In this YouTube presentation, Akimbuso— a health‑and‑fitness professional with over 25 years of experience and ongoing osteopathic manual therapy doctorate studies—explains a holistic, progressive approach to strengthening the spine. He argues that true spinal health requires moving from deep, intrinsic spinal muscles (the Eldoa/Aldoas) outward to the core and back muscle layers, while also incorporating the diaphragm. The talk outlines the anatomy and function of each muscle group (deep spinal tendons, transverse abdominis, internal/external obliques, rectus abdominis, three layers of back muscles, and the diaphragm), describes why training them in this order improves proprioception and strength, and offers a practical sequence: Eldoa/Aldoas activation, TVA tightening, diaphragm mobility, and roll‑unroll spinal movements. Akimbuso warns against relying solely on surface exercises like planks or McKenzie presses, and provides a free video series and handouts that address common “roadblocks” in body training. He also invites viewers in Santa Fe to schedule a consult, and promises a follow‑up video demonstrating the described exercises.
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Are you looking for ways to strengthen your spine because you want spinal health and wellness? Are you searching around for core exercises or back exercises that you think will make your spine strong? Well, I want you to check out this video. I'm going to talk about different aspects. You need to strengthen your spine with the proper progression of back and ab exercises. Are you looking for ways to sustainably take care of your body? Well, then subscribe to my channel. I put out weekly videos where I talk about strengthening and stretching exercises, diet, nutrition and lifestyle habits, and of course, goal setting and mindset. Hi, I'm Akimbuso. I've been in the health and fitness field for over 25 years. I have degrees as a summer therapist and a summer trainer. I'm currently in school to receive my osteopathic manual therapy doctorate. I believe that a good holistic program is a doorway to leading your best life. And I'm here to basically give you as much information as I can so that you can live your best life. Okay, so you want to keep your spine strong and healthy and you know that strengthening is the best way to it and you think that core exercises are the best way to address that. Well, if you look around the Internet, you could see maybe a plank and a Mackenzie Pressup. That's the only thing you have to do. But lucky for you, you have a lot more muscles that you can address to make sure that your core and AKA your spine is nice and strong and healthy. But where do you start? How do you make it safe? Well, I'm going to give you a brief overview. If you start from deep inside your body and work out to more superficial, then you have a good starting point. Because if I work deep first, I educate my body on how to move properly before I tell it to move in big moves. So we want to start with the muscles of the spine and within the spine. So I think about all the tendons and ligaments and little muscles that are intricate inside the spine to strengthen. Well, if I strengthen those muscles in the spine, I now make those muscles more intelligent. More intelligent means strength. Because if I have more information going from my body to my brain to tell me where I am now, I have more activation. That means I'm stronger. The best way that I found so far to educate and strengthen the spine is by using Eldo exercises. You can now target levels of your spine to open them up, to make it more aware and to strengthen them. Okay. Now that you understand more about the spinal strengthening, you can move on to a little more superficial. So now we're talking about the core. But now the core is not just your abs. The core is your entire core that encompasses your abs, your back, your lats, your pec, your rhomboids, etc, etc, etc. To keep it simple, we're going to talk about abs and back. So your abs have two jobs. To stabilize your spine and to move your spine. They have to be able to do both. You have four layers of abs. You have a deep layer, which is your TVA transverse abdominis. You have your internal and external oblique and your rectus abdominis. Now, there's hundreds of ways to reinforce those different parts of the abs in different directions. Just behind that you got your back. So if you just do the abs and don't think about your back, you're missing some really important links outside your spine. You're basically three layers of back muscles. You need to address those from the top and bottom in a multitude of different ways, like the abs. Oh, and don't forget, you need to train your diaphragm. Your diaphragm is this big gigantic muscle that sits right in the middle of your core that if you don't address through proper reinforcement and stretching, will inhibit how strong your spine is. Are you only using exercises like the plank or the McKenzie presser for your abs? Do you think you need to up your ab game and your back game a lot more? Just give me a yes below and let me know. So the obvious question is, where do you start with all that information, with all those different muscles, the different ways you can train them, where do you begin to be productive and safe? Well, you start at your spine. I would start with Aldoas. I can now strengthen and open my spine while giving myself a little more mobility. I would then also do my tva, which is my deep abdominal girdle. I want that girdle nice and tight so it holds all the contents in and protects my contents and also my spine. I would also incorporate my diaphragm. Like I said before, I want that diaphragm nice and strong and mobile. So to help regulate the tension within my abdominal area and strengthen my spine, I would then also work on learning to roll and unroll my spine down and up to the ground. Most basic thing you can do is to be able to move your torso down to the ground and move your torso back up and get tall. That was probably a lot to take in. I get it. Your job as a layman is not to get lost in the minutia. All these little different exercises or muscles where they are. You need to know what's going on on a big level, on a holistic level, because that's how a body works. If you can start to get the idea generally of how that works, well, now you can apply it to you. You can see what works for you, what doesn't work for you, and what's dangerous. So I developed a free resource for you. I made a video called how to advance past the roadblocks in your body. In the video, I talk about the three main roadblocks, what they are and what to do for them. I then complement that with emails, with handouts, and with other videos to build upon that knowledge so you have a better working knowledge on the different things you need to do for your body in a holistic manner. If you're here in Santa Fe, you can also reach out to us and come in for a consult. Just call us at 505-577-2171 and we'll get right back to you. Thanks so much for watching the video. I appreciate it. I want you to stay tuned because next week we're going to go through and demonstrate some of these exercises and that I just talked about in this video. In the meantime, you can watch some more of these videos up here. I want you to like this video. If you liked it, share with your friends and don't forget to subscribe so you'll be notified each week when new videos are out.
