Strengthen

Foundation Exercise

 This series of exercises are designed from a group of safe, effective and easy exercises that develop strength in the core/abdominal muscles and the glutes. They create a muscle strength foundation around the hips and lower back. This makes them excellent for clients with recurrent lower back pain, especially if it is due to weakness, poor posture and muscular imbalance.

As always get assessed by your doctor or health care professioal for any contraindicated conditions (disc injuries, acute sprains and strains, nerve conditions) and adjust or eliminate any exercises as they deem necessary.

Demonstration of how to perform a core activation. The perfect exercise to begin strengthening your lower back

This video describes how to perform a chin tuck. This activity helps to strengthen the front of your neck and bring you out of a froward head position. Give it a try!

Discover how to perform diaphragm breathing. There are so many health benefits to being able to breath effectively using your diaphragm. Give it a try!

These variations to the diaphragm breathing exercise change up the posture you adopt and add in elements of core activation. This allows you to utilise diaphragm breathing in real life positions.

Continue on strengthening your core with these additions to the standard core activation.

Use this exercise to help strengthen your glutes and correct hip anterior tilt

Use this exercise to begin strengthening the muscles in the side of your hip.
This can help to stabilise the hips and lower back.

Do you have lower back pain?
Do you ache when you bend forward?
Do you have trouble lifting?
Try this exercise to strengthen the glutes to take pressure off your lower back

Progress your glute strength training with these intermediate glute bridge exercises

POSTURAL CORRECTION

The following videos will take you through a step by step approach to correcting your posture. Combine these activation’s with other appropriate strengthening exercises to create long term posture improvements.

For example, if you struggle to perform a standing posterior pelvic tilt – first strengthen your core (with core activation variations) and glutes (with glute bridge and leg extension variations). Don’t forget appropriate stretching and mobilising techniques.

Do you have poor posture?
Do you want to be able to sit and stand straighter?
This video demonstrates the postural corrections needed to improve poor posture and adopt the “anatomical man” positions

When i was going through my posture correction videos i found out that i had a few old issues creeping back into my posture.
I show you the way i assessed myself and the tools i used to correct this issue so you can do it too!

LOWER CHAIN ACTIVATION’S (lower back, hips, legs & feet) 

This video will explain how and why to complete the lower chain activation series of exercises. This series has been designed to help with the common lower body postural issues of foot pronation, knock knees and hip anterior tilt.

Does your foot drop in and go flat when you stand but have an arch when off the ground?
You probably pronate, here is an easy exercise to help prevent it

Learn how to correct your posture by changing your knee alignment by flexing your glutes.

This video will help you put together the lower chain activation exercises into one activity.
Flex the core, glutes and feet arches to stand straighter.

UPPER CHAIN ACTIVATION’S (back, shoulder, arm and neck)

Do you have poor upper body posture?
Upper back slumped? Forward head?
Use these activation’s to correct your upper body posture

This video demonstrates how to perform a simple scapula activation exercise.

This technique helps posture by teaching you how to fire serratus anterior and other scapular stabilising muscles to help correctly position the shoulder.

This video demonstrates how to perform the chin tuck in a seated position.
This is a step up from the laying down version as you now need to engage your mid back to help you sit up straight.

This activity is designed to help correct a slumped upper body posture.
It activates the lower and middle trapezius and rhomboids in the mid back to lift the torso up straighter
It also activates the shoulder joint extensors and outward rotators to draw the shoulder back to a good position.

In this video I show how to continue correcting your posture by doing a hip posterior tilt and a neck retraction.
This helps you to correctly position your spine when standing. This activity is an extension of the core activation and chin tuck.
Check them out if you have not seen them

This video revisits the famous chin tuck exercise.
One of the best for strengthening yourself out of a forward head position.

It is important to maintain proper neck position as the nerves and muscles in your neck provide feedback about your posture.  Improving you neck position may improve balance and reduce the risk of neck pain.

This is the best place to start when it comes to strengthening your deep neck muscles, this can reduce pain and fatigue plus improve posture and balance.

In this exercise you will strengthen that neck without even moving it! A top set of exercises as long as you can get to a good chin tucked position.

If you are having trouble performing any of the scapula (shoulder blade) exercises or you are just starting out to improve your posture, check this out. It is important to strengthen the scapula muscles to help prevent neck pain.

This exercise isolates each scapula allowing you to develop good control at downward glide before introducing other actions.

This video contains multiple thoracic extension exercises. These are used to develop mid back strength and are excellent for people who tend to slump in their mid back.

Over time, developing the muscles in your mid back can help you to improve your posture and make daily life exercises and activities less fatiguing.

Look after your neck by positioning your neck correctly.
This works for any prone (face down) or kneeling position activities.

This is a step on from the scapula drops. This is another great exercise for improving thoracic posture, plus stabilising the shoulders and spine.
In this exercise we are lifting both arm overhead with a focus of flexing and strengthening through the mid back.

Take your thoracic extension exercises to the next level by performing it on a Swiss ball.

This makes the exercise more challenging by increasing the use of our stabiliser muscles, whilst extending through the mid back.

This exercise fully explains how to fire the scapula (shoulder blade) stabilisers and relax the middle traps (the top of your shoulders).

This is a step on from the scapula drops and should be used with other scapula stabilising exercises, such as; prone arm lifts and the ceiling punch.

The ability to effectively protract (push forward) and retract (pull backwards) at the shoulder girdle is a very important exercise and one that many people with rotator cuff shoulder injuries seem to struggle with.
Try this exercise to get some control back in your shoulders by strengthening serratus anterior.

This may look like a very simple exercise, well it is, but it is quite important for anyone that has lost stability in their shoulder/s.

I begins to develop strength in the muscles which hold the scapula (shoulder blade) flat on the back. These include serratus anterior, an often weak shoulder muscle which causes the scapula to wing.

Step up your kneeling push with the addition of an arm lift.

Not only does this push your stabilising arm further by reducing stability, it also aids in strengthening your mid back.

Overall a great exercise for improving shoulder stabiliser strength and training correct movement of the shoulder girdle.

Get those arms overhead and learn to stabilise your shoulders while the elbows are moving.

This exercise is a tough one, so make sure you depress (draw down) on your scapula. It will help to improve your scapula muscles endurance and posture.