Hello, I’m Taylor McCabe Physiotherapist here at Body Works Sports Physiotherapy in North Vancouver. This is the 5th video in a series of exercises to get your body ready for ski season. So far it’s been all about the legs; we’ve done the wall sit, some hip abductor work, and then the ball squat, so this week I want to focus on the obliques – those muscles on the sides of your trunk. They’re really important for lateral stability, keeping your balance and especially with weight shifting and carving while skiing. I’m actually going to show you three exercises today, ranging from easy to hard options for training these muscles.
Exercise #1: Tail Wagging
So we’ll start with the first one which is tail wagging; so for this you want to be down on your hands and knees, line yourself up so your wrists are under your shoulders, your knees are under your hips and try to maintain the natural curve of your body, keeping your hips level think about lengthening through one side of your body to send your hips to the other side and back the other way. Try to keep your hips moving on the same plane to keep the level parallel with the ground.
Exercise #2: Side Crunches
The next option is doing side crunches moving your upper body so you’re going to want to anchor your feet against the wall, being in a scissor position is a good way to stay nice and stable, line yourself up kind of perpendicular to the wall, you’re lowering, lengthening through the side of the trunk over the ball and then curling back up.
Exercise #3: Floor Side Crunches
The last exercise I want to show you is another side crunch but this time moving the legs. You’re going to lie down on your back. You want to be able to slide your feet so if you’re on carpet you need something like a plastic bag, if you’ve got hardwood, something like a towel again keeping the natural curves of your spine, think about pressing your tail bone down into the floor throughout the exercise and lengthen through the trunk send your legs over to one side and then back into the other side.
So there are three quick options for training your obliques – tail wagging, side crunches over the ball, side crunches using your legs. For each of these exercises you want to feel the work happening in the sides of your trunk between your ribs and your hips.
Hope you noticed, I was breathing, synchronising my breath. That’s the best way to make sure you don’t hold your breath and develop tension while you’re doing exercises. This week I’m going to leave the reps, the sets, and the rest time up to you. You should be getting a good idea of when your body’s fatiguing, deciding on a good number of repetitions to challenge yourself.
Ok, so go get to work with those, keep up the good work. Check out the rest of our ski exercise videos here.