Shapes Of The Spine - Lateral Flexion

Today's episode kicks off a mini series diving into the different shapes the spine makes in Pilates, exploring the planes of movement, the muscles involved in making the shape, and where we see this movement in our Pilates exercises. The star of the show today is lateral flexion, or side bending! Tune in!

I want to hear from you! Share your thoughts and follow the podcast on Instagram and Facebook @pilatesstudentsmanual. Full show notes and episode transcription can be found on the podcast website here: https://bit.ly/PilatesStudentsManual. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast for updates, and rate and review wherever you listen!  Episodes now available on YouTube: *https://bit.ly/YouTubePSM*

Email pilatesstudentsmanual@oliviabioni.com with your feedback.

Show Notes:

Check out these related episodes to learn more about shapes of the spine!

The Shapes Your Spine Makes In Pilates

Support the podcast:    

Visit *links.oliviabioni.com/affiliates* and take advantage of some sweet deals on products I use and enjoy with my affiliate links! 

Episode Music:

You're Right by Loksii, in compliance with Pixabay's Content License (https://pixabay.com/service/license-summary/)

Listen/download: https://pixabay.com/music/corporate-youx27re-right-179191/

Transcript

[00:00:09] Hello. Hello everybody. Welcome and welcome back to Pilates Students Manual, helping you get the most out of your Pilates classes. I'm Olivia. Remember, you get the latest updates about everything I'm working on by joining the community at Buy Me a Coffee. That site is buymeacoffee.com/OliviaPodcasts and you can follow along with my journey on Instagram at @PilatesStudentsManual. Pilates Teachers' Manual: The Book is now available for purchase as both an EPUB and PDF and on Kindle and available on Amazon. But you can purchase it and other podcast merch at shop.oliviabioni.com. 

[00:00:55] You might notice that the intro music is a little bit different today. [00:01:00] I shared this over in Pilates Teachers' Manual, but kind of an exciting milestone. I've now hit a number of subscribers and a number of views on YouTube that allow me to monetize my channel and be a YouTube partner. So that is official, that is a thing that I'm doing. So I've got some new intro music that hopefully has the same kind of feel, good vibes. I do love a little bit of EDM and I love a little music intro on the podcast.

[00:01:29] So now we've got new music on the podcast, which is very, very exciting. And Pilates Teachers' Manual: The Book is now available, which is really, really exciting. I know there's a lot of crossover on listeners between Pilates Teachers' Manual and Pilates Students' Manual, so you already know. But I have been working on that book for a really long time and it is now available for purchase. So if you are a Pilates student who is interested in maybe becoming a teacher, or maybe you've got friends who wanna be [00:02:00] teachers. Or maybe you just wanna learn more about what goes into Pilates teaching before you take that leap and become a teacher and really invest in that training program and developing that new skillset of teaching Pilates. It is a really cool book and I hope a really valuable resource to you on your journey. If you're not sure if it's for you, there are sample chapters available as well that you can look at for free and kind of just feel out. How it goes which is kind of neat. So definitely check out those sample chapters.

[00:02:30] There's a really great book landing page that I'll plug because my partner made it and they're amazing. That's book.OliviaBioni.com/pilatesteachersmanual and you can learn a little bit more about it and me there. So those are some updates. Lots of things going on in the wild world. 

[00:02:51] We talked about mat Pilates and March Matness in the last episode, and now here we are in April and I'm doing kind of a [00:03:00] mini dive, mid dive, maybe not quite a deep dive, but really looking at shapes of the spine in the next couple episodes because pilates is a form of movement that is awesome and incredible, but it is also movement and the tool that we have to move is our body. And our body moves in a certain number of ways, and we think about shapes of the spine a lot in Pilates because one of, kind of the hallmarks of Pilates is that you get to move your spine in all directions.

[00:03:29] It's not a repetitive action like running or biking where you're always doing the same thing and maybe you're doing that thing longer for a longer period of time, or maybe you're doing that same thing faster, you're doing the same amount of work, but in like a shorter amount of time. If you're a runner, something like that, you're working on, you know, increasing your speed as you're trying to run a certain distance.

[00:03:55] But Pilates doesn't really have goals like that. We're not necessarily [00:04:00] trying to do it faster. We're not necessarily trying to, like, it doesn't dial up the same way you would. You know, do a hundred laps of swimming. But when you started, you could only do three. So different ways of measuring progress and moving the spine in all directions is really a big part. 

[00:04:16] At least as a Pilates teacher, I always wanna program in a way that we get to move our spine in all the ways it can move. So this is kicking off a little series about the different ways that our spines can move. The topic of interest today is lateral flexion, which is just a fancy pants way of saying side bending.

[00:04:38] So lateral flexion means that we are bending side to side and pure lateral flexion is kind of like being a bagel in a toaster, in that we're only moving in one plane of movement if we're doing pure lateral flexion. And if you're like, okay, well what's a plane of movement? I [00:05:00] gotcha. 

[00:05:00] Plane of movement, the way I visualize it and the way it's taught in a lot of textbooks is like you are being bisected by a piece of glass, like a window pane. Right. So that's a plane, right? If we go all the way back to math land, so we've got a plane. So where that piece of glass is kind of bisecting you, is gonna tell you what plane you're in. So for flexion and extension of our spine, which is gonna look like a chest lift or like rolling up to seated from lying down. We're rounding the spine, we're flexing the spine. Like a chest lift is spinal flexion. A teaser is a spinal flexion, like our spine is rounded forward or extension. 

[00:05:49] So when our spine is going backwards, something like swan, something like what our spine's doing in swimming. What our spine is doing [00:06:00] in a bridge, potentially, if you're in like a real back bendy bridge, not a diagonal line from your knees to your shoulders bridge, but really like a yoga style bridge you could be in extension in that. Where else do we have some really juicy extension? You'll do it in pulling straps on the reformer where you find that kind of swan shape as you pull the straps back. It's our high bridge especially, which is like an archival exercise on the reformer where you're doing it's also known as wheel pose in yoga. So whenever you're doing that big back bending shape or forward bending shape, so spinal flexion or spinal extension, that happens in, in what's called the sagittal plane.

[00:06:43] So that would be if that pane of glass that I talked about is cutting you in half between your right side and your left side, and it goes like in line with your spine. So when you bend forward and when you bend backward, if you imagine that that plane [00:07:00] is cutting you into right and left sides, when you move forward and backward, you don't bump into the plane, if that makes sense. Right? When you bend forward, you're still moving with the plane, you're not breaking the plane, and when you go into a back bend you're in that sagittal plane. So we've got that. 

[00:07:17] We've got the transverse plane, which happens in rotation. So transverse plane would be like if there was a piece of glass that was cutting your legs off from your upper body.

[00:07:28] So if it like went through, or even if it like went through your belly button so we can rotate in the transverse plane because you can see that when you rotate your spine, you're not breaking that pane of glass. And I'll definitely find some fun videos to describe this a little bit better because it's hard to sometimes just hear the words. But I'll do some nice slides on Instagram. So that's our transverse plane, that's rotation. 

[00:07:51] What is side bending? So glad you asked. That is the frontal plane. That would be if the pane of glass was cutting you in half from your [00:08:00] front to your back so you can move side to side and stay in that plane. But if you were to go forward, like you would come out of that plane. So it's like where can that piece of glass kind of bisect us? And that's not like the most beautiful image, but just like metaphorically, that's where the plane of glass would be. 

[00:08:17] So those different planes of movement are ways that we try to like simplify very complex things that we do because never in our life, or maybe not in my life, I shouldn't say in anyone's life, do I do like a pure side bend. Like if I drop something on the floor and I go to pick it up, I don't just do a side bend to pick it up, right? I would like bend my knees and crouch down and bend over a little bit forward and then maybe a little bit to the side. Most of the movements we do in our day-to-day life are like very compound, very complex, but the planes of movement help us break it down into little pieces.

[00:08:53] And you may notice that in your classes, sometimes when you're taking a Pilates class, a teacher will take a more [00:09:00] complex exercise that has lots of movement in lots of different planes and break it into little pieces where you're only working at one piece at a time. So the little piece we're talking about today is lateral flexion. 

[00:09:12] And where do we see side bending show up in Pilates? It's the one that I'm starting with because I kind of love side bending. It's one of my personal favorites, but it's actually one that shows up in Pilates, I would say, the least. Not that we aren't using the muscles that allow us to side bend, and I'll talk a little bit about that, but it doesn't show up in a ton of exercises. Like I went back through all of my repertoire and I was like. No, there's only a handful that we really get some side bending in. But it's still a great way that we can move in a way that we should move and we wanna be able to move. So whenever it comes up, we can really enjoy it. 

[00:09:53] The muscles that are primarily responsible for side bending our torso are gonna be our internal and [00:10:00] external obliques. And if you visualize your torso our internal and external obliques kind of wrap around us in like a cross hatch pattern where our internal oblique is of course more close to our center. It's a deeper tissue from our skin and it wraps around. Kind of from high to low, and then our external oblique wraps around in a way that those muscles create an X and like they're big sheets of muscle, but like we're really simplifying in the simplest terms.

[00:10:31] Our internal and external obliques kind of make an X on the sides of our torso, and they help us with side bending. They also help us with rotation. They also help us with bracing, like we can engage those muscles in an isometric way and just kind of like hold them under pressure as well. But they are the ones that are responsible for our side bending.

[00:10:53] So if you, again, visualize with me, if you are going to side bend to your right, you would be contracting your internal [00:11:00] and external obliques on that right side. Right? So as I side bend to the right, my side body gets shorter on that right side. My right shoulder gets closer to my right hip when I'm in a side bend. And then, conversely, my left side, internal and external oblique are gonna stretch because when I side bend and shorten one side, I lengthen the other side of my body. 

[00:11:25] The opposite is true. If I were to side bend to my left. I'm shortening my internal and external obliques on my right side. Muscles get shorter. They pull the ends of the muscles together, so when I side bend to the right, I'm pulling the attachment points of my left side, internal and external oblique together. They get closer together, which shortens the side waist and then I get the stretch on the right side when I side bend to the left. So that's the general idea of what's going on in the body.

[00:11:56] Again, super duper simple. Because another great [00:12:00] thing about movement is that your body does it even like, you don't have to say, okay, internal right oblique, contract and external right oblique, also contract, and I will side bend to the right, like we don't have to think about it like that. For some people, knowing the muscles is really useful, so I'm, you've giving you that as a tool, but you also don't have to tell them to do that. You can just side bend to the right and they will do it for you, which is very handy. 

[00:12:22] So what exercises have side bending in them? I would say like the biggest, loudest exercise that always comes to everyone's head when we think of side bending is mermaid. And we can find mermaid in so many different places: on the reformer, on the chair, on the mat, on the barrel, like there's so many places that that side bending action occurs. And it shows up in a lot of classes because it's a great cool down exercise because it just is like a feel good stretchy thing, but it involves side bending, both if you're on the [00:13:00] reformer over the springs, and then side bending over the headrest 'cause you're sitting sideways sometimes in a Z sit or like a 90, 90 sit.

[00:13:08] But again, the movement of the spine is lateral flexion. So in mermaid, if your focus is just side bending, really doesn't matter what your legs are doing, you could be in a z sit, which is how it's, you know, classically, traditionally, performed. But if your hip doesn't rotate that way with ease or comfort, you could also be crisscross applesauce. You could also sit with your feet on the floor. Like if you were doing mermaid on the mat, you might find that Z sit to find that side bend. But again, you could also do it crisscross applesauce. You could do it with both legs straight. You could sit in a chair and side bend. Like at its very core self side bending is the shape of the spine. What our legs and our arms are doing are less important if we're prioritizing that exercise for side bending. So you probably [00:14:00] see this a lot in your classes in mermaid, especially reformer classes. 

[00:14:03] One of my absolute favorite exercises, you might also see it in Cleopatra, which I try to teach because it's kind of like the bigger side bend of mermaid. Like mermaid is a great side bend and you can kind of dial up the intensity of your side bend with a little bit of Cleopatra. If we look at some really fancy pants, advanced exercises- and advanced, because they're very complex and require a great degree of control and strength to execute them- also on the reformer, we've got Snake and Twist.

[00:14:43] Snake and twist are kind of like if you were gonna do a plank on the reformer with your hands on the carriage and your feet, maybe on the platform, maybe on the foot bar. But your hands are offset in both of those exercises. So you've got one hand on a shoulder block and [00:15:00] one hand. On the carriage, and just by the nature of offsetting your hands, you've already shortened one side of your torso, lengthened the other side of your torso, and that is side bending. When you take it into twist, where you're also looking over your shoulder, it's kind of like doing a cobra, looking over your shoulder while fighting some super fun spring tension like that is also lateral flexion for sure. 

[00:15:26] On the mat we've got sidekick kneeling is gonna put us in a nice side bend where we've got one hand on the mat, one knee on the mat, one leg is gonna be lifting and kicking. But that action of getting like you're kneeling and you also have a hand down, like that's gonna put most of us into a side bend because our arm is longer than our thigh bone. You know what I mean? So like, just structurally it's gonna put us in a side bend. 

[00:15:54] Definitely the exercise side bend is also really [00:16:00] great at, you know, putting us in that side stretch shape. Side bend is another really difficult exercise because again, every exercise can be done lots of different ways, but you could go into side bend by sitting down with one hand on the ground and both of your feet outstretched and then lifting into like a hover where it's not quite a side plank. Side plank is kind of the middle, but your hips are low.

[00:16:28] You've got one foot on the ground, you've got one hand on the ground. You can kind of see how it's like a side plank if your hips were dropping towards the ground and then you lift your hips through side plank and then higher than side plank so that you get the side bend in the opposite direction. 

[00:16:42] Now, just describing that, you're probably like, geez Louise. That seems like a lot. And it is, it is a lot. There's lots of ways to get into it, but if you go just from sitting straight into that hover, like yh, that's very tough. But that is a super duper side bend. 

[00:16:59] We can [00:17:00] see how sidekick kneeling and side bend are building on each other. That, and even if we were to dial it a little bit lower: sidekick, where we're lying on our side and then taking it into a kneeling position, adding in that side bend and then starting from zero and going like right to super duper massive oblique engagement to go into the side bend exercise like we can see how there's kind of a spectrum there.

[00:17:26] Pilates is doubly, triply, a thousandth-ly amazing because the shapes build on each other. So if you're like, Ooh, that side bend sounds really cool, I wanna do that, you can see how you would build up that strength in your trunk, the strength in your obliques, and then also if you're doing side bend, we're talking about some pretty serious shoulder strength because you're doing a side plank and then some pretty intense balance work because you're on one hand and one foot, which is difficult. Usually we're on two feet at least, you know what I mean? So side [00:18:00] bend is also gonna be another exercise that puts us into lateral flexion. 

[00:18:04] And I might be missing a couple, but like that's kind of it. And then a lot of exercises are just variations on that theme. So you might explore exercises like that in a variety of ways. Like it may not be exactly as described, but anything that you're side bending, you know that you're using those obliques. 

[00:18:25] Now, you can also use your obliques without side bending. Like you can use them in a way that they offer support to your trunk and you aren't shortening one side or the other, but you're holding yourself up over- under tension rather.

[00:18:41] So something like a side plank. You are using your obliques to help stabilize your trunk. And by stabilize I don't mean like your trunk is gonna fall apart if you don't hold it together, but it's gonna hold you up against gravity and the pressure of your own body weight. [00:19:00] Something like a side plank is gonna do that.

[00:19:03] Even in our sidekick where we're technically lying on the ground, so we're not doing a side bend because we're lying on our side. You can't side bend into the ground. I mean, you could side bend off of the ground, away from it, but you can't side bend towards the ground 'cause the ground's in the way. For something like that, you're still using those oblique muscles to help keep you in that position specifically because your top leg is kicking around like a silly goose. You know what I mean? So when you're doing sidekick and you're lying on your side, what's keeping you still in some part is those obliques, that and force of will, but also obliques. 

[00:19:40] So side bending is such a cool thing that we can do. Like, it continues to blow my mind that like, wow, I can just make these muscles short and these muscles long and move and like, we do that all day every day, but it's kind of incredible.

[00:19:57] So in this series [00:20:00] of episodes over the next few months, we're gonna be looking at different shapes of the spine. This one is lateral flexion. And just like forward flexion, like spinal flexion where you're doing a chest lift. You can see how you're making that C shape with your spine as you're rounding forward. Lateral flexion, we're making a C shape, but sideways, so in the lateral plane or in that frontal plane, and doing a side bend. So if you're interested in the different shapes that your spine makes, stay tuned because we'll be looking at spinal flexion, extension and rotation in the next few episodes.

[00:20:41] You can probably tell that I'm excited about it, and that is part of the reason I became a Pilates teacher and why I enjoy doing Pilates so much because your body can move so many ways. Even though the number of ways is finite, the ways that you can explore it are infinite, which is super cool. 

[00:20:56] Huge thank you to all my supporters on Buy Me a Coffee, including [00:21:00] a newest supporter. Amy, thanks so much for tuning in and checking out the podcast, checking out that Buy Me A Coffee community. I'll have the newsletter for April coming out soon for my supporters, where you'll also have that option to have a coffee chat with me where we can connect, you can ask questions. I will avail myself and my resources to you and we can just chat and connect and check in. So I'm really looking forward to that. I hope you have a great couple weeks and we'll talk again soon.