Guiding Question For This Week:

Because my back always feels tight especially when trying to keep a straight back in other stretches, can following videos and doing spine stretches throughout the week help me loosen up my back and improve my posture in other stretches?

This Week’s Focus:

For this week I chose to do spinal flexibility as it is something that I have struggled with. I have been working on my hamstrings and hips, so this week I thought that spine flexibility and back mobility ties into most stretches so by improving it will help with future stretches and build off of ones I have already done. My goal is to make my back feel looser and reduce stiffness.

What I Did:

This week I did the following stretches for about 10 minutes. I found that instead of doing the stretching routine once I decided to switch it up and do it multiple times until I reached 10 minutes. I liked this idea better. Although I was getting more flexible by doing the routine once I thought it would speed up the process by doing it longer. The stretches that I did were:

  • Cat-Cow Pose: On hands and knees, alternating between arching and rounding the back.
  • Seated Spinal Twist: Sitting on the ground with one leg bent over the other and twisting gently.
  • Cobra Pose: Lying on your stomach, lifting chest up, can have arms bent or straight.
  • Thread the Needle: On all fours put one arm underneath the other and rest your shoulder and head on the ground, gently twist.
  • Seated Forward Fold: Sit with Legs extended, hinge forward as much as you can.
  • Low Lunge: From your knees step one foot forward, gently lay other leg on the ground and sink hips down.

Reflection on my Learning:

My back has always been very stiff, I have noticed it during my previous stretches that require a straight back or to lean forward and many people can get low to the ground but I cannot. So I thought for this week I would look up spinal stretches. At the beginning of the week my back felt tight, doing the stretches my back was very arched and I couldn’t really lean forward without arching. Doing these stretches thread the needle became one of my favourite stretches, it felt very relaxing. You may notice that I added one stretch from week one as well as week two because I thought it would be a good idea to still stretch those areas inserted of doing them once and never revisiting. That way those areas can stay flexible.

Resources I Used:

I chose this YouTube video because I thought it was a great spine/back stretching guide. As a beginner to most of the stretches I have done so far, having a video to look at while doing the stretches has been great. It helps me make sure my hands and legs are in the right places as well as making sure I am doing the stretch properly so I do not injure myself. Although my routine and this video are both 10 minutes long, I didn’t follow this routine exactly. I took inspiration for a lot of the stretches like cat-cow, thread the needle, cobra (she calls it sphinx), and the seated spinal twist. I took yoga in high school so some of these stretches I am familiar with such as thread the needle. I really enjoy this pose so when I saw it in this video I was excited, with that though I didn’t particularly like how she did hers so I did what I was comfortable with. Instead of threading the needle and immediately coming back up over and over, I threaded the needle and laid there twisting my spine for about 30 second on each side. I felt a lot more stretch doing it this way.

Next Week’s Plan:

Next week I plan to focus on shoulder, neck, and wrist mobility. I thought that because each of these areas are pretty small I could combine them all into one week. I have noticed some tension in my neck and shoulders as well as my wrists. Every once and awhile I get wrist pain and I have noticed the past two days it is staring up again so I thought it would be a great opportunity to do some wrist stretches. My goal is to hopefully reduce my wrist pain and get the tension out of my shoulders and neck as they are a bit stiff.