It’s Dr. Ange Wellman and we are in video 3 of our series on how to build a stronger back and this third exercise is a “side bridge” exercise.
We are going to be working our abdominals…our external and internal obliques which are actually stabilizers of your spine…so they are really important!
It’s really important to have a strong, stable spine.
When we have back pain we actually don’t fire our stabilizing muscles properly and thus we aren’t getting that extra support.
So it’s no wonder we get back pain…but it’s a really important part of the healing process that we start activating those muscles properly and develop strength and stability in them.
I am going to show you the side bridge exercise and like the other two exercises you are going to work up to doing a set of 10.
You want to do that on each side and ultimately you want to work up to be able to do 3 sets of 10 and you can do these every other day.
It’s not something you need to do every day.
The starting point for this exercise is you want your shoulder and hip to be aligned and depending on the strength you have your knees can either be bent or your legs can be straight.
I prefer to use bent knees but if you have a really strong core then you can actually do this off of the feet and keep your legs straight.
Also, you want to pay attention to the position of your shoulder.
See how my shoulder is hunched up like that…we don’t want to do that.
That’s going to put a lot of stress through your shoulder so you want to have a nice solid, strong shoulder in line with your elbow and you want to draw in your lower abdominals.
Nice straight spine and then you are going to raise your hip up so that you are in line and then you are going to lower.
Raise the hip up and lower and you are really going to feel this in here(your obliques)…I’m really feeling it…apparently I need to do more of these!
The other thing you want to pay attention to is your neck.
You want your neck to be relaxed.
You want your body to be in a straight line and you don’t want to be feeling this in your lower back.
If you are feeling it in your back it means you are working your back too hard and this exercise is all about working your oblique muscles.
We are not trying to work our back muscles.
When you have done one side then you will flip over and do the other side.
You may notice that one side feels stronger or one side feels weaker and that’s really not uncommon.
Over time if you stick with this exercise you are going to get stronger and you likely will not feel that imbalance as much.
I hope you found this video helpful.
If you did…please feel free to share it with your family and friends…comment below…and if you are struggling with back pain we would love to help you!
Give us a call at the clinic (705-991-1555) and we can talk about how we might be able to improve your spinal health.
Until next time….
Live Well for Life