[Stephen] It’s mindful movement Monday. Hey guys, it’s Stephen Dunn with CORE Therapy and Pilates. Today I’m going to teach a little class, it’s more of a mobility class on those tight QLs.

Today, I asked a question as we were starting the class, “Does anyone have anything they would like to ask me about?” And someone said, “I have a tight QL.” Liz actually asked about a tight QL.

[Stephen] So we are going to look at the right side versus the left side.  Now with this facebook live will frequently switch the image so as I talk right and left if it doesn’t look right it’s not right. It’s been switched on camera so I’ll just say that right now.

Let me get that out of the way. So with that said we are going to talk a little about the QL, the Quadratus Lumborum.

What I want everybody to do is, I want everyone to do a little assessment of how their QL feels or how much mobility they have between the side bending or the side motion.

I want them to slide their hands on the side of their leg in each direction and you slide your hand down the leg to each direction make note of which side moves easier and which side is tighter. If you noticed that, let’s say, there is tighter movement to your left, do you feel that it is a tightness on the right QL and the “QL” stands for Quadratus Lumborum and it is a muscle that goes from your right pelvis up to your right ribs or your left pelvis up to your left ribs.

Does anyone see some differences with those?

Yes, you hurt on the right side and is it your left side bending that is limited?

[Liz] No.

[Stephen] All right, it is more of the opposite side?

It is not exactly what I expect but it doesn’t matter, it is not always what I expect

[Stephen] What do you got there?

[Mauro]] When I go here, it is kind of tight on this side.

[Stephen] And as you go that side, what about that?

[Mauro] It compresses easily.

[Stephen]  Ok. All right.

Now what we are going to do is we’re going to test it in a non-weight bearing position. So this was a test to see how they feel in weight-bearing we are looking at a mobility test, side bending to see which way is different, which is tighter, doing it at home, take note which side is stiff or tighter.

What I want you to do now is lay on your left side facing this way on the bolster and on the bolster so you can use the arc. Put the bolster right underneath your left QL so your left pelvis and your left rib and you can bring your left arm under your head. So I am saying all these lefts and it may appear the opposite right on this video.

Now in that position, everyone take their right hand bring it over their head and just let that kind of hang in there and then from there everyone take their top leg off of their bottom leg. Have the bottom leg slightly in front of you and that’s going to open up that right QL. So we are now stretching the right QL and I want everyone to kind of just assess this position and we are going to switch sides if you can tell the difference between these two.

Everyone, gather and kind of a snapshot there, now switch sides and go to the opposite. We are now testing again the QL in a side-lying position with a bolster underneath it. Cheryl is using what we call a pilates arc.

Is that right  Cheryl, a pilates arc?

[Cheryl] Yes.

[Stephen] Now we are testing how the two sides feel in comparison to each other. So everyone kind of take a snapshot here and give me the same information and now with that said what I want everyone to know do is come on up to standing. We went from a standing side bending position to laying on the side with a bolster.

If you don’t have a bolster you can use a couple of pillows at home. Now did everyone feel a difference?

[Liz] I feel tight on both sides.

[Stephen] You feel tight on both sides?

[Rebekah] One side.

[Stephen] Was it the same weight-bearing vs non weight-bearing?

[Rebecca] It was the opposite.

[Stephen] It was the opposite, right?

[Mauro] Tight on the right.

[Stephen] Tight on the right for both of them.

[Cheryl] Both sides.

[Stephen] So you are just tight, you are the opposite, you are tight on the right on both sides. So everyone was very different. What I want Cheryl and Liz to do is go back to that position and go into two minutes breathing into that side bending in each one. The two of you, you are going to go onto your tighter side, so you are tighter on the right side, so I want you to put your left side up you are going to do the opposite up. (Tight side down on the bolster and stretch the loose side)

You put your tighter side down not up. What I am having them now do is we are putting, Cheryl and Liz were tight on both sides so they’re just going to do a QL stretch in this position. We are going into some nice breathing here and think of your breath going into my hand and just focus on that in this position.

But for Rebekah and Mauro they were tight in a specific position and I actually have them go into their tight side down which is not stretching at all which is the exact opposite and we are going to see by doing the exact opposite if they feel a little looser and just a moment which is applying what we call TMR. It is something that we talked about every once in a while when I teach these classes and with this little TMR we can sometimes really have some interesting results with things… with that said everyone now. Cheryl and Liz, you are going to switch sides so you can get into a balancing act of your two sides.

Mauro and Rebekah what I want you to now do is go back to standing and retest your tight side which you did not stretch your tight side you stretched your good side. Now we are going to retest to see if you can sense the difference either on your tight side. Does that feel different?

[Rebekah] Yes, they feel better.

[Stephen] They both feel better so they’re doing both sides and I only had you all each do one side but it is the exact opposite of what most people would do. If I would have given you a choice I would have you put your tight side up. I mean both of you. Which is what most people would have done.

So again, I kind of switched a little bit and brought this TMR which stands for Total Motion Release. You can Google, Youtube there are lots of information about it .The guy who created it is named Tom. He is awesome.

But it is one of those things where we go into the good side instead of the bad side and where we actually see improvements. We look at that, whether it’s stretching, we look at that, whether it is mobility and strength and we can do another session on that on another day.

We now just basically did a QL assessment and side bending in standing and then we did a QL assessment in laying down on your side.

With that said we now found a couple of different ways to assess and a couple of different ways to stretch out a tight QL, a tight Quadratus Lumborum.

That’s what I got for you today guys. If you have any questions put them below and I will see you all next week with some Mindful Movement Monday again.

[vertical_spacing height=”10″]

[button_1 text=”Apply%20for%20a%20FREE%20Physical%20Therapy%20Assessment%20with%20one%20of%20our%20Pilates%20Physical%20Therapists%26nbsp%3B%C2%BB” text_size=”26″ text_color=”#ffffff” text_font=”Open Sans;google” text_letter_spacing=”0″ subtext_panel=”N” text_shadow_panel=”Y” text_shadow_vertical=”1″ text_shadow_horizontal=”1″ text_shadow_color=”#333333″ text_shadow_blur=”2″ styling_width=”20″ styling_height=”15″ styling_border_color=”#000000″ styling_border_size=”0″ styling_border_radius=”6″ styling_border_opacity=”100″ styling_gradient_start_color=”#9ecb23″ drop_shadow_panel=”N” inset_shadow_panel=”N” align=”left” href=”/free-discovery-session/”/]

[vertical_spacing height=”20″]

Call 512.215.4227 to learn more about CORE Therapy and Pilates in Austin, Texas.

We help people in Austin stay active, fit and moving away from pain pills and surgery. To a healthy lifestyle.

[blog-social]

The post Mindful Movement Monday Side Stretches for your QL with Stephen Dunn. Quadratus Lumborum appeared first on CORE Therapy & Pilates.

[Stephen} Hey guys! What’s up? It’s Stephen Dunn with CORE Therapy and Pilates and welcome to our Mindful Movement Monday class. Today we have Megan teaching and what you’ll need for class is a chair to sit in and a mat. Some will be sitting and some will be lying on the mat.

[Megan} Today we are going to talk about the pelvic floor and the pelvic wall and how to find that, how to strengthen and certain exercises where we can feel like we’re finding that pelvic floor. I have to start with a pelvis right here and I just wanted to show you all where that pelvic wall is actually at and what we want to feel like we’re lifting.

We have this little purple slinky here and I’m just going to show you that we’re putting that purple slinky right about in the center of the pelvis right there. I’m giving you this visualization because what I want you guys to feel is that we’re pressing down into the sitz bones and we are actually going to lift that pelvic wall like the slinky we are lifting up.

We don’t want to squish that slinky in together. We want to find that it doesn’t get stuck and it is just lifting directly up.

Everyone is on their chair and I think the chair is the easiest way to feel this and find this. We are going to get nice and tall on our chair.  I want to feel that our feet are firmly planted into the ground and that our sitz bones are pressing into the chair that we are seated on.

We are just going to start by doing a couple of deep belly breaths. Everyone I just want you to take a deep breath into the belly and on the exhale I want hot air coming out of the back of the throat like you’re fogging a mirror or that you’re making the verbal “ha” sound. Deep breath into the belly and exhale and let’s do one more just to kind of finalize where that breath is at…  take a deep breath in and exhale from the diaphragm.

So now you guys just keep breathing and I’m going to talk through and I want you guys to feel that  pelvic wall activation. What we’re going to do is we’re going to take an inhale; on our exhale we are going to push all the air out of from our diaphragm as we feel like we are pulling that slinky up towards the middle of the ribs.

We take an inhale into the belly and on our exhale all the air is coming out of our diaphragm to create space to find that lift of the pelvic floor. Let’s do a couple more guys, taking a deep breath in and exhale finding the lift. I don’t want you guys to feel like we are trying to jam those sitz bones together but that we are finding that deep deep internal lift. Again it’s just kind of come right through the center of the sitz bones that we want to feel those drawing up and end.

Does everyone feel that we have a little bit of a connection and some awareness to it?

Now I’m going to have everybody go ahead and stand-up. We are just going to take our chairs, I’m not going to move them off the mat, off to the side. I wanted to practice finding this pelvic floor activation and a couple of different plans.

First we are going to start with standing and just basic squats.  Everyone I want you to take an inhale and we are going to press through our heels and squat down. And on that exhale, I want you to press into those heels and find that lift coming through the center.

We inhale as we squat down and then finding that deep internal lift as we extend the legs and come back to straight.  Let’s do two more guys: so inhale, we are going to squat down, find that lift. You can also feel that you are lifting your bladder or that you’re pulling a marble from your root all the way up to the diaphragm.

And really find that deep lift as we extend the legs. What we are going to do is we are going to drop down to the floor and I want you again to find that connections with the sitz bones into the ground. Also you want to feel that you can really support yourself from your feet .

What we’re going to do is we are going to take an inhale at the top and then as we exhale we’re going to start by lifting that pelvic wall and rolling down. I don’t want you to get compressed in those ribs and just sag but we’re keeping our ribs away from the pelvis as we roll back. When you get to the bottom, I want you to go ahead and take on inhale and on the exhale we’re going to find that deep internal lift again, pressing into the hills as we roll up.

Again you’re keeping that space that we’ve just created as we’ve rolled up. We are going to take an inhale at the top. Let’s do this again, exhale we’re going to press our sitz bones into the ground, still feeling that connection with the feet, finding that lift and the ribs are away from the pelvis. When we get to the bottom, go ahead and take a breath of air and then exhale as we find that deep internal lift and we’re going to roll out by finding that connection into the back body.

Now we’re going to take this and we’re going to find it in a quadruped position. I want everybody to get into their hands and knees. Let’s just find it right here in this position before we start doing the hand movements.

We are going to take an inhale and on that exhale I want you to find that deep lift and again it’s going to feel like that belly button is kind of drawing closer to the spine. I don’t want you to feel that you’re arching your back or curling your back but rather you are finding that internal lift. And you are kind of holding your bladder up in towards the body and then we exhale and release.

On this next one, we are going to take an inhale, on our exhale we’re going to lift off our left hand and our right foot. So exhale finding that the pelvic floor and we’re extending finding through oppositions, stabilization into the pelvic floor into the core and then go ahead and drop those arms and legs back down and find the other side. Take an inhale to begin and then exhale as we float that right hand and that left foot back. Finding that stabilization coming from the core and then go ahead and come back in.

Let’s do one more time on each side. So take an inhale, on that exhale we’re finding, lifting as the legs are extending and coming back to center and last one.  And holding for a second and then slowly bringing our legs and feet to touch the mat.

Just one more final little thing, we’re going to have a seat. Let’s sit back on our chairs for this one. So this one we’re just going to find that pelvic wall and we’re going to hold for about 5 seconds and you can do this a couple of times a week and it should help you with kind of keeping some of that pelvic floor strength.

Again ladies and gentlemen, we are going to find those sitz bones so you can wrap around, side to side and can take those hands and spread your cheeks feeling that we’re really pressing down into them. We’re going to take an inhale, on the exhale we push down into the sitz bones as we lift that pelvic floor. When you feel that pelvic wall is engaged up and around the diaphragm, hold for around five seconds. Keep trying to breathe and maintain that contact.

And then go ahead and relax and release. Let’s try to find that again, deep breath in and exhale as we push our sitz bones down, find that internal lift and hold and release. And last one, taking a deep breath in, exhale getting those ribs down to create space to find that internal lift and relax.

Thank you, everyone, for participating.

Thanks and we hope you have a great day.

[vertical_spacing height=”10″]

[button_1 text=”Apply%20for%20a%20FREE%20Pilates%20Taster%20Session%20with%20one%20of%20our%20Certified%20Instructors%26nbsp%3B%C2%BB” text_size=”26″ text_color=”#ffffff” text_font=”Open Sans;google” text_letter_spacing=”0″ subtext_panel=”N” text_shadow_panel=”Y” text_shadow_vertical=”1″ text_shadow_horizontal=”1″ text_shadow_color=”#333333″ text_shadow_blur=”2″ styling_width=”20″ styling_height=”15″ styling_border_color=”#000000″ styling_border_size=”0″ styling_border_radius=”6″ styling_border_opacity=”100″ styling_gradient_start_color=”#9ecb23″ drop_shadow_panel=”N” inset_shadow_panel=”N” align=”left” href=”/pilates-free-taster/”/]

[vertical_spacing height=”20″]

Call 512 215 4227 to learn more about CORE Therapy and Pilates in Austin, Texas.

We help people in Austin stay active, fit and moving away from pain pills and surgery. To a healthy lifestyle.

[blog-social]

The post Pelvic Floor Exercise with Megan. Mindful Movement Monday appeared first on CORE Therapy & Pilates.

Hey guys, what’s up? It’s Stephen Dunn with CORE Therapy and Pilates. Today for Mindful Movement Monday, we have Megan teaching a class. What you need is a foam roller, so get your foam roller out.

Tonight, we’re just going to work on the upper body, some drastic lengthening and rotation. I’m already going to go ahead and get down on our mats. We’re going to take that foam roller, we’re going to lay it across the back, and it’s going to go right about mid back.

So if you’re a woman, you’re probably going to go right along that bra line. We’re going to take our hands and we’re going to interlace our fingers and rest them up underneath supporting the neck. Take a moment and lift with your neck supported.

Let the upper body lengthen over the top of that foam roller, taking some nice deep breaths here. On your next exhale, we’re going to push the center of the shoulder blades down into that foam roller and curl up to look at our belly button.

Then as we inhale, we’re going to keep that neck supported and lengthen out over the top of that foam roller again. We’re going to do this about five times, gently exhaling.

Pressing that mid back into that foam roller as we curl up looking at the belly button again, keeping the neck supported and trying to keep the neck away from doing all of this work. You’re engaging into those lats to help bring you up. We’ll do about one more through the center.

We’re going to go ahead and lengthen over the top of that foam roller again. On the next one we are going to curl up and we’re going to look down at our left hip pocket.

So we’re going to curl up almost like you’re going to go take a look right at the side of your belly. Then we’re going to inhale, lengthen out, centered over the foam roller.

Now exhale, we’re going to curl up looking at the opposite side, trying to gently start working that spine and some different plans. We’ll do about one more on each side.

After we get finished with that, we’re going to take that foam roll and we’re going to get rid of it. So after you come up off of the foam roller, you can let it rest to the side. Then we are going to the next position.

We’re going to get into child’s pose. You can have those feet together, knees apart. We’re going to lay down and stretch open, trying to reach our fingertips down towards the end of the mat.

Once you find a nice comfortable position here, we’re going to take an inhale into the ribs. As we exhale, we’re going to try to walk those fingertips out towards the end of the mat.

A little bit more on your next inhale, nice big breath into the ribs and to the low back. Again exhaling, walking those fingers upset a little bit further on the next inhale.

Let’s take this fingertips and start walking them over to the right hand side of the mat. Now we’re getting really long on that left side body. When you get here, I want you to take a nice deep breath into that left, rip. Exhale, try to walk those fingers, hips a little bit deeper.

Taking one more inhale and exhale in this place. Again, trying to lengthen up through that body. Then we’re going to start walking the fingers, hips, reaching for the end of the mat as we go through the center.

Then we’re going to walk over to the left side of the mat, taking a nice deep breath into that right side. Rip and exhale and walking those fingers heads just slightly deeper. Good, one more inhale and exhale here.

On that exhale, find a release through the rib cage. Find the release through the low back. Then we’re going to start walking ourselves back towards the center. Again, lengthening out during this whole entire process.

When you get back to the center, nice deep breath here, inhale. Exhale. Let’s go one more fingertip out. Then we’re going to slowly roll up out of this position.

When we get up to see that we want to have that spine set nice and tall. We’re going to go on to the hands and knees now. So we’re going to be up onto quadruped head. The next thing we’re going to do is we’re going to go into thread and kneel.

Let’s start by taking that right hand. We’re going to reach underneath the left arm and you can do less if you can make it down to the right shoulder. We’re just going to rest there, finding a little bit of tape rotation, then go as far as you’re comfortable.

As you’ll see, we’ve got people in all different kinds of areas right here. Once we get there, nice and gentle, deep breaths to help release and open up through that body. One more in here, and on the next exhale, we’re going to come back to center.

Now we’re going to pick that left hand. We’re going to thread that left hand underneath, trying to reach away from the body as we go into that rotation. Using that breath, letting the exhales decompress the spine.

We’ll do one more in half, and on the exhale, we will go ahead and come up out of that. Then the next position. We’re going to do one more exercise. We are going to be down on the ground, legs extended out in front of us.

The next exercise we’re going to do applies exercise called saw. Let’s reach both hands up initially. We’re going to take an inhale. On the exhale, we’re going to take that left hand and bring it to the opposite side of the right leg. There we go.

Slight reach forward, as far as you’re comfortable, trying to get that rotation through the rib cage, keeping the pelvis stable in front of us. On your exhale, we’re going to come up through the center and lowering down on the opposite side.

Go ahead and drop those hands to either side. Take an inhale and we are done for the day. Thank you guys so much for watching. We hope you have a great week.

Call 512.215.4227 to learn more!

Ready to start your Pilates journey?

[vertical_spacing height=”10″]

[button_1 text=”Apply%20for%20a%20FREE%20Pilates%20Taster%20Session%20Here%26nbsp%3B%C2%BB” text_size=”26″ text_color=”#ffffff” text_font=”Open Sans;google” text_letter_spacing=”0″ subtext_panel=”N” text_shadow_panel=”Y” text_shadow_vertical=”1″ text_shadow_horizontal=”1″ text_shadow_color=”#333333″ text_shadow_blur=”2″ styling_width=”20″ styling_height=”15″ styling_border_color=”#000000″ styling_border_size=”0″ styling_border_radius=”6″ styling_border_opacity=”100″ styling_gradient_start_color=”#9ecb23″ drop_shadow_panel=”N” inset_shadow_panel=”N” align=”left” href=”/pilates-free-taster/”/]

[vertical_spacing height=”20″]

[blog-social]

The post Mindful Movement Monday with Megan. Pilates with a Foam Roller appeared first on CORE Therapy & Pilates.