Prevent Upper Back Stiffness in 2 minutes - Spinal Rotation Stretch

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If you feel pain, stop.
Video Transcription:
Welcome back to Foundation Physical Therapy’s TH-cam Channel. We’re going to show you a couple of quick things you can do laying on the ground to improve the rotation in your spine. This can be rather non-specific in that it’s a good stretch for your lumbar and thoracic spine. We’re going to show you two variations kind of a beginners position and once that gets easy we’ll show you a progression for that. Real easy, for level 2 you will need a yoga block. For level 1 or the beginners position you won’t. All you do is lie on your side and you can actually use this yoga block for a pillow or just a spacer here for your head. You’re going to bring these knees up around waist level or a little higher and start with your hands clasped like this. Then what you want to do is I try to keep my nose lined up with this hand here. I’m going to open up my chest and I will turn and rotate trying to keep an eye on my hand. Then we’re going to bring it back. If that’s pretty easy then what I do is a rib pull variation. So I’m going to change my leg position. I’m going to take this yoga block to cue me to keep this leg down against this position here. Then what I’m going to do is as I rotate, I’m going to grab the ribs on this side and I’m going to pull these ribs back this way until I feel a gently stretch. I’ll feel a little bit more in my upper back. Then I hold it. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 then bring them back. Both really good activities to improve the rotation of your spine. Of course this should be done pain free and if both of these get easy then I invite you to take a look at our other thoracic activity that we call our “Lumbar Lock Thoracic Rotation.”