This exercise helps you unlock rotation through your spine and hips while lying on your side, letting your breath do the turning.
Crocodile Breathing With Ankle Weights
This exercise helps you learn and practice breathing with your diaphragm, using ankle weights on your back to feel where the breath lands.
- Starting Position:
- Prone
Start: Lie face down with an ankle weight across your lower back and another across your upper back. Rest your forehead on your hands, palms down, one over the other. Chest, arms, and neck fully relaxed, body as flat as it gets, weight on your chest not the edge of your ribs.
Action:
Breathe in slowly through your nose for about 3 seconds. Feel the air go low — the weight on your lower back should lift first. The upper weight shouldn't move until the very end of the breath.
Pause briefly.
Breathe out slowly and fully through your nose for 4–6 seconds.
Pause a little longer, 2–3 seconds. Then begin the next breath.
Aim for the air to fill your whole midsection like a cylinder.
Feel: Lower weight first, every breath. If the upper weight lifts first, the breath is too high — slow down and aim lower.
Related Exercises
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This exercise helps you learn to breathe into your lower back first, with a partner's hand on your back giving you a target.