Do you want to improve your core strength? Be able to stabilize your back and pelvis better for activity? Check out our core strengthening exercises. This one focuses on stability of your spine in neutral while sliding your heel backwards.

Hi this is Dana Ranahan from Body Works Sports Physiotherapy. Today I want to show you a core strengthening exercise you can work on at home.

Grab a mat and come down on hands and knees position.

One of the things we want to work on here is learning to find a neutral spine position. We have a video for this already on our website.

Basically it’s trying to bring your knees underneath your hips, working on engaging your abdominal muscles to hold your spine neutral. So you’re not letting your back sway or back round. Then come into position where both hands are under your shoulders and neck is in a nice neutral position.

From here we want to work on moving so that we can maintain our spine in neutral. So getting your core muscles to hold your spine neutral while we move our arm and leg.

So first off, we’re going to work on breathing.

Breathing in, as I breathe out I’m going to engage my abdominal muscles
Now I want to work to slide one leg behind me without allowing my pelvis and spine to move.
So effectively, breathing in, breathing out, engaging my core, sliding one leg back and trying to maintain my spine neutral as I do it.
And then breathe in, come back and alternate sides.
Breathing out, maintain, try to hold your pelvis neutral and slide back.
Breathing in, coming back to neutral.

This is a nice exercise to work on controlling your spine to teach your muscles to stabilize for you.

So give it a try at home and work to fatigue. So maybe you’ll end up doing about 8 or 10 in a row before you start to get tired. Give it a try and give us a call at 604-983-6616 if you have any other questions.