Thoracic Spine Exercises
All photos taken courtesy of Herongate Leisure centre Hungerford
Exercise programs written by Victoria Kerr Davies
Photography Cayford Media
Standing in water up to chest level.
Dumbbells or bottles can be used for added resistance.
Warm up by marching across the pool forwards, backwards and sideways swinging your arms.
Repeat x 2 in each direction.
Then do the exercises below x 10 each.
Start with your hands on your shoulders and side bend each way.
Then with your hands on your hips, side bend to one side and then the other
Stand and hug your arms around your body and then push them out across the water. Keep doing this and try to increase the speed of the movement.
Punch alternate arms forwards and back
Breaststroke or crawl arms standing
Bend and straighten elbows-(bicep curls) with or without a weight such as float
Hands on the back of your head bring your elbows forward to touch in mid line, back to start position, repeat.
Lift up one arm as high as possible out of the water and bend up the opposite knee at the same time.
Then swop legs
Straight arms out in front rotate to left and right
Stretch both arms down into water and swing arms together back and forth past hips as if playing Golf
Arms by your side, slide hand down leg to side bend left and right.
Start with straight arms crossed and resting on your thighs from there bring them up and out to surface of the water turning palms up as you go, then rotate palms down and take them back down.
Bend alternate hip and knee and clap hands under each knee.
Raise your straight arms out to the side and now do small circles with your arms.
Straight Arms out to side, take left straight arm across body to right and back to start position, repeat with right arm.
Standing hands on wall, press ups
Hands on shoulder elbows out to side, clockwise circling.
Hands on shoulders elbows out to side. Bend alternate hip and knee, and rotate to take right elbow towards left knee, left elbow towards right knee.
Then relax arms by your side, shoulder shrug towards your ears and then relax.
Standing hands together do the following exercises
- Arms circling/ stir water in a big circle.
- Make figures of eight with your hands and arms.
- Bicycling arms clockwise and anticlockwise.
Standing: Feet hip width apart, in water at waist height.
Using small float, place hands on top of float and push it down into the water, keeping back straight, slowly bend elbows to let float come up towards surface, and repeat
Keeping the float under the water and with the right hand on top of the float move the float away from your body to the right. Change to the left hand on top of float.
Keeping float under the water, holding it between both hands, take the float across in front of your body to left and right.
Pass the float, which is flat and under the water around your body, changing hands as it goes behind your back. Clockwise and anticlockwise.
Hold the float upright with both hands so that it is against the water. Push and pull float away and pull back repeatedly while maintaining balance.
Progress all the above exercises by standing in stride standing, right and left leg forward, single leg standing right and left.
Progress further to larger float, or 2 small floats or bottles/ball with graduated size, whatever is available.
Now move to the corner of the pool
Lying holding on to the corner of the pool and supported by floats if needed. Bend up both knees and roll from side to side
Parts and Crossovers
Lie out flat on the surface holding on to the corner. Part your legs as wide as you can keep bottom up. Bring the legs together fast but letting your body twist so that one leg goes over the other one. Then uncross them and go the other way.
Double leg side flexion
Now keeping legs together take them both sideways across to the right and then to the left. The faster you do it the harder it is.
See video above right
The Back program exercises are also suitable for you and include some other good mobilising and strengthening exercises including abdominal exercise on the wall of the pool as shown in this video.
Finish with a swim if able doing breaststroke, crawl, doggy paddle or backstroke
or Walking forwards, backwards and sideways with swinging arms.
Thoracic spine exercise film