I don't really feel the stretch when doing cat/cow, what am I missing?

Question

Abi Carver · Answer

So the question is, I don't really feel the stretch when doing Cat-Cow What am I missing? So you can see in this video, I'm demonstrating Cat-Cow This part is Cow, and this part is Cat. So here you can see that I'm stretching muscles across my upper back. But this is more an exercise for spine, shoulder, and pelvic mobility. So what this means is that it is great for alleviating aches and pains in the upper body, but it's not so much for increasing your flexibility, which is something that you'd be looking to do in a static stretch more than you would in a dynamic sequence. I hope that answers your question.

Carol Earle · Answer

All right, someone asked, I don't really feel the stretch when I'm doing Cat-Cow. What am I missing? I don't think you're missing anything. Cat-Cow is more of an exercise of spinal mobility, which you're going through spinal flexion and spinal extension. All right, so in this clip I'm going to be performing Cat-Cow three times. This is the Cat portion, which is full spinal flexion, and then the Cow is the full spinal extension. Now as I go through this three times, I'm noticing that I'm getting a wider range of motion or a fuller range of motion in each of the repetitions. So that might be what someone might consider a stretch because I'm increasing my range of motion with each of the repetitions. So maybe that's a different way to focus your thoughts is by increasing range of motion instead of feeling the stretch.

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"I don't really feel the stretch when doing cat/cow, what am I missing?"