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To stay healthy, only developed, strong muscles and endurance are not enough. The whole body should be flexible, and not everyone can boast of this.

Today site shares with you exercises to test and develop flexibility.

1. Ankle mobility

Stand in a lunge, bending both legs at a right angle, the big toe of the foot in front, 10-12 cm from the wall. Lean forward and try to touch the wall with the knee of this leg. Check the other leg as well. You passed the test if the knees of both feet touched the wall without lifting the heel off the floor.

Take a bodybar or a sturdy stick, lunge (right leg in front). Place the stick on the floor in front of the middle toe of your right foot and hold it upright. Move your body forward and try to move your knee to the right side of the pole without lifting your heels off the floor. Do 10 reps for each leg.

2. Pelvic tilt

Sit on the edge of the bench, then lie on your back with your arms around your knees and hugging them to your chest. Now gently lower one leg as low as possible without letting the knee of the other leg come off your chest. Check the other leg as well. It is very good if the knee joints of both legs were able to drop below the bench level.

Get on one knee in a long lunge position, put your right leg forward and rest your palms on the knee of your right leg, lean back a little. Try to lower your pelvis as far forward and downward as possible. You will feel a stretch in the upper third of the thigh of the "back" leg. To strengthen the stretch, try to contract the left buttock additionally and stay in this position for 5 seconds, then relax. Do 5 reps for each leg.

3. Elasticity of the muscles of the back of the thigh

Stand straight with your feet together, gently lean forward and try to touch your toes with your fingertips. You passed the test if you were able to touch your toes without bending your knees or rounding your back too much.

Pick up a stick and place it upright behind your back. It should touch three points: the back of the head, the point between the shoulder blades and the sacrum. Place your feet hip-width apart and straighten your legs. Keeping the stick in contact with all three points, slowly lean forward as far as you can without bending your legs. Hold in this position for 2 seconds, straighten up. Repeat 10 times.

4. Mobility of the shoulder joints

Stand with your back against the wall, press against it with your shoulders, back of your head and buttocks, feet pelvis-width apart, heels 20 cm from the wall. Now raise your straight arms up and touch the wall with your thumbs. This should work without deflection in the lower back and without lifting any of the three points off the wall.

With your back to the wall, place a tennis ball between the wall and your right shoulder blade. While pressing on the ball, look on your back for painful points in the area of ​​\ u200b \ u200bthe right armpit. As soon as you find such a point, stop and, while maintaining pressure on the ball, slowly raise and lower your right hand 3 times in a row. Do the exercise for a minute, then move the ball to the left shoulder blade and repeat.

5. Checking the rectus abdominis muscle

Raising the body from a supine position, legs bent at the hip and knee joints, the feet are fixed. The muscle is in great shape if you can get up from the starting position.

Usually, when you can't reach your feet with your toes, you always make excuses for the peculiarities of your body. But nature is not to blame for the fact that you are obviously not in the best physical shape. You can't touch your feet because of your daily lifestyle but it can be fixed.

The hamstrings are one of the main causes of this problem, but in addition to them, the flexors of the hip, mid and lower back and ankles play a key role.

In a perfect forward bend, the upper body should bend towards the legs, similar to how a clamshell phone closes (remember?). Both parts of the body - the upper and lower ones should remain straight, and the bend should take place at the level of the hips. The ability to bend correctly is influenced by the muscles in the back and lower leg.

By sitting much more than we should, our hip flexors become accustomed to contracting involuntarily. They affect the work of the back and lower back, intervertebral and hip joints. Therefore, when the hip flexors are chronically contracted, they move the body out of optimal position, resulting in poor posture.

Imagine that the tendons are rubber bands. They should lengthen and then return to their original position. But if you constantly stretch the elastic to a length that it is not designed for (as happens with the hamstrings, when the pelvis and lower back are tilted forward), it will begin to deteriorate and tear. You feel the same when you bend over. It seems as though soft tissue is being torn because the muscle fascia is stretched beyond its normal range.

Stiff hip flexors also interfere with your abdominal and gluteal muscles from helping your toes reach your feet. If these muscles do not work properly, then the hamstrings will be strained even more, which will not only make it harder for the body to resist gravity, but will also hinder the hip flexors from working.

Let's figure out how to develop your hip flexors, achieve better spine mobility and inner thigh balance. You should do these exercises twice a week to finally reach your feet with your hands.

So what to do

We offer you to watch a video tutorial from gibkoetelo.ru:

According to statistics, from 65 to 96 percent of people have experienced severe back pain at least once. More than 40 percent regularly. In most cases, they are caused by degenerative-dystrophic changes in the spine - osteochondrosis.

Have you wondered "why is the person higher in the morning?". For some, such growth fluctuations reach 6 cm. This is due to the fact that during the night the intervertebral discs, without experiencing pressure," rested "and parted the vertebrae.

It is necessary to train the flexibility of the spine very carefully. This complex biomechanical organ is easily damaged by excessive exercise.

But in the spine there are many vital centers of our body.

Scoliosis - this is the curvature of the spine to the right or left relative to its axis. The most common scoliosis of the thoracic and lumbar spine.

Scoliosis - this is the asymmetry of the body, not only the curvature of the spine, but also the shoulder blade or ribs protruding from one side (right or left).

This asymmetry is especially noticeable when a person leans forward with arms freely lowered.

IMPORTANT!!! In no case should you confuse scoliosis with kyphosis (stoop) - these are completely different posture disorders. Although in fairness it must be said that sometimes kyphosis (stoop) is aggravated by scoliosis. This combination is called kyphoscoliosis.

But in general, kyphosis and scoliosis are different conditions, and they must be considered separately.

Scoliosis most often begins and progresses rapidly in adolescence, especially during the period when the teenager is rapidly stretching in growth. That is, between the ages of 10 and 17.

The causes of scoliosis remain a mystery to doctors: in 80% of cases they are declared idiopathic, which translated from Greek means scoliosis of "unknown cause".

Idiopathic scoliosis most often (although not always) it develops in sedentary children leading a "home-sedentary" lifestyle, due to improper seating at school at the desk or at home at the computer, or due to the improper position of the child at the table during lessons.

Moreover, more often than not, only one circumstance is of decisive importance, one wrong habit - the habit of putting your shoulder forward!

Let me explain. When a child constantly bends too low to a notebook or keyboard, and at the same time has the habit of pushing forward the shoulder of the hand with which he writes or controls the computer mouse, he involuntarily twists the spine and turns the body towards the outstretched hand. Over time, the muscles of the back and spine adjust to this abnormal position, and scoliosis develops.

The remaining 20% ​​of scoliosis occurs:

Due to joint hypermobility syndrome;

Due to congenital deformities of the vertebrae; due to congenital torticollis; due to rickets;

Due to congenital or acquired due to trauma, the difference in the length of the legs (if the difference in length between the right and left legs exceeds 2-4 cm);

Due to diseases of the neuromuscular system; for example, scoliosis often develops in children with infantile cerebral palsy (cerebral palsy), as well as in children who have had polio or tick-borne encephalitis; scoliosis often occurs in people with syringomyelia or central (spastic) paralysis;

Due to metabolic disorders in the bones;

After injuries and amputations due to accidents or operations;

Very rarely - in children after heart surgery.

Fictional causes of scoliosis.

Theory number 1(distributed by sellers of various insoles): scoliosis is a consequence of flat feet. This is absolute nonsense! Flat feet cannot in any way lead to scoliosis - a sideways curvature of the spine. We could still (with great difficulty) believe that flat feet lead to stoop - although this is also stupidity. But how can flat feet lead to curvature of the spine ?!

In fact, there is a substitution of cause and effect in this idea. In children, physically poorly developed, having a flaccid posture, or patients with hypermobility syndrome, in parallel with the development of scoliosis or kyphosis, flat feet often also occur (since the cause of flat feet is still the same - weakness of the musculo-ligamentous apparatus). That is, the development of scoliosis and flat feet often have one common cause, but these two diseases do not directly affect each other!

Theory number 2(distributed by chiropractors - dropouts): scoliosis is a consequence of osteochondrosis. Also complete nonsense! Think about it: osteochondrosis is an age-related restructuring of the spine, usually in people over 40. And scoliosis most often begins at a young age. So how can scoliosis occur due to osteochondrosis?

Theory number 3(distributed by some large clinics in which herniated intervertebral discs are operated on): scoliosis occurs due to a herniated disc. Here again we are talking about the substitution of concepts.

Indeed, sometimes when a disc herniation occurs, painful spasm of the back muscles and body distortion occur. In fact, it is very similar to scoliosis. But this is, so to speak, temporary scoliosis.

Let's remove the pain and spasm - and it will disappear overnight, without a trace. That is, a herniated disc will not lead to persistent scoliosis, to scoliotic disease. Although, if it is not treated at all and living with pain for 10-15 years, something similar to scoliosis, of course, can occur. But in this case, long-term pain, it seems to us, will in itself be a much bigger problem than curvature of the spine!

Theory number 4(distributed by sellers of dietary supplements containing calcium): scoliosis is a consequence of osteoporosis, and for the treatment of scoliosis allegedly you need to take calcium. Another nonsense.

After all osteoporosis - an age-related disease, a disease of the elderly(with extremely rare exceptions). This means that osteoporosis cannot be the cause of scoliosis that began in adolescence. Perhaps illiterate supplement sellers confuse osteoporosis with rickets, which also has bone deficiency.

But rickets does not become the cause of osteoporosis so often, and rickets is treated not with calcium, but with preparations containing vitamin D.

Posture test

To determine the correct posture, you should first of all examine an evenly standing test subject from behind and from the side.

When viewed from behind, pay attention to the shoulder blades - the shoulder blades should be symmetrically positioned, at the same distance from the spine, and pressed against the body. The gluteal folds should also be symmetrical. And the waist triangles should also be symmetrical.

To see and appreciate triangle waist, we ask the subject to freely and relaxed lower his hands down. As a result, a triangular space is formed between the arms lowered down and the contour of the waist - this is the triangle of the waist.

Now we compare the sizes of the resulting triangles - on the right and on the left side of the body. If the sizes do not match, then the waist triangles are asymmetrical.

If the triangles of the waist, shoulder blades and gluteal folds are located asymmetrically, this usually indicates one degree or another of scoliosis - curvature of the spine. However, a slight asymmetry is noticeable in most people - As you know, there are practically no perfectly symmetrical people.

Now let's examine the subject from the side. In a properly developed adult, the chest should be slightly raised, the abdomen should be tucked up, the legs should be straightened, the physiological curves of the spine should be smooth and moderately pronounced.

By old age, the curves of the spine usually become less pronounced, flattened. But in about 1/3 of people, on the contrary, there is an increase in thoracic kyphosis, the spine is strongly slumped; a senile hump may even form. This usually happens with osteoporosis - an age-related decrease in bone density.

When viewed from an angle we ask the test subject lean forward and try to reach the floor with your hands... Normally, a harmoniously folded person should, bending over, touch the floor with his fingertips without much difficulty, without bending his knees.

If, bending forward and not bending the knees, a person not only touches the floor with his fingers, but easily puts his entire palm on the floor, this usually indicates hypermobility of the joints and spine. Or that a person devotes too much time and attention to stretching exercises - which is not always good.

Conversely, if, leaning forward and not bending the knees, the person does not reach the floor with fingertips more than 10-15 centimeters, this speaks of the other extreme - poor physical shape, chronic spasm of the muscles of the legs and lower back; perhaps even - about Scheuermann's disease (if poor flexibility is combined with a noticeable stoop).

Distance more than 30-40 centimeters, if we are talking about a person under 45 years old, requires special attention! In combination with constant back pain and a markedly reduced flexibility of the spine, this may indicate that a person is sick with Forestier disease or ankylosing spondylitis. Or about the severe form of Scheuermann's disease.

Having determined the distance between the floor and the fingertips, we examine the back of the subject, who continues to stand in an inclination.

When leaning forward, we can easily detect the curvature of one or another part of the spine (if any) to the right or left. You can also easily notice if one blade protrudes clearly more than the other. These are all signs of scoliosis.

Even when leaning forward you can easily detect the misalignment of the pelvis - when the wing of the ilium is higher on one side than on the other. Such a bias indicates either a significant shortening of one leg, or, again, about scoliosis.

The final stage is an inspection against the wall. At this stage, we ask the subject to stand with his back to the wall, freely lower his hands down, and press the heels, buttocks, and the back of the head against the wall (in addition to the back). In this case, the feet should be closed together; it is undesirable to move the legs apart.

For a properly folded person, performing such a test will not cause any difficulties.

But for a person who is accustomed to stooping, and especially for a person with Scheuermann's disease, it will be quite difficult to press the back of the head against the wall without tearing off either the heels or the buttocks from the wall.

It will be even harder for him if, in addition, we ask him to press his shoulders against the wall. For a stooped man, this will be an extremely difficult task! And it is the fact that it is difficult for a person to press his shoulders and the back of his head against the wall, will indicate to us the habit of constantly stooping, or the presence of excessive kyphosis, or Scheuermann-Mau disease.

At the very end of the inspection, we will pay attention to the fact what distance remains during this test between the subject's lower back and the wall. Normally, a palm should be squeezed with difficulty between the waist and the wall (naturally, pressed flat against the wall, and not with the edge of the palm).

If the distance is too large, that is, the palm passes very easily, and there is still a gap, this indicates excessive lordosis of the lower back - with Scheuermann's disease or with a flat-concave back.

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