Core Stability Video

(2:20)

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Transcript

Hi, I’m Jaclynn Reifman. I’m a licensed occupational therapist with Sharp HealthCare. I’m going to be talking about core stability.

I am going to describe stability of the core in both sitting and standing. In sitting, the base of my posture, my spine is my pelvis. When I’m sitting, the surface that I’m on is key to where my pelvis is; if I allow my pelvis to roll back, I go in to what we call a C-curve. I am no longer in a neutral position. By rolling my pelvis forward, you could see how my spine immediately starts straightening out in to it s neutral S-curve. I hold my posture with my pelvis slightly forward so that I maintain a slight lumbar curve in my small of my back.

I want to stabilize the anterior side or the front side of my spine by tightening my abdominal wall. It’s not a matter of sucking your breath in, it’s just tensing the wall. If you just tap on your abdominal wall, you’ll get it to tense up.

And, now I can move from my hip joint and not my spine. When I get up out of this chair I want to actually get my center of gravity over my base of support while keeping my core stable. I’m shifting my weight forward so that I can use the larger muscles of my hips and knees to bring me up to stand. And in doing that I’m maintaining a neutral spine and I’m not making my spine do the work to bring me up. In standing, what I want to do is I want to stand with a broad base of support. I’m going to keep my knees in an unlocked position, so as I go down, I’m hinging at my hips and knees and not moving from my spine. If I’m turning I want to actually make my toes and my nose be pointed in the same direction so that I’m not stressing my spine.

This has been an overview of core stability.