Special #1231

Spine Corrector Introduction

10 min - Special
85 likes

Description

This week Amy Havens shows us her three fundamental uses for the Spine Corrector, a Pilates apparatus that can help to get the kinks out of your back and improve your overall posture. Amy shows two different exercises that will help improve the mobility of your entire spine. She ends the class by showing you some movements that will help improve your posture by opening your chest, shoulders, and neck. These exercises are great to do after you have been sitting for a long period of time, like after a plane or car journey or a day in the office.
What You'll Need: Spine Corrector

About This Video

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Sep 25, 2013
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Transcript

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All right. Hi everybody. This is Amy again and welcome to today's podcast. So what I have with me here, what I'm sitting on is the spine corrector. There are a lot of names for this. I call it, I known as the spine corrector. It's also known sometimes as the half barrel and it's got many uses.

Um, gosh, where should I start? What I'm going to start with and kind of kind of break down maybe three fundamental uses in my opinion. Um, mobilization and specifically right now this first section or the thought is mobilizing your lower back. So you're sitting at work all day. You may not have this specific apparatus, there are home versions of this that are foam, a little bit easier to work with than this. This is for studios, but you can have one at home. But really the intention here, I'm going to have a sit at the top and uh, yeah, it sit at the front on this edge here and it's one way to really help kind of get some mobility and some stretching and the muscles and the joints of the lower back. But when we start moving the low back, the whole entire spine gets a little benefit from it. So you might even begin to feel some relief up in your neck. So all I'm going to do is just have us hold onto the side here are the corners and establish a sitting tall position.

And I really think about it mainly for my lower back, but all the way through my head and I'm going to start to round my tail or my pelvis, which is here and rounding it meaning kind of roll off of the edge and roll back just a little bit. So the image of a letter C and in Palladio z say the c curve a lot or the c shape. So I'm going to stop for a moment and hopefully you can see a bit of a c. They'll get the back of my body from the top of my head down to my tail. And I hope I look a little bit like a letter c for that. I'm feeling some work in my abdomen, but I am beginning to feel an opening or a stretch in my lower spine.

And my low back muscles and then to come up, right, I am going to use my back muscles now to sit up tall. So on the way back there's a sense of almost letting go of the use of the back and using more of the front here to open up and lengthen the back muscles in the spine. Now they're ready to do a little work to help me come back up and to sit taller. So again, a few uses of the corrector. We do a lot of postural correction on here.

So the name might indicate that spine corrector. So correcting some alignments of the spine or tightnesses or if you've certain areas that your back is not as mobile. This is a great piece of equipment to to tap into that. So again, here I'm going to do maybe three more and I might even choose to do different arm pattern. Just hold my arms out and as I exhale feeling the work now and my stomach muscles hold this position now without holding onto the apparatus itself, my body has hold me in the sea shape. No longer do I have the use of my arms and now I've got to use those muscles along my spine to sit me up and using the abdominal muscles to move my spine backward and using my back muscles to move my spine forward.

And one more time, some mobilize. The lower back feels very nice. So if you've been sitting all day and you want to stretch out your back, you can do something very simple like this. But along with sitting all day, your whole back might feel tight, not just this segment. So what if you do a little bit of a larger movement and roll yourself all the way back? Now I incorporate this apparatus with mat exercises.

So some things that you might see in a traditional mat class, like the pumping 100 or some of your leg changes or some oh bleak work. I use this for many of those and it helps keep the neck less involved so you can concentrate your effort here for more of an efficient workout and not having the neck strain. But I'm going to go on and work on the mobility again. So I'm going to work on mobilizing more of the middle of my sign. And the way I want to do that is to slide myself a little forward and I am going to put my hands behind my head so that I can talk to you and to support my head. And so it's through here. This is our thoracic spine, basically where the rib cages, and I'm just gonna move, I'm thinking like I'm the links on a bicycle chain moving one link at a time. And, or if I feel like I'm a little stiff in one section, this is a great way to learn about that and to kind of massage through those tighter sections. You may not have tight sections, this might just feel good because it feels good. But here Yo, and again, as I'm going backward, my back muscles now are really activating when I come forward in this exercise, I'm feeling more of my stomach muscles.

So the use of this apparatus is amazing. It's a really, really healthy for mobilizing and, uh, conditioning the natural functions of our spine. So I'm gonna do one more through my thoracic spine. And depending on how mobile you are, you may have been able to get your the back of your head all the way down to the corrector, something like that. No need to force that. That'll come as the longer and more flexible and strong your spine is. However, I am going to use this scooting forward a little bit again to really address something that's near to my heart and that has good posture and good posture across your chest, your shoulders and your neck. So again, I'm going back to the work reference if you'd, if you'd been at work all day or on computer, so much texting, all of that stuff where we're forward, it can congest the upper body position and the shoulders and neck. So here's a perfect apparatus. You get supported, you're lying on it is there for you.

Just let the weight of your shoulders fall back. This is plenty. If this bothers your neck, you'd put a little extra pillow underneath your head, behind your head to the barrel. But for now, I'm going to show you here and just breathing would be exercise, but adding a little bit of movement, I'm going to do arms up and gently opening up the arms to stretch the larger muscles across the chest and the biceps. And this is so healthy for all of us that are at the desk all day. Three times three to five would be plenty. I'm gonna do three and show another one and no specific, you know, hand position. Just open up your body.

Now do a imaginary jumping Jack, so meaning your arms. I'm going to sweep them up and try to touch my thumbs together. And then maybe down by my legs. Again, allowing the barrel to support the weight of your upper body. Your muscles are activated, but you're not having to really strain them to just simply move the arms. You'll, you'll benefit from this, you'll feel the stretch in your chest.

So why is this correcting my posture? Well, it's helping keep my shoulders back and I cannot, you know, round them forward and jump my head forward. And I couldn't probably text a message if I try, unless I'm up here. Maybe that's the way we should start doing it, but the idea is to open up and correct. Right now, if I wanted to get a little more specific with the muscles in my shoulders, let's pretend my arms are just here, I could literally press the back of my shoulders against the barrel and feel the muscles in my shoulders working to hold my shoulders wide. I could use that as I stretch my arms out. So now it's more active of a contraction of stretch or again, I can just go back to more of a little bit slightly passive of just moving.

Okay. You could also do our movements. S overhead alternating arms. A great way to stretch even this is helping you correct my posture. So it sending my spine up higher and taller and my collarbone and my shoulders wide so that ideally when I take myself up, I have a restored sense of being vertical and lifted and I probably wouldn't want to go back to shrugging and shouting my shoulders down. So that those are a couple of examples.

One more that is wonderful and it's a great way to stretch is to open up the side of the body. And this can be postural correction as well. So I'm going to fold one knee over the front, have a straight leg out to the side. And as I stretch myself over, I am going to support my head and just take another long stretch over and move the arm. Feel free to do different arm movements, but this is what I want to show you something basic. And every time the arm goes overhead, you'll feel a deeper longer stretch along your hip, the side of the rib cage, maybe even up through these fingers. Okay. And then one more is going to be a circle and it's a little circle up and over. So see again, I'm trying to ask my shoulders to come back.

I'm supporting my head with my hand, not just letting my head hang, but every time I open up my chest I'm trying to send those shoulders back and correct that faulty head forward posture. That may be kind of setting in on you. And I'll do just one more for this example right now. So the spine corrector has many uses and again I've just briefly over viewed a few. I'm going to be safe to say, and it is safe to say that mobility of the spine is it's number one and learning how to move your spine in all ranges that it can do, which would be rounding, extending, turning your spine and bending your spine from side to side. All really promoting the nice a resilience that is the spine and the design of the spine.

So if you feel like you're stiffening and getting tight or your postures may be getting a little bit fussy upstairs in your neck, maybe invest in a spine corrector. Come to the website and check us out and let us know what to think. Thanks and tune in next time.

Comments

1 person likes this.
Great as always - thank you Amy :)
Thanks Amy,, nice, clear, great basic movements..
less is more...
have a great day!
Thank you Molly....yes this short little intro is just that, an intro! Glad you liked it!
Very functional and I like the analogy to being at a computer all day affecting the spine!
Hi Suzanne.....thank you! Spine Corrector work is some of my favorite...glad you enjoyed it too!
Thank you, Amy for this! Your explanation always clear, concise and lovely. Besides that, I needed this today!! J.
Thank you Amy i really enjoy the way you teach! Clear instructions and great detail! Beautifully presented thanks!
Hello Amy! I have had a question from a client and I really don't know the answer, can you please let me know your thoughts on this: is the spine corrector tailored on all sizes and heights of various clients? thank you!
Loved this short session. What is your opinion on the Stamina pilates spine corrector?
Hi Jodie.....regarding the Stamina Pilates Spine Corrector---I don't have an opinion as I've not done any work on one. I typically use Balanced Body, but have a Gratz Corrector and absolutely LOVE that one!
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