Core Exercises on the New York Pilates Reformer:

Hi, I'm Harry from a power physical therapy in New York. We’re here today just to talk about some New York Pilates exercise-based equipment exercises that you can do to decrease your lower back pain and as many of you might know there's 80 percent of us will have low back pain at some point in our life. So that's a pretty fair amount. so I want to be able to demonstrate and show you how to do some exercises to decrease that pain one of the main culprits for lower back pain is a muscle called the psoas muscle and the psoas muscle is deep within the abdomen is how you would reach it runs.  On the front of the spine down into the front of our hip and so we can only reach this through the front of our abdomen. We’re working with it manually but it looks a certain way.

When somebody has tightness in this area so frequently from a therapy perspective. what I'll see is somebody that has a very tight hip as soon as they move their leg back their spine also arches which is not bully 1 so your spine should stay nice and stable and you should be able to freely move that hip without your back are the channel. so that's one way that I'll look at if somebody so as might be tight this psoas muscle is responsible for either arching the back or bending up the hip. As normally as you bring the leg back you should have that free motion in your lumbar spine to bring that forward and back. so if that's tight we want to get that loose so now we're going to go through a couple of exercises on the reformer going to be our demonstrator for this and I'm going to have lay down here and she's going to be doing feet in straps. So for those of you who are not familiar with the New York Pilates exercise Reformer, it's a great way that can be either an adjunct to making an exercise harder or easier. I've known a lot of patients that have gotten injured by doing their own New York Pilates exercise mat exercises and this is a really nice way to start patients with low back pain to make sure that they're staying nice and stable so this is a feed and straps exercise. And what we're going to show is that does have a few tight hamstrings so if she comes all the way up high her pelvis is going to come off. Here we don't want to see that so we're going to allow her to keep her legs straight her pelvis in neutral.

Now she's just going to be moving her hips back and forth without moving her spine so take a deep breath in and on the exhale draw the abdominals in and press the legs away good and only go as far as you can. Wear your abdominals stay nice and tucked and bring it back up towards the ceiling as far as you can. Without the pelvis coming off good and back down good and this is a nice exercise because I've as I demonstrated before if that soaz is tight she's going to use the move as one unit. Where the back is going to come off and move with the hip instead of it being a separate motion. so this is a great exercise to be able to work with to get that hip free and her lumbar spine and her stability and her demos are going to improve greatly good. now bend your knees take your legs out of the straps and we're going to come on up into hands and knees so we can do knee stretch all right image again onto your hands and knees hands are on the foot bar feet are against the shoulder rest. here hipster hip distance apart I want you to sit back towards your heels just a little bit slightly curl the tailbone under shoulder blades stay down and back I want you to hold this position don't let those arms move even a little bit tuck that chin and just move the hips back as far as you can out the spine arching and man back it good no and just keep folding in good nice and lengthened. Now I want you to show one time what it looks like if somebody's really tight here. so if you arch your back and then straight now that's not what we want to see a flat back otherwise that's going to make that pain work so a nice flat back and hips are just moving in and out as far as they can move with that nice neutral spine and is looking good here.

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Thanks and come on up the last exercise we're going to show is this so for this exercise appropriately positioned a little bit of a lunge she's going to hinge forward keeping a very nice flat neutral spine position her leg is going to be slightly off the reformer. And she's just going to be bringing her left leg in and out so no arms just bringing in and out and what she's going to be working is that right thigh quad, but she's also trying to get as much length through the front of this hip. so that her back isn't arching now add the arms and then you can add in running man arms so lengthening through the torso making the obliques work this is very nice it's called reciprocation works well to improve somebody's walking and then when you add in the neck rotation that simulates a little bit more of a balance challenge will compete. This can be great for this exercise beautiful and notice how as she lengthens this arm out she does not arch in her back. This is another thing that you’ll see when somebody has a very tight lower back exercise perfect good.