I attended the Halifax Can-Fit-Pro conference on Saturday, and in one of the talks I picked up a nice cue for helping participants find a neutral spine and engage the pelvic floor muscles.
"Imagine your hip bone as a bowl of water. Now don't spill the water either out the front of the back of the bowl."
At this point it's easy to demo what "spilling water" looks like by tilting the hips forward and back.
Once the hips are in place, "lift up the pool liner" at the bottom of the bowl.
If people are wondering how to tell that their "bowl" is upright, I can cue them to find the triangle formed by the two hip bones and the pubic bone and then make sure that the triangle is completely vertical.
After all that, I think most people will be able to find their nice strong neutral spine point.
Next I cue them pull the shoulder blades down and chest open, and Bob's your uncle. I sometimes tell them to pretend there's a star on their chest (point to near top of breast bone) and then make sure I can see their star even as they hip-hinge over for bent-over rows or hamstring stretches or squats. "Show me your stars everyone!"
Oh and one more nice exercise modification I learned about: for a squat, get them to extend their arms forward, thumbs up, and put a dowel (or empty bar) across the biceps. Raise the arms a bit higher than parallel with the floor, and now squat without losing the bar.
Conferences are great!
1 comment:
I love conferences! You learn so much! I always come back and have to go "okay, you cannot do everything, so slow down and just pick the one thing you want to do MOST first"
So many great ideas and enthusiastic people! Can't help but get excited! :)
I might try this pelvic position cueing in my next Balance session. Sounds great!
Thanks for the tip!
Post a Comment