After reading and practising the breathing patterns in part 1, you'll be embedding great habits that can support exercise but it's worth mentioning at this point that you should always be conscious about this in movement and just naturally breathing too. If lifting or performing exercises and your back starts to really hurt or dominate an exercise that it shouldn't, the chances are that your breathing has become lazy and isn't engaging low and internal abdominals.
The next step is to now start being functionally strong. Well, what do I mean by that? It's all very well being able to perform something in isolation and in a controlled environment but if you're unable to do it through natural movement or in normal circumstances then it almost renders itself as pointless. I'm aware that walking around, pushing your stomach out and then breathing out hard would feel rather strange and possibly attract a few stares so let's just take 3 natural movements of the spine and master these first.
Flexion, extension and rotation. These movements occur through every single step you take, every time you stand up or sit down and pretty much most of the time through movement. The issue is that they become lazy so it's time to get the right muscles working.
Firstly, standing up in a normal standing position, whatever that is for you, I want you to flex and extend the spine and maintain those good breathing habits. Keeping legs relatively straight, I want you to reach down towards your toes and in doing so, breathe out hard and draw your low stomach in tight. After a couple of seconds, stand up again and draw a big breath in, looking to inflate the stomach and pull your arms out to the side and back to fully open up the chest. Repeat this movement10-15 times and again, practise it 2-3 times daily to start embedding strong and positive habits through normal movement.
Along with the above exercise, we need to encourage the same good habits through rotation which is the strongest movement plane of the body and possibly the least engaged in traditional exercise. Stand facing a wall at arms length, soften your knees and engage into your hips. Reach out directly infront and place your finger tips on the wall. Keeping your hips forward facing and one hand touching the wall, pull the opposite arm back (keeping elbow extended) to behind you so that your trunk twists and aiming to rotate through 180 degrees. As you go through this movement, breathe in as before (inflating the stomach), hold for a second and then reverse the movement back to the start (whilst breathing out) and alternate with the opposite side.
Doing these two movements together will create a strong and functional neurology for your core. Mastering the basics is the key to getting the great success that you want. After 7-10 days, you will start to notice that daily movements are engaging your core much more than before. Filling your glass from the water cooler, checking your blind spot whilst driving, all these movements are becoming more functionally sound.
For video interpretations of the above movements, check out our free online fitness tool to get tailored exercise programmes, nutritional guidance and our very own personal tracking system to keep you going in the right direction.
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