Hi, I’m Michelle and welcome to pelvic exercises. Today, I’d like to show you some great little back
stretches. Now, these exercises are designed to help you promote really good movement mobility
through your lower back. You shouldn't feel any discomfort with any of the exercises,
and if you do, see some straightaway. We're going to go through a series of exercises lying down
on your back, and then also too lying down on your tummy, and you might like to do them along
with me at home. So let's get started, lying down on your back, now I’ve got a mat here,
a fairly firm surface. You could use a pillow underneath your neck if you need to use one
at home. So we're going to extend ourselves out, lying down flat. So lying down flat on your back,
head on a pillow if you need one, let's just start bringing one knee up towards the chest. Now,
gently holding on hands around the front of the knee, bringing your leg back in towards your body,
and that's a really nice stretch for your lower back, just holding that, remembering
the importance of nice relaxed breathing used to stretch and relax through your neck, through
your jaw, and through your shoulders, and then release slowly, and bring in the other leg up,
just once again hand around, just below the knee, if your knees are sore, you can always
hold on behind the hamstring there, and bring the thigh in towards your body. And again,
nice relaxed breathing, staying relaxed through your neck and shoulders, and just aiming to get
the thigh in towards your body, so that's a really lovely lower back and hip stretch.
Okay, let's take that leg down and bring the other leg up, so that your heels are about hip
width apart, arms out to the side, knees are bent, and we're just going to go into a small
range lumbar rotation. When you do this exercise, always keep your feet flat. It allows your low
back joints to open up, so you're just rolling the knees slowly to one side and back to the center,
and you can take it across to the other side as far as it feels comfortable for your back
and back to center, breathing in and breathing out and rolling across. And if you feel really mobile,
you can take those knees right down towards the ground. The idea is that when you roll to one
side with your knees that the opposite shoulder stays on the ground, so you get that lovely
rotation through your back, just holding it there, nice and relaxed, nice and steady, and coming
back to center. Now, in that center position, let's take some tension out of the lower back,
just gently tilting, this is called pelvic tilt, we're flattening the curve of our back and just
coming back to center. So really nice exercise if you've got a, particularly got to sway back that
arch is excessively just tilting, so I’m just gently flattening the curve of my back into the
ground. And one more time, just flattening down, just gentle pressing into the ground and taking
it back and release. And you could repeat that little series again if you choose to.
We're going to come onto our tummy now. So I'm just going to roll onto my side just slowly,
just coming over, and once I come into this position, I'm going to come into kneeling,
really stretch out my back and slide back. Again, this is a stretch for the lower back, bringing my
bottom right down towards my heels, I can bring my head down, my arms up. If your shoulders are sore,
you can bring your arms around beside your body, place your forehead down, and allow your
shoulders to relax forward. So I'm really, you can see, I’m really opening up in my middle back,
and also too you can see the stretch in my lower back muscles. And just coming up slowly. Bring the
hands up underneath the shoulders. We're going to come right down onto tummy, and we're going
to do a really small back extension, so hand underneath shoulders, chin stays down, can you
breathe in with the exercise, and as you do so, breathe out and just press back a little
bit. So this is not a big back arch, this is just a small back arch. That extension movement is very
important for our backs. Just breathing out, press back, and take it back down, breathe in,
and breathe out. And that's as far as you need to press back, and bring it down. And once more,
after you've extended back, bring in your hands underneath your shoulders, and once again,
sliding back, stretching forward, big breath in, breathe it into your back, big breath in, and out,
and again big breath in, sink your bottom down towards your heels, breathe it in and out. Now,
let's bring the hands up underneath the shoulders, knees up underneath the hips, again we're going
to finish off with a nice cat curl for the middle back. So as we breathe in, we're going to stretch
up tall, breathe in, stretch your middle back up towards the ceiling, lift up and bring it back,
breathe out and come back to flat. Now, you can see, I’m not dipping down too far with my back,
I’m not arching it, I’m just taking it back to that neutral position, breathing in,
stretching up and taking it back to flat, and once more breathing in, stretch up and back to
flat. And one final time, sliding back, coming right back, and you might like to finish your
little routine with your head down, allow your shoulders to relax forward, and just take a moment
in that position, just nice relaxed breathing and out. I’m just going to bring my body up.
So as you can see, that's a nice little routine you can do at home, if you need to take some
tension off your lower back, and if you're aiming to keep that mobility on your back,
we started lying on our back with some knee rolls and knees to chest,
we moved on to our tummy with some little push backs and cat curls. So I hope you
enjoy that little session, I look forward to exercising with you again soon. Bye for now.