5/4/2023 0 Comments Couch stretch![]() Don’t allow your hips to open to the side. Maintain proper hip alignment by rotating your hips internally. Instead, maintain a neutral spine and refrain from slouching or collapsing downward. Prevent your back from overarching, which can lead to compression of your spine. Don’t allow your front knee to travel past your ankle. Use your back knee as an anchor to ground and stabilize your body. Avoid putting direct pressure on your back knee. Skip this stretch if you have any knee concerns. Skip this stretch if you have any knee concerns Correctly align your hips to face forward, and avoid letting your knee collapse into the center or opening out to the side. She adds that it’s important to avoid rotating the thoracic spine, moving only in the sagittal plane so that you’re not moving to either side. ![]() “This way you’ll get the full benefits with the correct alignment.” “Have someone watch you to make sure you’re doing it correctly,” she said. She advises that you create a straight line from your hip to your knee so that you’re not shifting forward as you would in a lunge. Create a straight line from hip to kneeįranklin emphasizes that the couch stretch is not a lunge. You should be able to breathe deeply, comfortably, and steadily throughout the stretch. You may feel some sensation or mild discomfort, but you shouldn’t feel pain or experience shaking in your body. This gives you the mobility needed to do the couch stretch safely. If you have limited flexibility, work on easier low back, hip, and quad stretches to create openness in your body. If you move into it too quickly, it can be painful or uncomfortable. Work on this stretch slowly, step by stepįranklin notes that it’s really important to do the couch stretch step by step. Since it’s a deep stretch, you’ll want to build up to the couch stretch slowly if you’re new to exercise or have a lot of tightness. You can also spend some extra time stretching out whichever side is least flexible. A few times per week, spend a bit of extra time on this stretch by repeating each side multiple times. Elongate your spine and engage your core and glutes.ĭo the couch stretch daily.Place your right foot in front, aligning your knee above your ankle.Keep your left thigh in line with your body.Bend your left knee and place your shin along the back cushion of a couch (or a chair) with your toes pointed upward.The cotton used in our covers comes from more sustainable sources, that means it’s either recycled or grown with fewer resources. Use a cushion or mat under your knee if you’re placing it on a hard surface. Extra covers help you to keep your sofa looking good for longer, and mean you can update the look without buying a whole new sofa. You can also do this stretch using a ball, wall, or any sturdy surface. 1, 2003.The couch stretch is safe enough to do every day and is one of the stretches that Joely Franklin, a Level 3 personal trainer and sports therapist, teaches her clients regularly.įranklin stresses the importance of activating your core throughout the stretch so that you’re not fully relaxed. “With new range comes new responsibility,” Tikkanen says.Īdditional reading: A Postural Error: A Costly Biomechanical Fault-Muted Hip Function (MHF) by Greg Glassman, published Jan. He instructs Dercentis to spend two minutes in each stretch and to consistently use the tools to make progress increasing mobility. “Everybody’s working the bottom, but they’re not working necessarily coming up all the way to full extension.” ![]() “We see a lot of elite athletes (who’ve) still got difficulties in coming up from the bottom of the squat,” Tikkanen says. Beginning with Starrett’s classic couch stretch, Tikkanen adds two more versions to help fix Derscentis’ tight hips. Tikkanen shows Derscentis a series of stretches taught by mobility guru Kelly Starrett. He addresses tight hip issues he identified in one of the seminar attendees, Diego Derscentis, a professional soccer player in Europe. “It turns out that even top athletes who are really really good at what they do they still need to stretch,” says seminar team member Jami Tikkanen of Thames CrossFit.
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