Lower Back Exercises: Land Swimming

Video Transcript

"Swimming, or extension for the spine, is a full spinal exercise. You have to maintain the integrity of low back and core strength by holding in your abs, but don't hold your breath. Now if you want to start with a slight bend in the elbows so you don't have as much leverage and momentum to control, that's cool too. As soon as you bring those arms by the ears you're going to feel your legs start to levitate. Think of strong glutes, hamstrings attaching into the low back, energy shooting out through the top of the head because you're strengthening in an elongated state, hence one of the reasons why you're going to able to prevent injury effectively. Head in line with the spine, come up, and then you're just going to simultaneously move. Now if you've practiced your quadruped extension where you extended the opposite arm and opposite leg, then you can add in both at the same time, and it's just like you're swimming out of the water but you have to control all of the momentum. Nothing else moves, it all moves as a result of extension and contraction. Everything stays nice and still. Inhale, exhale, you've got to breathe, you've got to give the muscles the fuel they need to swim out of the water. Inhale, exhale, lifting in the heart. Inhale, exhale, and you want to do that to fatigue or where you've got good, quality control over the movement. "