolled up towel, exercise video in the information above if you want
to check out that link. But that's another nice way of using of doing these exercises,
if the foam roller actually makes you back. So let's get started, we're going to start
lying down, let's go through the muscles first of all, and then we'll do some joint releases.
Alright, So position your foam roller behind your back and you're gonna start with the foam roller
at about middle back level, I've got my feet out in that position there, my feet are flat. And the
important thing with these exercises is that your neck is supported and your head well supported.
So bring your hands back behind your head and bring your head back into that neutral position.
So you don't want your head flexed forward. And you don't want your head extended too far
back because both those positions constrain your neck and make your neck. So keep the elbows wide,
and lift up your bottom and that this is the way we're going to start with our back
releases. So we were looking at the muscles between our shoulder blades and our spine,
we're just going to roll down slowly and roll back through so I'm not extending into the lower back,
I'm keeping it into the upper middle back. So coming down and you can breathe in and roll down,
breathe out and taking it back rolling right back through getting that lovely
effect through the middle back. Breathing in and breathe out.
Now if you'd like to go a little bit deeper into the muscles between your shoulder blades and your
spine, then bring your elbows close together and you can work a little bit deeper into that area.
Again, remembering to keep your head in that neutral position, keeping it well supported.
Breathing in and breathe out with the roll, and let's do another one breathing in and breathing
out, and just take a moment lowering your bottom down. So then you can give your neck a break,
move your head right back might like to come back down into neutral or rest your head on
your hands. And just take a moment there just to rest your neck keep your neck supported.
That's the big issue with doing some of these exercises, we're going to now start
to work on some of our joints as well and a little bit deeper into those back muscles.
And this time, we're going to start working the muscles in that shoulder blade area
closer to the spine. So coming back down and bring the elbows back wide I'm going
to start by tilting your right elbow down to your right hip, lifting your bottom up,
and they can roll back and through. You can see I'm looking at the ceiling. That's I'm trying
to just keep my head in that neutral position to demonstrate for you. But that way you can
really work into that right shoulder blade and the spine. I mean, you can increase the
depth of that by pointing your elbow up to the ceiling breathing in and breathe out. So you
can get a really nice deep roll right into those muscles that attach between the shoulder blade and
the spine. So I'm getting a really deep, lovely message through my back there and taking it back
and now we're going to go into our joint stretches. So we've mobilized the muscles,
let's mobilize the joint so this is part of a dressing sequence in the back.
For this time with feet up, can you bring the hands up, lift the bottom up again and we're going
to work at various levels of the elbows are going to come close together. Breathing in
and breathe out, extend your back, back without tilting your neck back too far. So we're really
working through the spine here and come back up. So breathing in. Breathe out as you chill
back and come back up. We're going to move the roller up level. Breathing in and breathing out,
extend right back and we can come up another level breathing in and out so what I'm doing
is I'm progressively rolling the roll up, up my spine and I'm working at each level. Each little
individual joint there and then I've got one more time between the shoulder blades and you can work
on any particular level there. If you feel a lot of stiffness in one level, you can stay working
on that level if you like, and lowering my bottom down slowly. So there you have it,
some ways of actually massaging deeply into the muscles between the shoulder blade in the spine,
and then also to mobilizing the joints in the upper back. I hope you've enjoyed those exercises
today and I hope they help you use your roller at home. I'll see you next time. Thanks for watching.