Lateral Line Love
In this week’s Unreal Results podcast episode, I talk all about the importance of lateral stability in your clients. The lateral line is often overlooked as well as its connections to the nervous system and visceral organs, despite the fact that it plays a crucial role in movement & performance. In the episode, you’ll hear me talk about common rehab & training oversights, as well as specific assessment and treatment techniques that I utilize with my athletes. You don’t want to miss this episode because it’s packed with actionable & practical insights you can start using today in your practice.
Resources Mentioned In This Episode
Episode 27: Sciatica Secrets
Episode 44: Using Weight Shifting To Improve Movement Patterns
Exercise Video: Pelvic Leveling
Exercise Video: Side Pillar Hip Extension
Exercise Video: Quadruped Hip Abduction
Exercise Video: Side Sit Oblique Hold
Learn the LTAP™ In-Person in one of my upcoming courses
Considering the viscera as a source of musculoskeletal pain and dysfunction is a great way to ensure a more true whole body approach to care, however it can be a bit overwhelming on where to start, which is exactly why I created the Visceral Referral Cheat Sheet. This FREE download will help you to learn the most common visceral referral patterns affecting the musculoskeletal system. Download it at www.unrealresultspod.com
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Anna Hartman: Hey there, and welcome. I'm Anna Hartman, and this is Unreal Results, a podcast where I help you get better outcomes and gain the confidence that you can help anyone, even the most complex cases. Join me as I teach about the influence of the visceral organs and the nervous system on movement, pain, and injuries, all while shifting the paradigm of what whole body assessment and treatment really looks like.
I'm glad you're here. Let's dive in.
Hello, hello, and welcome to another episode of the Unreal Results podcast. I'm coming in hot on this episode. I just got off a flight home from the east coast. Um, early morning flight. Too early for my liking, but I, I, people always ask me like what airline I fly. my, my response always is my loyalty is always first with a direct flight.
So I don't really care the airline. I just prefer a direct flight over anything. So same thing. That means sometimes then I will do early morning or red eyes just to have a direct flight. So, um, yeah, I was thinking about what I wanted to talk about today and, um, I might actually film two episodes because next week is Christmas!
So I'll be pretty busy. Not sure if I'll have time to record an episode. Not even sure if I'm going to have an episode drop Christmas week. I might wait till the week after, but nonetheless, uh, we've been thinking about what episodes I want to, um, record and realized that I was like, I maybe have talked about this before, But I think inside another episode about something else.
And so I was like, you know what, let's do it for its own episode. So what we're going to talk about is the tendency. Or maybe the word is not the tendency, maybe the words more like, um, the importance, the reminder for professionals to consider the lateral line and consider the lateral line in a strength standpoint.
Um, also mobility. I mean, they go hand in hand, mobility and strength of the lateral line. Um, Honestly can't have one without the other, right? A full expression of strength is one that can go through the whole spectrum of range of motion. Uh, lengthening, shortening, and everything in between. So, I'd say that this, um, characteristic or this um, fundamental movement pattern is a really important one and talked about a lot, but then not trained very well.
Um, and so often in my athletes, what I see with them is in their training or in their rehab, um, it's like focused on a little bit, but then forgotten. And, um, um, oftentimes it is like, one of like the most gaping limitations that they have. And when I look at some of their strength and conditioning programs or their rehab programs that they're following, and I'm like, Hmm, you could argue some of the exercises should be getting the lateral line as a part primary or participant in the, the total movement pattern, you know, because most of the time athletes might be doing like single leg exercises, which technically for single leg, it is very much our lateral line.
But the problem is people, athletes specifically, but probably even regular old people, or as the kids these days, I call them narps, non athletic, regular people. Um, we cheat it well, it's hard to sometimes see, um, if you're actually utilizing your lateral line, your lateral muscles, your lateral stability to the lateral strength to its highest capabilities.
So I definitely wanted to talk about that. Of course, I also will touch on. visceral and neural considerations around it, but this episode is going to be probably a little bit more heavy from a movement standpoint than anything else. Um, but it's also like, with that said, in practical application, I'm looking at someone's mobility of their lateral line and someone's strength of their lateral line, different pieces of the lateral line.
as before and afters
Within my treatment session within the LTAP right. When I assess someone no matter if it's someone I've worked with every day once like Every month like whatever it may be and and no matter their rehab or no matter the reason why they're seeing me I always start with the LTAP because I want the body to tell me where to go And I also want the body
to let me know if there is an underlying visceral or neural thing going on And so, um, in this sense, the lateral line, you know, I'm looking at like, hmm, is this a true strength issue? Is this a true mobility issue or is it being influenced by the viscera of the nervous system? Because where do I start? The question always to me is where do I start?
Do I start right out of the gate with exercises or is there a something else I can start with that when we go back to that exercise, the client, the athlete's going to get more out of it and it's not going to feel like such a headache for them banging their head against the wall over and over trying to, you know, quote unquote turn on muscles that are like for whatever reason not
automatically already turning on in the first place. My goal always is to uncover the rest of the things that it could be leading to the reason why they have to be such good cheaters and the reason why these muscles are not just automatically dynamically turning on reflexively for themselves. So, um, for example, an athlete I was working with recently, He's post op, ACL, uh, surgery, and, um, I assessed his, well, for example, his locator test assessment protocol actually was taking me to the opposite side, lower extremity on him. But I still wanted to know what the lateral line was like on his involved side because he was having some pain with his involved side.
So I'm trying to collect all this information. information to like have a index of suspicion of like why things are hurting and what is hurting and how can I help him and from a long term standpoint. And so even though I know I'm going to start treatment on the right side, I still want to look at the left side, the involved side and see what's going on.
And so I, um, Assess, so the things of the lateral line I like to assess is I kind of piece it up between lower extremity, trunk, head and neck. Um, sometimes I skip the head and neck part, uh, especially if I'm not like led there on the LTAP or I'm not like led there based on the person's complaint. Um, but I'm always sort of watching it and paying attention to it when we're doing exercises.
But I always check hip adduction in zero degrees of hip flexion. So in a supine position, straight leg, I bring their leg in a dorsiflexed foot position, I bring their leg over towards the midline. And I like as a kind of standardized practice people to be able to bring their leg to at least the midline, if not.
Beyond. But also there's a certain quality that I'm looking for when I bring them to the midline. And it's hard to explain this quality, but, and this is why it's so important and I teach so much, like, why you need to trust what you're feeling in your hands. Cause part of it is just like, I know, based on what it feels like.
But when I brought him over, it felt like, It, it felt like he had great range of motion. He went past midline actually easily, but it felt to me like it was all coming from his leg and not really a whole lot from his trunk and pelvis. And it's a funny thing to say because when I'm testing JIP, just hip adduction, a lot of it shouldn't come from the pelvis or the spine.
because in fact, if it did, I'd be like, Ooh, I don't love that. But there is an integrity of the entire lateral line that you should feel when you bring the leg into hip adduction because the leg is not, Isolated to itself. It is connected to the rest of that. And so I want to always kind of feel in my hands, as I move a joint into any range of motion, but specifically for this one, as we move into hip adduction, where does the motion feel like it's coming from?
Does it feel evenly distributed? And what is the quality of the relative stability? Stiffness of all the segments in the chain and on him specifically this other day it just felt all leg and not a whole lot of stiffness or movement anywhere else and so I was like my
Antennas were kind of up for that. It was one of those things and I'm like, I'm not sure That's a problem, but I also am like something's off when it with it And this is again the value of trusting what I feel and then also the value of trusting that I know his body really well. I've been working with him since 2016 and so it's like I've tested this a lot of times and I don't recall it really feeling like this a lot.
Like so something feels off to me. So first I test that and then in a side lying position I test, I do manual muscle testing. Um, Oh, let me back up with that general range of motion test. I'm also like being like, if it doesn't go, so that was the scenarios that went, but it didn't feel right. Right. The end feel didn't feel how I feel like it should, especially in the type of athlete he is because he should have a lot more stiffness.
I should feel stiffness. Um, So let's say they don't get all the weight of midline, like they're limited. Then I'm like noticing, like where's the range of motion, like getting like limited from, like is this is more in the low leg around the knee, up in the thigh at the hip joint itself. Sometimes the hip joint itself doesn't like to like, um, compress the groin area.
Or does this feel like in the pelvis or am I feeling it all the way up into the trunk? So I'm always sort of paying attention to, again, the range of motion, but then the quality of motion and where that quality of motion feels like it's informing my hands and my touch from. And then, um, so then after I look at that in supine, I put them on their side and I then look at their hip.
a B duction. And then, um, I usually then do like an traditional like Ober's test just to kind of like see what kind of like just IT band stiffness there is. And then I do a manual muscle test of glute med. And so I bring them, I passively, I put my hand, like my arms usually like in this sort of like bent 90 degree bent position.
And their leg is bent in on top of me so I've got the whole support of their leg and I bring them into hip flexion and then I bring them into a abduction and then I bring them into As much hip extension as they have, and I make sure the leg is then externally rotated. So the foot is sort of hanging down and then I say, I'm gonna let go.
You just hold your leg there and in the very beginning of that test is often the most powerful information you'll get. Because if they're strong in their glute med, then what you will see. And I don't want to say it's just glute med. It's like all your hip abductors. But like, if they're strong in hip abduction, what you will see when you give them the weight of their leg now in that end range of motion, you'll notice initially what their strategy is and if they're strong enough to hold it.
If they deviate from that position by either bringing the leg into flexion, dropping it into internal rotation that you would see by the foot lifting up, or any other sort of strategy. That's the most powerful to me, right? When I grade manual muscle testing, I'm looking at, can they contract through a full range of motion and hold the end range?
That to me is a three out of five on a manual muscle test. And so that's like average, right? If they can't do that to me, that's not even a three. So I can still break test them. And add force, but usually when I add force, I either see more of the compensation or I get to see how good they are at cheating and like cheating the system to give me a strong test, which is great.
I honestly, I want people to be able to cheat because at the end of the day we need some like some strength somewhere. But when I'm like just looking at like kind of assessing like where we need to work on some like relative stiffness or strength or mobility, that is. That's why I'm isolating things. So that's the first test I do.
Then no matter how they score on the bent leg version, then I do a straight leg version. And what I'm looking at in a straight leg version, I have them again, bring their leg in like their knee straight. I bring them to wherever their hip extension is, which is important that you assess, assess that. I like to assess the in side lying..
So before I do over test, I do a side lying hip extension, monitoring the pelvis for movement. Their hip extension is when their pelvis starts moving into anterior tilt with their leg. That's where I stop their range of motion. I check it with a bent knee and with a straight leg. So I get to appreciate where it's coming from.
Um, so going back to the straight leg, you know, quote unquote glute med manual muscle test. I have them still in the side lying position. I have their leg out straight and um, I asked them to lift their leg up five times. And what I'm looking for in those five reps is their strategy. I'm looking to see if they dorsiflex their foot or I have to tell them to.
And then I'm looking, same thing. Do they bring their leg in more hip flexion? Do they rotate their thigh in external rotation? Do they rotate their thigh in internal rotation? Like what is the strategy for them to lift their legs? And then I'm also looking at how is that whole lower extremity then integrated into the pelvis?
What's happening at the pelvis when they're doing this motion too? Am I seeing a lot of movement in the pelvis going laterally, you know, laterally flexing? Um, do I see a lot of rotation happening? Do they open their pelvis up completely and turn it into a hip flexion exercise? But then I'm also, they might not even know, I'm gently resting my hand on the space between their ribs and their pelvis.
And I'm noting what's happening from a muscle stiffness in their obliques and core when they're lifting their leg. Ideally, as soon as you engage to lift the whole leg, you should feel the entire lateral line kind of light up. And what this feels like on your hand is just a stiffening and a widening of the core musculature of those oblique muscles.
Often, most of the time, is dorsiflexion of the feet, a nice clean, strong hip abduction. And then what you might also see in their upper part of their trunk is like their ear hole slightly sort of lifts towards the ceiling. That is a very good full side, lateral side, tension stiffness to do this test. So, um, in a lot of times with people, I see just like, Not a whole lot of clean movement and then definitely no full body connection of the lateral line so that's for the most part how I look at it in like a Traditional assessment standpoint when they're standing I look at it in a little bit different way when they're standing it's harder because you're gonna have people who are, you know, quote unquote cheats, um, like cheating it a little bit and it makes it harder to see.
So if you're not really dialed in on what you need to be looking at, you might miss it. And so what I'm looking at when I'm looking in standing is two things. First, I just do a standing side bending assessment and I want to see what's happening with their musculature in the trunk when they go into lateral flexion.
Does the QL and the rectors and the obliques, does it look like they open up nicely, like elongate nicely into that side bending. And do they bring the body back? Well, even from a, um, skin or like shape morphology assessment on them. Sometimes like do they have a divot kind of right around the area of their QL?
Sometimes when people are lacking stiffness and like especially oblique stiffness, they have a little bit of a divot as the obliques hook into the thoracolumbar fascia right there, kind of at the border of the QL and erector spinae. And oftentimes if I see that divot, then when they laterally flex to the opposite side, it's like it doesn't want to let go.
Um, and so that's one way I kind of look at, again, just, it's not a strength test. It's not even, I mean, I guess technically it's a mobility test, but it's just giving me insight on, again, how well the muscle balance is through that spectrum of eccentric and concentric control. The fact that they're standing upright and supporting themselves means that their obliques and their QL, like.
And their hip stabilizers, their lateral hip muscles are, like, doing a good job. Right? So it's like, nobody's muscles are turned off. If their muscles are turned off, they literally would not be standing like that. Let's, let's stop saying those words. So anyways, um, then I look at single leg balance and when I'm looking at single leg balance, I'm not like, you don't need to bring your knee up towards your chest in like a March position.
I'm literally like, just shift your weight to the right and pick up your other foot. Shift your weight to the left, but get your other foot and majority of the time when I'm really looking at. So, what I want you to look at is as they unweight themselves, what's happening at the pelvis. And oftentimes, what you'll see is a little, like, rotational faults, but sometimes they can be very subtle.
And then the other thing you see is the pelvis doesn't move at all. And that's actually a problem. Because When we go to a single leg stance, what should happen is our lateral hip stabilizers and our piriformis, which we're going to talk about the piriformis, but, Those muscles should activate to maintain our upright position, and they are lateral flexors of the spine.
So you should see ever so slightly a hip hike on the opposite side. So the other fault, so I told you the fault was like a rotation, either external or internal, it can be either. Um, no movement at the pelvis, or you see the opposite. It drops down at the pelvis and they hip hike on the side that they're standing on.
Most of the time with my athletes, what I see is very subtle and almost no movement. They're really good at like just being rigid and like upright and, um, utilizing their stiffness everywhere else to fake good single leg stability. But I never see any pelvis. movement. And I want to actually see pelvis movement.
This is like when we think about the gait, when we're in a single limb stance of the gait, our pelvis should be going through its motion. It goes through this figure eight motion, which includes a hip hiking on the opposite side, which is also known as hip abduction, lateral hip stabilization on the stance leg.
So that's missed a lot. And then also same thing with, you can then look at a single leg squat, a single leg bound, um, things more dynamic or more loaded, but you're looking for the same thing. To me, I'm looking at what's happening at their pelvis. And I don't care as much about the rotation as I do about the lateral flesh and piece, as well as I'm looking at their knee.
And just their general control of their knee and their foot. And then if their pelvis isn't moving, I might give them a cue and I'll say, Hey, go ahead and hip hike on the opposite side while you do that. And let's see what changes. And so often what changes is that, you know, hip stability component of the poor knee control, the valgus and the, and the pronation.
And. Then they look solid and that's only because I've cued them To Create a little hip stability and lateral stabilization of the lateral line Through the other side so they're not even like thinking about how it connects They just do one little motion and then it has a different experience. It looks differently to me.
That's like a cue that Um We need to work on that pattern that there could be something that is challenging that pattern like a visceral or a neural, um, protection pattern somewhere, right? Like, again, I'm just gathering information and then sometimes they're not strong enough to do that. But most of the time, like I said, if they're upright, they like, it's not often like so much as a strength thing as it is more of a patterning thing and more of a, and often these patterning things are not, um,
motor control issues in the sense of the old fashioned sense of like things are not activating in the right, um, sequence or things are not like turned on. or whatever. It's more of a, the body is choosing a different output for a reason. We need to figure out what that reason is so we can change the inputs.
So the body automatically fixes our output and then you go from something looking like weak to strong in a second. Now what you'll see is once you get it to actually work like, um, reflexively like that, what you might then see is a, um, strength endurance problem because they haven't been using it, but it's usually not like a pure strength problem as much of a strength endurance program problem.
And sometimes that's even still just like a neurological, like nervous system problem. But
that's a soapbox anyways. So with this, With this concept, I mean, it's not even a concept. I think it's pretty well known that hip stability, lateral hip stability, and lateral trunk stability or trunk stability important is important for function of the whole body, but specifically lower limb issues. Um, and like I said, it is something that is hard to catch and it is something that, um, people cheat.
really well. One of my previously to this athlete, like, um, there's an athlete I worked with a few years ago, also coming back from an ACL and he was looking so good with all of our weight room exercises. Like, you know, like I'm like, Oh man, like things are looking good. Assessment's good. Like things looked a little weak, just like your general like post surgery stuff.
And it wasn't until we started doing pilates, like reformer, like bounding, single leg bounds on the reformer, which is like really low level. It's like barely, I feel like you can barely even. call it an impact exercise because like it's opposite to gravity. You're in a horizontal, like you're horizontal to gravity.
So the impact is just the weight of the spring and the springs are not that heavy. And so I actually call it more of an elastic recoil exercise because you kind of are still getting that yielding type of plyometric, um, scenario, but without the impact and the stiffness of true plyometrics. Anyways, um, we were doing it and I was like, Oh my gosh, like, wow.
When you go to go single leg on the involved side, your trunk and your pelvis and your legs are like literally all over the place because he had just lost so much stiffness in that core on the, on like core connection obliques on that same side, which reminded me of the study. And I've probably shared the study before, but it's a study that like, we would like talk about a lot when I taught for EXOS Athlete performance back in the day.
But it was a study, I don't even remember who wrote it, but it was basically about how after lateral ankle sprain, there's like a neurologic inhibition of the lateral hip stabilizers and the core. And we used it to like, um, validate the focus on so much lateral hip exercises in our programming. And yes, we talked about core stuff a lot, but I feel like we kind of like a little bit missed the boat on that oblique things.
And that part of that study gets kind of like ignored because everybody's so excited about the hips, but like same side core inhibition or weakness or whatever you want to call it. post injury to the lower extremity, ankles, knees, feet, whatever. Not only do you see that hip, lack of hip stability, strength and control, but you also see a lack of, um, trunk stability.
Stability, control, strength, stiffness. So, um, it's just one of those things. And I'm like, Oh yeah, we really have to be diligent, especially in our athletes who have a history of a lower extremity injury, which is like almost all of them that we are addressing that. So a little bit on, um, a little bit on this from a visceral or neural perspective.
My athlete that I recently was with. I already told you that his locator test assessment protocol was actually directing me to the right side of his body. On the right side of his body, it was, um, or right side of his lower extremity, it was like a tibial nerve, like ankle mobility, calf thing. And based on his slump test, I actually decided instead of starting directly at the right lower extremity, I started in the lumbar spine because his double leg slump test told me that it was coming more from the nerve root.
Then the distal part of it. And so I addressed it there first. So I did a little like dynamic cupping. I think that's actually all I did. And then I went back down to the leg and I worked on his calf and not only did his ankle range of motion open up really quickly. When I then went and assessed the lateral line, it, When I brought the leg back across midline to look at the hip adduction, right?
The mobility was already good, but it was the quality that I didn't love when I brought it back to the midline. I was like, Oh, that already feels better. And what I was feeling and why it felt better is now I felt that whole side body stiffness participating in the range of motion versus it all feeling like it was coming from his
thigh. And so I was like, Oh, I really liked that. So when this is an example of like when the body is protecting, it was protecting like that right lumbar sacral nerve root. So it was probably in a little bit of side bending protection pattern. And so then when I went to test it, I was not able to feel that normal quality or stiffness of the trunk because it was sort of like stuck in a protective like concentric contraction.
So it wasn't really giving me anything. It wasn't really allowing itself to be like pulled on on the pelvis. So when we see this pattern a lot with central nervous system tension patterns, as well as visceral, um, protection patterns. For example, if someone is protecting their liver because their liver is not moving very well, or there's just like, you know, having hormone issues and just challenged with like liver function, the body's going to sort of splint it.
And it does that usually with right side bending and, um, a little bit of rotation. And so you can imagine how that's going to affect the function on the lateral line of both sides of the body. You know, it doesn't have to be opposites, could be the same side. Um, so any organs on the side of our body, even sometimes on the front of our body because they're three dimensional can create a little bit of side bending patterns, central nervous system, especially because when we have tension in our cranium, the rest of the spinal cord tries to alleviate the tension in the cranium by side bending to the side of the tension.
So oftentimes if someone's having a challenge with their lateral line stability, strength, function, whatever, I, again, I have to make sure, like, is it a hip stability issue or is it a cranial issue? Or is it a liver issue? Or is it a stomach issue? Like, again, like I can't stress the importance of having a skill set like the locator test assessment protocol or like general listening from the Barral Institute that can lead you to the visceral and the neural components of it.
And then even like in the scenario of this athlete, like there could have been a lateral femoral nerve entrapment, like not allowing me or like, uh, like, I don't know, there, there could be a lot of reasons besides just orthopedic reasons. And we saw, like, I even saw that, right? I treated his right lumbar spine area and then it totally changed
everything on that left lateral line. And so not only did it change in mobility coming to the midline, but I also, when I retested his, you know, manual muscle tests, his strength tests, they were better. They were stronger. Was there still some room for improvement? Absolutely. But the difference was like night and day.
Had I not done anything, then I would have seen this video. And this is often what happens, right? And this is why the LTAP can be so powerful is when we get to the sort of driver of things, our dynamic alignment changes throughout the whole body, head to toe. And so we see a change in strength. We see a change in stability and motor control, motor output, because we're changing the body's internal experience, we're changing the body's external sensory experience, we're just changing the whole thing so we're getting presented a new dynamic alignment.
But now, now that we have considered the viscera, considered the nervous system, talked about the importance of always like going it stepwise, like where's the body directing this first, let's knock that out or reassess these orthopedic things that we care about in relationship to the knee. And then what are we left over with?
So what I was left over with was still a little bit of a weakness and still a little, a lot of a strength endurance problem. And so now I'm looking at what exercises do I want to put into his program either from a home exercise program standpoint or just the strength and conditioning like global programming standpoint that is going to help that strength endurance of that motor control program.
Concern that I have, part of it is going to be where did the body direct me and like, let's do something for that. So knowing that it was coming, kind of coming from the spine at first, like his first corrective, I hate calling them correctives, but his first exercise to do was spine mobility, roll down, rag dolls.
It doesn't have to be complicated. Cat, cow, like doesn't have to be complicated. Needs to be specific for the right area of the spine. So that was step one, number one. Step number two was these exercises specifically for the lateral line. And so my favorite ones, my favorite ones, the ones I gave, I gave him three exercises.
They're simple to do. And there's my favorite. I gave him side lying on elbows and knees. Knees are going to be kind of like a 90 90. You're going to go up in a side pillar with a bent knee, and then you're going to pivot on your shoulder by extending your hips to come into a full lunge. extended pillar bridge.
I call it side pillar hip extension. This is a very, very good exercise for the lateral hip stabilizers and um, even glute max as a lateral hip stabilizer. So that's a favorite. Then we gave him, um, quadruped bent knee. Hip abduction, kind of like a fire hydrant. Now the key here is understanding how the body moves in a weight shift.
I did a whole episode on weight shifting that I'll have Joe link in the show notes. And, um, Well, I talk about this even more, but if I'm opening my leg out to the side and hip abduction, when I'm in a quadruped position, that is my body rotating to the right. So that means my weight shift needs to also go to the right.
And so many times, especially when people are weak, when they open their hip up to the right, they shift their weight to the left. are cheating it. You're actually not going to get anything out of the hip exercise or the core exercise. So what makes it challenging and effective is shifting to the right, staying at that right shift, and then opening to the right.
You will feel like your leg has gone from like weighing nothing to weighing everything. It makes it so much more challenging. And that's part of like when I know it's needs some support. And when I've identified this with my athletes, I like to like demonstrate, like, I like them to feel that for themselves.
Like, don't, don't trust me that this is weak and needs some support. Like you try it and then you try it on your other side. That in this case was definitely strong. Sometimes both sides need some help, but when I have a comparison, I can, and they're like, wow, that was so much harder on that side. I'm like, yeah, so we should probably work on it.
So that's a huge favorite. And then the third exercise, I actually gave him ended up giving him for the third exercise. They gave him was a side sit, like a Z sit, obliques of oblique hold. So I had him go into Z sit and then I had him use his other arm to support himself in like a lateral tilt. So it's not a lot of reflection.
It's lateral tilt. And then I was like, can you let go of your arm support and just hold your body there? And again, like there was a noticeable change on side to side. It was very challenging and you get to modify the range of motion to what you can control. So it's a pretty simple exercise for everybody to do at any level.
And then because we saw how weak that was, because really that was probably At least eye opening for him that it would seem like his obliques were actually kind of the weak link in that whole lateral line. We added in a side pillar bridge, but instead of just a bridge hold, because again, athletes are really good at cheating that.
With the rest of their strength of their body. We do it as like a lateral flexion exercise And so I call it like side pillar rainbow where the focus is not only coming up into a pillar But going past that pillar into a side bending that looks kind of like a rainbow and then coming all the way out of it but again, kind of like a Suspension bridge you're touching you're trying to touch your space between your pelvis and your ribs to the floor first before your hips, before your shoulders, before your feet.
This version of a side pillar is usually easier or more. I don't want to say easier is usually better at getting that side body of the trunk when your legs are actually staggered. So that's a favorite. Um, another favorite, especially when we're looking at piriformis. Um, and true glute med glute minimus and pelvic control is a pelvic leveling.
So I put somebody standing on a block and I have them push their foot into the block to initiate the lateral tilt of the pelvis. And then I let them use their side body muscles to help the hip hike accentuate it. So it's a timing thing. I still want them seeing how their feet are steering wells to the pelvis, not the pelvis pulling their legs into different positions.
And then once they master pelvic leveling, then we take that concept of the pelvic Um, I guess it's technically pelvic unleveling. We take that concept of the pelvic unleveling and we, we put it into single leg balance, single leg squat, single leg everything, anything you're going to do single leg. We start cueing that.
Drive your pelvis. Unlevel your pelvis by pushing your foot more to the ground to be a steering wheel for the pelvis to get that lateral hip hike on the opposite side because that is hip abduction on that side. So those are all great. Another, um, kind of rendition of the side pillar with a rainbow is the exercise star from the Pilates world.
Standing ladder reflection. It's a classic, but you might want to think about. not doing it on both sides if you don't need it on both sides. So again, use your brain of like, where do they actually need the support? Um, make it heavy. Suitcase carries heavy. Also really great for, um, obliques, uh, seated waiters carry hold.
Also really great side lying banana exercise, which is just like a whole lateral line, like lateral flexion in a side lying position. Lizards taking my elbow to my knee in that side lying position. Log rolling is a great one. Holding with the kettlebell in an arm bar, it can be helpful. Um, lizard on the ground.
Quadruped, um, like crawling with an emphasis on a lizard like motion. Front rack holds even are great for general oblique stiffness, um, and then lateral flexion on the edge of a bench or a box or like a Pilates arc. Always really great too, but if you don't start at the oblique sits with the hold, then it can be cheated pretty easily.
So a lot of options that just don't get programmed very often, and they need to be like a daily thing. Ideally, whenever we're growing single leg balances is happening naturally, but we need some support. Think of how many people have rolled their ankles and never gotten rehab. Well, it doesn't just sometimes come back on its own.
Sometimes it does, but it doesn't always. And so now they're just walking around town without a very good lateral line stability. And so, um, We really need to support that. And then the, for the final resting piece, the final piece I'll leave you with. The lateral line is also very intimately integrated into our hearing.
And so often we have things in our ear holes, over our ear holes, like too loud in our ear holes. And so, you know, our ears can be affected by our. reflux, like there's so much that can affect our ears and just know when our sensory and our ears are like start to diminish, then this is going to affect our whole lateral line as well.
Big episode, probably a little bigger than I thought it was going to be. I'm going to have Joe link the weight shifting episode. I'm going to have him link the piriformis episode. Cause I talk about this relationship between the piriformis and lateral flexion as well. And then I'm going to link my three favorite exercises, four, my four favorite exercises that I told you, the side lying pillar hip extension, the quadruped hip abduction, the pelvic unleveling and the um, oblique side sit.
Um, just to get you kind of started, but I've got so many of them and I need to record a couple new ones for my athletes. So look for those. I usually put them on social after I record them for an athlete. Thank you for being here. We'll see you next time.