Athletico Health Resources

The final week of May is here! How are you doing? How is your back? Make sure you check in with yourself, it helps to create body awareness as you stretch. For the last week of May you will have three options for a psoas stretch. I will be giving beginner, intermediate, and advanced variations for this psoas stretch. If you have a history of low back problems stick with the beginner variation.  (more…)

Week 3 of May might look a little familiar to you if you’ve been with the stretch of the week blog from the beginning. It’s called High Lunge. In this variation we are focusing on getting a deeper stretch through the psoas though. So it’s different I promise! 🙂

You will need two yoga blocks or something similar, and a wall for this stretch.  (more…)

Week two of May is a bit of a deeper psoas stretch. It doesn’t have a name but I guess we can call it a variation on the yoga pose upward facing dog. In this variation we are focusing on the front of the hip where the psoas resides.  (more…)

During the month of May we will be focusing on a crucial muscle involved in low back pain, our psoas muscle. Back in December we addressed our quads and hip flexors (please feel free to check back through our Stretch of the Week archive for those stretches!), which did get into the psoas a little, but this month we will try to isolate it. For the first week we will start with a gentle psoas opener, it’s a variation of what’s called a Bridge in the exercise world.  (more…)

It’s the third week of April, I can’t believe it! How are you doing? Do you feel more limber in the ribs, the spine, and the obliques? I hope so! This week is a favorite of mine called the Triangle Stretch. This is a good stretch for strengthening the legs too! 🙂  There are no major contraindications for this because we will be using the wall to support ourselves. Please listen and feel what your body is telling you, and only go as far as you comfortably can. (more…)

Week two of April is upon us! This weeks side opener is from the yoga world. It’s called “Gate Pose.” You will feel this stretch all the way down into the hip flexors (front of the hip), and all the way up through the hand. Please stretch using the modified version if you have any groin, feet, or ankle issues.  (more…)

The third week of twists has brought us to a stretch we call Sage Twist in yoga. It’s unique because we turn our head in the opposite direction of our bodies. This gives us a stretch in our neck as well. Bonus! This stretch is done on the floor but if that is not accessible to you, you can sit in a chair and repeat week one of March, the easy seated twist, with turning the head over the opposite shoulder. (more…)

In week two of March we are doing a twist called thread the needle. Maybe you have heard of this stretch before? If not, it’s a nice gentle yet effective one you should definitely try! This stretch has the same benefits as last week’s stretch, but we get a little bit more into feeling this in the lateral body, or the sides of the body. (more…)