Lower Back Exercises: Seated Spine Twist

Video Transcript

"Seated spine twist is a philosophy of Joseph H. Pilates, and his theory was that we have stale air built up in our lungs. Pilates is a great way to strengthen in elongated state. Whether that's true or not, whether you build up that stale air in your cardiopulmonary system, it also is a good exercise to build strength into the spine using rotation. We can start with our feet crossed and we're going to put our hands and fold it, just like the "I Dream of Jeanie". Inhale 3 times to the right, and exhale center. Each time that you breathe in you're trying to facilitate the rotation and make your obliques work a little harder, but try to maintain neutral line between the nose and the sternum and release. You can also do this by extending the legs. If you can get your hamstrings and your calves towards the floor with a slight bend in the knees, that's good, too, but if you roll forward or roll back, then you know you need to come up into neutral posture. So it's inhale, inhale, inhale, exhale. If you can only do inhale, inhale, exhale, start there and then try to increase your inhale so your increasing range of motion and strength. But the movement is facilitated by the obliques and the spine working together, not exact twist. Your obliques are going to run the same direction, they don't cross over so try to take the movement in direction of the muscle, and release. Try to work in about ten reps starting out and then progress from there to fatigue."