Alleviate back pain and strengthen it at the same time

This five and a half minute movie is to help you isolate your Psoas and over-ride the instinct to use your Abdominals and Quadratus Lumborum to hold your posture.

I need to point out that Brian had his arms high to be out of the movie...which pinched his Scapula and splayed his ribs. A better way to do this exercise is with your ribs relaxed on the floor.

With that said:

It is very difficult to have a neutral pelvis. The best way to find out if your pelvis is neutral is to mark on the front of your hip (the Anterior Superior Illiac Spine) and the back of your hip (the Posterior Superior Illiac Spine). Then use a straight stick/ruler/level to show if your two Illiac spines are level with each other OR spilling one way or another.

After personal dance accidents and uneducated instructors I recovered from an anterior pelvic tilt only to fall into a posterior pelvic tilt. These exercises, done for two years, have created an equilibrium. I now enjoy a neutral pelvis and less Lumbar pain.


Begin: (Always check with your doctor to make sure your personal body ailments can withstand new exercises. If you're poor? Avoid sharp or needle-like pain. No pain? You gain.)

Start by laying on the ground with your arms to your sides. Raise your knees (like those old fashioned sit-ups) with your feet hip width apart. Check to make sure your back is spread on the floor and your lower ribs are pressing into the floor as well (not raising to the sky).

Now rock your hips back and forth. Anterior, Neutral, Posterior, Neutral, Anterior, etc. Try to keeps your ribs down while doing this.

If this causes pain? STOP! Go to a Chiropractor or Sports Therapist. They have the technology to take X-rays and see what your personal ailment includes. (Sorry to all those doctors...I never had much help from you in this regard.)

From neutral press your lower back into the ground (posterior pelvic tilt). Lengthen the angle from your hip to your thigh. slowly roll up to a plank position. Do this one vertebrae at a time. You can use the image of your hips trying to reach the top and your ribs being too comfortable with the floor to comply easily.

When your reach the plank or diagonal hold it there for a few seconds. Make sure that your back is not curved to the sky. If it is you went too far. Your body should be flat like a board.

As you roll down try to leave your hips in the air as long as possible. Your ribs will start and try to reach the floor first.



Stretching? Watch the movie for some lower lumbar stretches. Another, not included, is to sit and stretch your body directly to the side. Do it in both directions.


Be gentle. Be careful. Repetitions. Patience.

Correct procedure(s) for stretching

First it is important to understand that to correctly stretch you need to be warm. There are a few ways to resolve this:

WARNING!
Flexibility is not a contest! If you are normally able to touch your toes, yet are sore from over-exertion, you may not be able to touch your toes for a few days hence.

Stretching should not cause sharp pain! Your Golgi tendon sensors are put in place to protect your muscles. If you stretch your muscle too quickly or too far these sensors scream "STOP!" and refuse to relax their grip.

Ligaments are not elastic and will not return to their original size! If you do stretches that compromise your ligaments you must take into consideration that they will remain that way for the duration of your life. Grande plie's and hyper-extended knees are commonly producing pain in the now as well as the future lives of dancers.

Word to the wise? Ronald Nuttall, dance trainer at BYU Provo, stated that the quickest way to flexibility is frequent gentle stretching. Dr. Zanendrea (Dr. Z), flexibilty instructor and former US Olympian, confirmed this fact.

Early Morning stretching:
To warm up your muscles and help your body come into consciousness gently stretch your muscles for, at most, ten seconds at a time. Repeat five or six times on each stretch. If you repeatedly do this you will not injure yourself.

After shower, or other warm up that makes you sweat:
stretch your muscles gently. After 20-30 seconds you should feel a gentle release in your muscles. At this point you may go deeper into the stretch for 10 more seconds. (This takes longer than it seems. If you don't know how long 20-30 seconds are keep one eye on a clock to keep relative track. Your body should be the top-priority on indication.)

To use as a cool down:
Stretching can be a cool down (but is not the only option). I have noticed that as I repeat the above instruction on stretching I tend to need to cycle through the stretches that affect my warmest muscles. Depending on the intensity of the exercise I may only need to stretch each muscle group once (and in rare instances twice).

This is not the end all on stretching. It is simply a start for you in your own flexibility quest. Dr. Z attests that flexibility, nutrition, hydration, and health can prevent most of the ailments of age. I hope you discover the same.

Breath

I think that breath is a fundamental of movement that is often looked over in dance. I can not count how many times I have heard someone comment on how they forget to breathe while dancing. Breath is the fundamental process of life and movement. It might be surprising how much this one simple thing can affect one's dancing.

To get the point, breathing not only supplies oxygen, which is an obvious plus when dancing, it also helps to stabilize the core. When inhaling, the muscles that are used help to align the posture of the neck and head, when exhaling it helps to engage the lower core muscles, such as the transverse abdominus, and helps to ground us. An important thing to note is that this will only really make a difference if the dancer is relaxed enough to allow the body to align itself. If the dancer is tight and holding themselves out of alignment the breathing process can only do so much. The dancer needs to relax as much as possible and only use the muscles absolutely necessary to the movement to experience the true aid of breath, and to achieve better movement overall for that matter.

A more technical and detailed explanation will probably follow in a later post or on the our website when it is finished, but if dancers remember to breathe when moving, they will experience more stability and freedom.