Pilates Instructors’ Favorite Foam Roller Exercises
Did you miss Foam Roller Week on our social media? We have recapped the exercises here for you to try at home or in our online Pilates classes—enjoy!
Day 1: Matt loves this foam roller version of Reverse Push Through. It’s great for people with wide or tight shoulders for whom the traditional bar is too narrow. It also forces you to use your core because if you dump into your arms the roller doesn’t move smoothly.
Day 2: Here’s Sarah with her side plank variation. Hello obliques!
https://www.instagram.com/p/CC4RVwCBRv9/
Day 3: Here’s Ash’s variation on the foam roller, which focuses on the hamstrings and glutes. Afterward make sure to do a hamstring stretch to balance the leg muscles.
Day 4: Kelli loves using arm circles to feel how our arms connect deep into our trunk and you can use the weight of them to open up the spine and chest and deepen into flexion inside a curl.
Day 5: Fanina loves this challenging abdominal exercise using the foam roller. Try both the stable spine and curled spine variations. The roller acts as a lever increasing the load on your deep trunk muscles…the farther you roll it away from you the harder it gets!
Day 6: Andrea loves doing mermaid with the roller! It’s both a great side bend and good for stabilizing the muscles of the rotator cuff. Doing a counter stretch at the end makes it extra yummy.
Day 7: Finish the week of with Lyra’s yummy hamstring stretches.
Follow us on Instagram @reformpilatesandmovement and on Facebook.com/reformpilatespdx for more movement inspiration. We hope to see you in our online pilates classes, or in person at the studio.