If every time you walk out of the gym you feel like you’ve just worked out your low back or you wake up and dread bending over because your back is tight….
We’re Here To Help
Our back can get stiff for a variety of reasons such as stress, doing a lot of heavy exercises, sitting too much, gardening, and a lot of other reasons.
The culprit could be that we’re too extended which means our ribs are flared up and our hips are tipped forward. This change in our posture alters the lengths in your postural muscles.
What Extension Looks Like
The Muscles
What Muscle Could Be Tight?
- Lats (Pulls the ribcage can up causing it to flare)
- Erectors (Compress the mid back)
- Rhomboids (Compress our upper back)
- Upper Traps (Pull our shoulders up toward our necks)
What Muscles Do We Want To Turn On?
- Hamstrings (Attach to the back of hips and help scoop them back under us)
- Side Abs (Obliques) (Help pull the ribcage down and tip the hips back)
- Arm Pit (Serratus Anterior) (Help us push your ribcage back and get our ribs down)
Here’s a post to help you visual that:
https://www.instagram.com/p/CUquV2cpS3t/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
Why Breathing Matters
Breathing influences our nervous systems. Rapid fast breaths are going to shift our nervous systems into a Flight or Fight state (sympathetic). While a slow relaxed exhale is going to shift us into a Rest and Digest (parasympathetic) state.
If we are in a fight or flight state, our body is going to look at new positions and ranges of motions as threats. If we are in a rest and digest state, our body has the opportunity to learn and integrate new positions and ranges of motion.
The way we breathe also influences our joints and muscles. Being able to fully inhale and exhale allows your joints to move more fluidly through their ranges of motion.
Check out this video on how our spine’s curves change as we breathe:
A full exhalation is like the foundation of your house. It recruits our internal obliques and transverse abdominis which help us create stability throughout our body. When you get a fully breath out your spine flattens out, your ribs come down, and our pelvis tips back. This help us align our ribcage and pelvis.
A full inhalation is everything you build on your foundation. It recruits our external obliques which help us increase the stability in our body as we inhale. A full inhale increase the the curves in our spine, tips our pelvis backwards, and helps our ribcage expand without our ribs flaring up.
How To Breathe
The way we coach breathing is pretty simple. You’re going to start by laying on your back in an A frame position or feet up position with your hands on your lower ribs.
For exhale, you want to imagine your fogging up a glass or window. It should be a nice wide open mouth exhale. Try to exhale for 8-10 seconds at a consistent pace. Those obliques and transverse abs will kick in as a result of the exhale. Not because your crunching or squeezing your abs.
Pause for 3-5 seconds at the end of the exhale and sense those side abs.
Gently hold onto those side abs as you inhale through your nose nice and slow.
How Do We Loosen Up That Back?
I’m going to give you some exercises that put you in a position to turn off the muscles on the first list while turning on the ones on that second list on.
*To get the most out of these exercises we want to do them with a gentle effort. Overly tightening up our muscles is only going to create more stiffness.
All the exercise videos below have instructions. It can be really helpful to watch the video and then replay it while you perform the exercise to really nail those cues.
Here Are The Three Exercises We’ll Be Going Through: Give Them A Go!
Hooklying Bridge With Downward Reach
Perform 1-3 sets of 5 breaths
Start by laying flat on the ground with your legs in an A frame position.
Gently exhale, pull your feet back toward your butt without moving them, and tuck your belt buckle toward your belly button (this should flatten out that low back against the floor and let you sense those hamstrings)
Reach your finger tips toward the middle of your calves (you should feel a light stretch in your upper shoulders)
Exhale slowly through your mouth like you’re fogging up a window (think 8-10 seconds). Pause for 3-5 seconds. Hold onto those side abs as you close your mouth and inhale through your nose.
Rockback Breathing
Perform 1-3 sets of 5 breaths
Start in a quadruped position where your knees are under your hips and your elbows are underneath your shoulders.
Rock your butt back toward your heels and relax.
Drop down to your elbows and walk them back until your elbows are slightly in front of your shoulders.
Gently push your elbows into the ground to round that upper back.
Exhale slowly through your mouth like you’re fogging up a window (think 8-10 seconds). Pause for 3-5 seconds. Hold onto those side abs as you close your mouth and inhale through your nose.
Lat Door Stretch
Perform 1-3 sets of 5 breaths
Start by staggering your feet (about 1 foot length between your front foot’s heel and back foot’s toes).
Using an underhand grip, grab a door frame with the opposite arm of the leg you stepped forward with.
Turn your upper body toward the floor by dropping your shoulder on the non reaching side.
Shift your weight onto your back foot and feel the stretch in your upper lat.
Exhale slowly through your mouth like you’re fogging up a window (think 8-10 seconds). Pause for 3-5 seconds. Hold onto those side abs as you close your mouth and inhale through your nose.
Bringing It All Together
Nothing works in isolation so we can’t just look at one part of the body as the source of our issue.
We want to help loosen up that back, so we’re going to need to turn off muscles like the lats, rhomboids, upper traps, and erectors. While we turn on the hamstrings, obliques, and serratus anterior.
When you do exercises like the ones we mentioned above, you’re taking yourself out of extension and moving into a more neutral position. This means your hips and ribcage will be more aligned and you’ll be able to move with less restriction.
If these exercises helped you, feel free to leave a comment below. We would love to hear from you.
