Corkscrew

Let's talk about the corkscrew. The corkscrew is a spinal articulation exercise, and it's of the family of articulation exercises that rings the legs over the body, over the head and shoulders and behind the body. Other exercises in that family include roll over control balance, jackknife. So in order to be able to do the corkscrew, the first skill that we need to be able to have embedded in our bodies is just the skill of getting into the rollover position. So we'll look at that now and then we'll see how the corkscrew differentiates once we get to that shape.

There's some challenges in this movement and in that there's some rotation of the spine. So we wanna be careful that people have healthy spines and a lot of control of their bodies, abdominal control, spinal control and shoulder extensor and stabilizer control. That's not an exercise. You wanna just throw yourself around in. So the exercise begins on the back.

And then just like to go into the roll over, bring the legs up one at a time is always safer. And then we take the legs to about a 60 degree angle. So this is exactly the same setup. Bring the legs to vertical and then from that vertical position, trying to maintain the angle of the legs to the body as the legs go overhead. So what this is where the similarity is finished.

So in the corkscrew, what happens is we have to take the pelvis and the spine into rotation. And what's important there as that happens is the line of the pelvis. So as the legs go, we wanna make sure we're not dropping into one side or the other of the body. So what helps to to visualize is just the line of the ASIS staying horizontally aligned as the legs go over. Another really common mistake is to try to take the legs really too far over, which will be very difficult to control the movement.

So with those two things in mind, once we're overhead, we're going to do a small rotation of the pelvis So the legs are just pointed over my shoulder. I then roll down that side of the spine. A lot of arm work here to stabilize his shoulders. I land on the one side of my pelvis. The legs then travel down back to the starting position over to the other side of the pelvis.

Now remember don't go too far So again, we're aiming just over the shoulder here and then over the body from there and back to the center. The lates can be lower as low as the person is able to manage and then we alternate. So, again, we watch the line at the horizontal alignment of the ASIS, roll down the side of the body. Pass through center, the back is flat. Rotate to the opposite side of the body and then up overhead and back to center. So a lot of information there, not a lot of tempo.

It's a quicker exercise, and it goes like this. Inhale as you rotate. Excel as you come down, pass through center over to the other side and exhale to come up and reach her in here. Roll. Come through. Over to the other side up and come through.

I'll do one more for you. A lot saw arm work, lots of thought processing, trying to keep all the parts of the body well organized. After you've completed say two to three to five repetitions max on each side of the spine, you finish with your legs in the center and then you of course roll down with control back into the beginning of the position then these can then bend and we can come out of the exercise. So definitely a lot of details within that definitely a lot of things to have to manage. So probably a relatively high skill level to make sure safety is considered. Lastly, if someone has any order, nerve disorder, cervical disorder, vertebral disorder in their cervical spine or their neck.

Maybe not the best exercise, so probably one to avoid for those for those populations for that population of humans. But otherwise practice carefully, practice with control, but it's a really fun exercise. So hope that helps.