Exercise #1755

Twist

3 min - Exercise
59 likes
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Description



Muscle Focus: Abdominals and arms.

Objective: Strengthen abdominals, obliques, shoulder stabilizers, and hip stabilizers.

Start Position: Sit sideways with both legs folded to the left, either stacked on top of one another, or with one foot on the Mat in front of the other. Place your right hand on the Mat a few inches past your shoulder, in line with your hip, and fingers pointing away from your hip. Left arm is connected to your left side.

Movement: Inhale to press into your right hand to lift your hips away from the Mat, bringing the body into a side plank and reaching your left arm overhead in line with the right arm, stacking the shoulders and making a T with the body. Exhale to thread your left arm across your chest and between your legs and right arm as you pike your hips to the ceiling to fold your body in half. Draw your abdominals in and up and glue the inner thighs together. Inhale to lower your hips and body back into the side plank, with your left arm reaching to the ceiling, shoulders stacked. Repeat for a few more repetitions, and perform the entire exercise on the other side.

Precautions: Avoid sinking in the shoulder girdle by drawing your shoulders away from your ears throughout the exercise. As this is an advanced exercise, you should be proficient in performing the Side Bend before attempting this exercise.
What You'll Need: Mat

About This Video

(Pace N/A)
Jul 18, 2014
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Transcript

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We're taking a look at the twist. It is definitely an advanced exercise. So I know if you're looking at this video, it means you've done the work and you're ready to give it a try or to fine tune it. Um, there's a lot that goes on in this exercise that is going to work your obliques. Um, it's gonna definitely work your shoulder stabilizers and your hip stabilizers. Um, at the end of the day you're gonna, you're gonna need strength in your arms, you're gonna build strength in your arms, build strength in your abs and in this version, even some back extension as well. Um, so we're gonna have you, Meredith, just go through the motion of the exercise and I'll talk her through it. So go ahead. She's inhaling in this version.

She's coming right up to the t position. She knows her obliques are ready to go. Now she's going to pike reaching under, so that arm is crossing underneath them. This is where the really great rotation is with her nice long back. Inhale, reopen. There's the t again and then she exhales and sits down by bending your knees and kind of coming away from that arm. Do it again. Inhale, lifting up. Now here, if you can hold for a second, she's really strong underneath here. She's not sagging in her shoulders, so that means her lats are traces.

Everything is really working for her. She exhales to reach under that arms, kind of going across the chest and then inhale, reopen, exhale to sit down. That's the twist. Now if you could just stay here for one second, I'm not going to have Meredith to come up and show you what it would be like if she weren't stable, but here we can kind of fake it a little. If she went to push and she wasn't ready and her shoulder, what would happen is she would sink here or it would appear as if her shoulder was just rising up. That's not a good place to live from. You just have no support. So when she were to go, if she's going to put weight into her feet, this whole complex is going to stay strong, which again is a coordination of not just her arm strength but our lats, her obliques, her back muscles, everything has kicked in and needs to be for this to be really effective and safe in. And just take a look at her shoulder. Now it's perfect. As she starts to lift, you don't see anything happen there.

Come on back down and tell him he slowmo how you didn't move your shoulder, how it was all good. And then as she listed doesn't shrugged her ear. Perfect. So you need to be able to do that before you get going. Okay? You want to be doing culottes forever. You don't want to just try to do the fancy stuff and then not have that. Let's do just one or two on the other side to balance you out. Flip these.

Um, if you are in math class and you know that your feet get slippery, it's hot up here for us. So it's we make sure we have sticky maths so that our feet and arm, shoulders don't slide. So just the couple she's going to inhale to lift up. She exhales and it's as if the drawing in of the abdominals is what made that action happen in how reopen legs are working here to exhale, sit down. So use the feet, right? Don't rely just on the arm. She pushes into the feet a little bit. She's using this outer hip a bit, exhaling to go under and I said Long, she's looking. Where she's going is beautiful. Inhale rate open and come on down.

One more thing. There's, you will find other ways that people teach more. Classically, what you're going to see is some version of this. This front leg, the knee goes up, the knees are apart and you basically step into it right away and you just go right into the rounding over. So go ahead and just step into it. Reaching under. Yeah, so you just kind of don't go through that one area of a side plank and then bringing it right back down. Keeping the body and close. Let's just do one more. Up and reach, reach, reach, good. And then coming back down. That's the twist. How Fun.

Comments

Jo
Many thanks, beautiful demonstration and clear instructions.
So glad you find it helpful Joanne!
Thank you! Good demonstration
Thanks for great instruction in this.  Are there any recommendations for this if you have shoulder issues?

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