Standing Side Stretch

How to do it

Setup

1. Stand upright with your feet hip-width apart and arms resting at your sides.
2. Engage your core lightly and keep your pelvis neutral with weight balanced evenly between both feet.

Movement

1. Reach one arm straight overhead toward the ceiling, keeping the shoulder relaxed and down.
2. Inhale to lengthen through your spine, then exhale as you gently bend your torso sideways toward the opposite side.
3. Hold the position at a comfortable stretch point along the flank of your body.
4. Engage your core to return smoothly to an upright posture, lower your arm, and repeat on the other side.

Breathing

Inhale to find length through your spine and exhale as you ease into the side bend, maintaining slow and steady breathing throughout the hold.

Cues

• Reach up before reaching over
• Keep your chest facing forward
• Ground both feet firmly

Common faults

Rotating the shoulders or chest forward during the bend

Stay strictly in the frontal plane, keeping your chest open and square to the front wall.

Shifting the hips excessively to the opposite side to fake range of motion

Keep your pelvis relatively stable and initiate the movement by articulating through the spine.

Safety

• Avoid aggressive or bouncy movements into the stretch, especially if you have a history of lumbar disc irritation.

Muscles

• Obliques stretched
• Quadratus lumborum stretched
• Latissimus dorsi stretched
• Erector spinae stabilizer
• Gluteus medius stabilizer

Joints

• Thoracic spine: Lateral flexion
• Lumbar spine: Lateral flexion
• Shoulder: Flexion, Abduction

Details

Movement

Stretch, Lateral flexion

Modality

Flexibility, Mobility

Mechanics

not applicable

Force

static

Laterality

unilateral

Kinetic chain

closed

Level

beginner

Equipment

None

Record

Duration

Load

none, not applicable

Sources

• wger: Side stretch, by Davidgj32 (CC-BY-SA-4.0)

This record: CC-BY-SA-4.0.

Data

standing-side-stretch.json