Great Foam Rolling Exercise If You Sit A Lot

Great Foam Rolling Exercise If You Sit A Lot

In this video, I wanted to go through a great foam roller exercise you can do if you sit a lot. Sitting for long periods leads to muscle imbalances in the body, leading to pain. The sitting position stresses your back, especially if you have poor posture. When you sit, the muscles on the front of your body tend to get short, tight, and painful.

Your hip flexors, the muscles on the front of your hips, are an especially common muscle group to get tight and painful from sitting. When you are sitting, you are flexing your hips, and over time your hip flexor muscles will shorten. This creates all sorts of problems, such as hip and back pain. At the same time, the muscles on the back of your body tend to lengthen out and get weak, which can also cause pain.

Your chest muscles also get tight while you sit, especially if you are hunched over your phone, computer or desk. Tight chest muscles round your shoulders forward and make it difficult, if not impossible, to sit up straight with good posture. At the same time, muscle groups such as your glutes get weak, stretched out, and turned off. This leads to them not firing properly when you need them, and you overcompensate with other muscles, leading to poor movement patterns and injuries.

You can see how simply sitting too much can create all sorts of problems for your body. The exercise in this post will help to reverse all of the things we were talking about earlier. The Foam Roller Mini Bridge will strengthen your glutes and the other muscles of your back body while opening up and stretching the front of your body, including your hips and chest. This will lead to better posture, less pain, and a decreased risk of injury.

CLICK HERE to watch the Youtube video.

Foam Roller Mini Bridge

I had Sonya demonstrate the Foam Roller Mini Bridge. You can use a one-foot foam roller for this exercise. You do not need to have a full-length foam roller.

Lie on your back and place the foam roller at your ankles. Tighten your abdominal area, push down with your legs, tighten up your glutes, and lift your seat off the mat.

Foam Roller Mini Bridge

Foam Roller Mini Bridge

Why is this a good exercise?

This exercise makes you activate the glutes. You are stretching out the front of the hips when activating the glutes, which is good. Sitting for long periods, the front of your hips gets tight, leading to discomfort, pain, and even injury. You are also working out your core, which you often don’t get to when you sit a lot at work. We are working on having a really good alignment in the body.

If you have a foam roller and sit a lot, give this exercise a go. If you don’t have a foam roller, try the exercise with a rolled-up towel or blanket.

Final Word

Enter in your injury or pain. Make sure to swing by ExercisesForInjuries.com. There’s a good chance that I have an article, an interview. Or a video that will help you overcome your injury or pain.

Secondly, if you’re watching this on YouTube, head up above and hit subscribe. When you subscribe, you’ll get a video like this every couple of days. I talk about tips and tricks on overcoming and preventing injury or pain.

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Take care!

Rick Kaselj, MS

If you are looking for your foam roller, check out our 3-in-1 Foam Roller here!

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