Transcription:

In this session the equipment you'll need is a rolled up mat and have your folded up towel handy as well. We will be doing three shoulder exercises and a lying version of a rotation for the spine. The first movement is exploring this range of movement that we class as a chest-opening exercise. We've done it before on the wall, now we're going to do a face-down version lying on the floor. We'll focus today on the arm rolled over version. Have a quick look at me do it, and then we'll follow along together.

So let's have the towel handy. We'll just anticipate that perhaps you can't comfortably get the shoulder right down on the floor; that's what the towel's for. And the angle of the arm you might recall is really important. We want it about 45 degrees between vertical and shoulder height. So 45 degrees, roll the arm up towards the head, so it's the back of the hand and wrist that's on the floor. Something you need to do in this lying version is, and just watch, you need to unweight the hips and just move them to the side away from the outstretched arm, and then I'll turn away from you. And then the stretch is brought on by rolling the body around that bottom shoulder. Relax the neck. And if it's comfortable, let the top leg come up and over as well.

So let's follow along together. Down on the floor, put your towel in there. Arm out at 45 degrees, roll it over, so it's back of the hand down. Lift the hips, shuffle them a little bit away from that outstretched stretching arm, and then slowly roll yourself around the bottom shoulder. And then if you feel you'd like to, have a play with taking the top leg over. It's good if you can rest part of the foot on the floor. Are you breathing comfortably? And the beauty of the lying version is every time you breathe out, you can feel yourself sinking that shoulder onto the towel or the floor. Breathe deeply into that side of the chest that you're stretching. And every time you breathe out, let it sink into the floor. Tendency is for that arm to unwind itself, so have a play with just rolling it over again so the back of the wrist stays on the floor.

And now let's do the contraction. So you'll be trying to pull the back of the wrist into the floor. We'll do it together for a count of five, four, three, two, one. Slowly stop contracting, take a deep breath in, first breath out, let yourself go limp again. Take another deep breath in and on this breath out slowly try and move yourself a little bit further into the stretch.

And let's do three more deep breaths in and out in this restretch position. Really focused on breathing deeply and relaxing in this new position. Last breath. And to come out make sure you feel supported as you roll yourself back to your chest. And then we're ready to do the second side. So reach the arm out so you've got that 45 degree angle. Roll the arm over. Move the hips away from that outstretched arm – this hand will be in a pushup position – and then slowly roll yourself around that bottom shoulder. And the top leg can come up and over, if that's comfortable; if that's too intense, or something doesn't like it, this leg can stay to the front. That is fine.

Breathe deeply. Every time you breathe out you're relaxing and feeling yourself sink into the floor; you're not holding yourself up away from this stretch. Couple of breaths in and out in the initial stretch position, getting used to it, making any adjustments that you feel you need to. Just check that that stretching arm didn't unwind, still the back of the hand on the floor. And now we'll do the contraction, which is to pull that outstretched arm through the floor. So let's go now for a count of five, four, three, two, one. Slowly stop contracting, take a deep breath in and on the first breath out go limp, relax again.

Take another deep breath in and on this breath out, can you move a little bit further into the stretch? Rolling a bit further around that bottom shoulder. Three more deep breaths in and out, trying to breathe into the side of the chest that's under stretch. Breathe as deeply as you can into that part of the chest. One more breath. And we'll come out now; make sure you can control the rolling back to your chest. And we'll come up to a kneeling position now.

This is where you'll need your rolled up mat because we're going to sit upright on our heels, and just to make it comfortable, we will put the mat in between our heels and our buttocks. If you can't sit like this, then you could always sit cross-legged. So the movement we're going to do now is not quite the opposite of what you just did, but it's an opposing movement. What you're going to do is make a fist and put it on the hip there, maybe a little bit behind. And then you're going to play with letting the arm come forward a little bit, and let the shoulder round forward as well.

Not turn around; chest stays to the front and you're just letting the elbow and the shoulder come to the front. And then you'll find that you'll be able to reach and hold the back of the elbow joint there. Just pause there. Breathing deeply, every time you breathe out let that shoulder relax. It'll want to do this, so let it relax, and use the hand on the back of the elbow there to help move the elbow further around towards the front, and feel what you feel. What do you feel? Do you feel something in the shoulder joint? Do you feel something coming down around the back of the arm, back of the shoulder?

Good. There's a couple of different contractions we could do here. We'll just do one, which is to hold the elbow still – don't let it move – and you're trying to gently press it back to the start position. So hold it still, and we'll just do this one for a count of three, two, one. Slowly stop pressing, take a deep breath in and as you breathe out, relax, take another full deep breath in, and this time as you breathe out can you move a little bit further into the stretch? Three more deep breaths in and out here. Not trying to go any further now, just trying to relax the whole of this shoulder, any part that's feeling the stretch. One more breath, and make sure you let go of that elbow really slowly so it doesn't spring back to the start, and come out, shake out. I'm going to turn so you get a different view on the second side.

If you don't like sitting like this for this period of time you could always come up to a kneeling position, it's fine. So we make a fist, put it on the hip – I like to have it just a bit behind the hip there – and I see how far the elbow will come through, moving nice and slowly. And all we need to do is be able to get to holding the outside of the elbow there. Breathe and relax. Let the shoulder sink, there is a real tendency for this to happen, so few breaths in and out, encouraging the shoulder to sink down away from the ear, and use the other arm to draw it to the front.

Breathe. How does it feel? Can you relax? How does it feel compared to your first side? And we'll do the same contraction. So you're holding the elbow still with the hand holding it, and you're trying to gently press the elbow back to the start position. Do it really gently and smoothly for a count of three, two, one. Slowly stop contracting, take a deep breath in and as you breathe out, relax as much as you can. Take another deep breath in and as you breathe out, see if you can go a little bit further into the stretch. Three more deep breaths in and out, relaxing as much as you can.

One more breath. And then pause, slowly and smoothly let go of the elbow so it doesn't spring back, and unwind. Good. Okay. Now a lying rotation exercise. Keep your rolled up mat, 'cause you'll want to use that, put it off to the side. And, two parts to this exercise. I'll just move my little thing out of the way there. There's two parts to this exercise. The first part is just to warm up in the hip joint generally, and then we'll go into the rotation. So lie back. If you're comfortable with the legs outstretched, do it that way. If you need to bring the other one up, that's fine. But what we're going to do is bend the leg, and you can follow along with me. I like to interlace the fingers, hold the front of the shin there. And use the arms, you're just exploring this movement. How far can you move the thigh in towards the body? If it's any pinching in here you might need to go back and try a slightly different line to come in on.

If you run out of room, as in your thigh is contacting your ribcage, go even more towards the armpit. And how does it feel? For me it's just a general stretch, right up the top of the hamstring and around into the buttock itself. It's not a big stretch for me, but you just feel how it feels for you. A couple of breaths here. All right, now we're going to let that leg, it stays bent and have the knee directly above the hip, and we'll take the opposite hand to the outside of this bent knee. And that holding arm is straight; that gives you an idea of how far away from the body the thigh needs to be. The opposite arm we come out to the side. Take a deep breath in and as you breathe out we'll start to move the leg across the body. So this is moving into our rotation.

And when you're aware that the bottom hip is getting in the way, just want to unweight it enough that you can shuffle it under a bit, and then continue as far as you're comfortable with. Now, if you can comfortably touch the toes of that top bent knee on the floor, then you can do it that way. If you're a long way away from the floor and you'd like to, you've got your mat there, you could bring that in and just rest the lower part of the leg. Okay.

Are you still breathing? Use the floor to support you, let yourself sink into the floor. The only real effort to be done in this exercise is breathing deeply, into your chest, into your ribs, into your lower back. And where do you feel the movement? Where do you feel this position? Let's try just a couple more breaths. I find the lying on the floor ones you can often hold a tiny bit longer than others because you're not really doing too much work here. And to come out of the position, just move your hand around to the underside of the knee and help that leg as you roll back.

Stretch the legs out, wriggle around, and we'll try the same thing on the other side. I won't use the mat this time, you'll get a good view from the other angle. So, first part was the little hip/buttock warmup. Just a test of how the hip feels doing this movement. Try not to use any of the hip muscles to pull the leg in because all you'll feel is compression there. Rather, use the arms to do that movement. And if any particular line is just uncomfortable, try a different one.

Good. How is that movement on this side compared to the first side, in terms of range of movement and or how it feels? Are you aware of any difference left to right? Good. One more breath. And now we go into the rotation. So let that bent knee come away. Opposite hand comes to the outside of the bent knee; that arm is straight. Other arm goes out to the side. T,ake a full breath in and as you breathe out, slowly start to move that leg across the body. And when you're aware that the bottom hip is getting in the way it's getting pushed into the floor, you've just got to unweight it enough that you can smoothly shuffle it underneath – that might take a couple of goes to practice – and then you continue as far as you're comfortable with. So I know that I can get my toe touching the floor, so I don't need that rolled up mat, but if you need it, put it in there.

When the leg is just suspended in space it's very hard to relax. Even just the toe touching the floor, your brain knows where you are in space and you'll feel straight away you can relax way more. And this is about relaxing. Breathe as deeply as you can into your chest, into the ribs, into the abdomen, into the lower back. In this rotation component, how does it feel in this direction compared to the first direction?

If your neck feels uncomfortable, just wriggle the head from side to side; try and relax the neck muscles completely. Ideally, you've got both shoulders on the floor, but if one comes up a little bit, don't worry about that for now. Two more breaths. One more breath, And to come out, reach to the underside and help that leg roll back nice and slowly. Good. Do it just a little roundup for the lower back here, just stay lying on your back, one at a time bring both legs in, hold around and just try curling the knees in so that you feel your tailbone curl up off the floor. And then you can just do some little rocking movements; again, just a counter movement after that rotation, feels nice.

All right, then we're going to come up to a seated position. Final thing we'll do here is an exercise which is this movement of the arms in the shoulder blade, in the shoulders I should say – so taking them behind you – but we'll do it on the floor. So for some of you, it might be more of a forearm wrist stretch; that's okay. Let's just try it together. So you're going to reach around with the palms down, and don't be too ambitious about getting the hands really narrow; any comfortable width for you is what you're after, palms down. The tendency with these exercises where the arms are going behind the body is to slump.

So anticipating that, every breath in you want to lift the chest up towards the ceiling and roll the shoulders back. And then keeping your feet and your buttocks still, you do a little hand creeping action to take your hands away from your hips, only as far as you can comfortably not collapse like this to avoid the stretch. Good. This is a straight-elbowed position, so don't go too far the first couple of times. Just how does it feel? Can you relax? Can you breathe into the top of the chest? Chest is opening here. Good. As you go through a couple more breaths you might be able to creep away just a little bit further. Couple more breaths.

And to come out of it, you have to use a bit of abdominal strength. So you're going to curl and as soon as you feel the weight come off the hands you'll be able to come forward. And just do a tiny brief roundup just in case there's any tension between the shoulder blades after that last one. And up you come. So that's it for this session, couple of big shoulder movements combined with a spinal rotation there. I'll see you next time.

Program 13: Floor biceps + leg behind, “reverse chicken”, lying rotation, chest + biceps

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