Exercise of the Week: Snow Angel with leg pump

I have a client with persistent low back pain. Our sessions are often "immediately corrective". In other words, how can I help her be out of pain this morning so she can have a better day. But in the long term her issue was not improving. I thought about parts of GYROTONIC® training I haven't used yet in our sessions and decided to practice the Sciatica Combination to see if I thought it could help. As I lay in the position for those exercises I thought "What else can be done here?"

i started doing movements from the Hamstring Series and was kind of surprised by how many of those exercises can be done in this position. Having the resistance coming from the side completely changes how the body stabilizes the movements and I found that these transposed exercises are remarkably core strengthening, even though your torso doesn't move. The also strengthen the muscles around the hips joints as well.

Of all the exercises I worked on, Snow Angel is the only original movement, a movement not in the Hamstring Series. Laying sideways to the tower, this exercise strengthens the abductors (prime movers: glutes medius & minimus) of the leg further from the tower and the adductors (which are called adductors) of the leg closer to the tower. And working on either leg strengthens the stabilizers of the hip joints and again, surprisingly great core strengthening.

The variation shown here is a progression from simple Snow Angel, adding a leg pump.