Flow Rope Progressions and Ideas to Improve Posture, Running and Mobility

“The sacrum and spine are the source of your passionate and creative flow. This flow is essential.” 

- Innerunner 2023 

Photo Johnny Hällneby aka Son of Odin

 At Innerunner, we teach the rope flow a little differently, with an emphasis on helping to balance posture and promote ease and efficiency, and to learn the timing of healthy running.

 The Why

For the most part, modern humans are anterior chain biased, WHY? this is the equivalent of swinging the rope overhand or in a downwards chopping pattern, instead of the graceful, gentle flow of a rope moving in momentum.

Walking and running require an articulate spine and a competent and aware posterior chain, you can find, feel, and enhance this posture by swinging the flow rope backwards or underhand.

 When you start, most of your emphasis and time should be spent swinging the flow rope underhand. If you find this difficult or challenging, then it is even more essential that you spend time on this to correct this imbalance and empower your posterior chain.

 The flow rope can also be used to learn more about moving from the center out and how to animate, rehabilitate and decompress the spine and joints.

 As your spine and movements become more fluid, many of you will find your swimming dramatically improves; simply from swinging the flow rope.

 This center out movement pattern is at the heart of why using the flow rope decompresses the spine and joints so much. It is common to see people regain an inch in height after a regular practice of swinging the flow rope.

 The flow rope also helps smooth out running and athletic movement and helps your body gain more symmetry, balance, and efficiency.

 Exploring the Variations & Techniques:

 The Start: Mastering Flow Rope Basics

1. One hand underhand swing = Holding the rope in one hand, get used to doing an underhand swing in front of you in an under and over motion. Feet should be shoulder length apart with soft knew. This pattern strengthens the posterior chain with a focus on the shoulder blades.
2. One hand overhand swing = Still holding the rope in one hand, swing the rope in from of you with an over and under motion; this is good for firing up your anterior chain and pectoral muscles. Remember to switch hands to practice on both sides.
3. Underhand figure of eight = Holding the rope in front of you with both hands, move the rope in a figure 8 or infinity pattern in front of you with soft shoulders and a slight side bend rotation. This motion fires up your posterior chain with a sacrum/hip rotation, lumbar spine, and slight side to side bend. Your spine should be arched more than rounded to support thoracic rotation = this is pure gold for mastering mobility. Practice doing this pattern underhand as much as you can, the harder it is for you the more important that you make it second nature.
4. Underhand figure of eight with step = With this motion, the rope hits the ground as the same side your foot steps down; remember, your head is over your foot. To make this easier, first establish your underhand figure of eight and practice shifting your weight from foot to foot with your head over your foot, in a side-to-side sway before you add stepping or try rope on one side only.
5. Underhand figure eight with walking forward and backward = Congratulations, you have learned posterior chain walking!

 Techniques & Variations

Pigeon Toe

Pigeon toe underhand will mobilize your posterior sacrum and sit bones, this is also the important range of motion we need to run and walk well. As your knee goes behind your hip, your femur rotates internally. Being strong and competent with enough range in internal rotation is vital for healthy movement, hips, and spine. This will open your sacral fascia and Sacro tuberous ligaments which will give you access to hip power, control, and hip extension. It is fantastic hip; sacroiliac joint and coccyx rehabilitation and it is fantastic for your golf swing too.

 Duck foot

Duck Foot underhand will wake up your glute max and fire a shoulder to glute connection, but don’t do too much of this, find the connection or activation and then move to neutral stance or a spilt stance or walking or whatever it is you are working on. It is a good idea to finish off with pigeon toe or neutral feet (this is because you may find that your neutral may at first - or forever - be slightly duck foot).

Split stance (In a big step position)

We have found that backwards walking really helps with themes that can be explored in split stance, so most athletes spend more time walking backwards than split stance rope swinging.

 When practicing flow rope in split stance it’s a big deal how you practice with your feet and hip position. Ideally spend more time with the following setup:

1. The back foot internally rotated (pigeon toe) or rather the femur (thigh bone) should be internally rotated.
2. The belly button or pubic bone should face the leg that is in front.
3. The weight should be on the back leg and most of the weight through the heel.
4. The glute max should feel gently switched on with a dimple or hollow in your buttock or glute max. If you don’t experience this gluteal tone, simply take a bigger step. This is an important insight as many long-legged athletes and those with other anatomical variances will need to take bigger steps when in extension to get glute activation.
5. Summary: take a big enough step to feel your glutes work when you swing the rope in split stance, but make sure it is a step and not a lunge.

Split Stance Enhanced:

Split stance should be your home position when you swing the rope to groove and get used to it; and then you can work on expanding your awareness and movement.

 Once you are relaxed at swinging the rope underhand, and you can feel the glute impulse, you can then shift your awareness to the following ideas:

1.  Hip impulses: As the rope swings past your hip (underhand swing) and hits the floor, see if you can facilitate this movement with your hip. Think of this movement as helping a carousel come past by giving it a flick. The rope is coming past so see if you can help it with a pulse from your hip. Have a relaxed soft hip, don’t clench, squeeze, engage or tighten the glutes. It’s a relaxed pulse. “Your hips drive the world back. Your relaxed hips are the source of your running power.”

2. Foot rocking: As the rope comes past your hip (underhand swing) see if you can rock forward onto the forefoot. It’s okay to stay on the outside of the foot (don’t worry about the big toe, the whole forefoot and toes should be swift and relaxed). Have soft relaxed toes and don’t use the calf muscles, there should be no sensation of a calf raise. You are simply rocking forward onto the forefoot with your hip impulse and the momentum of the rope, in a wave-like pattern from the hip down. “Your power comes from your hips and flows out like a whip.” Rising onto the forefoot is a “flourish” or release rather than an active process.

3. Connect the two preceding concepts: The rope should sing underhand forward with a hip shift forward; this results in a lengthening of the back leg and a foot flourish up onto the forefoot with soft toes. The femur is internally rotated, the glute max softly engaged, the lower back in a gentle arch, and you feel a wave like impulse traveling down the leg from the hip. Boom!

Shoulders: Reverse grip.

A movement lesson that’s hard to grasp for most, but easy to learn and feel with the flow rope, is that the softer the hands, the more relaxed power you can receive from the shoulders.

 The same holds true for the feet and hips; relaxed feet help make it easy to create relaxed power flow from the hips down.

 If you are an anterior chain, forefoot runner you will find it hard to relax your feet in the flow rope and access your sacrum and hip movement, which is where your power should come from, or where your movement should originate. Tight extremities that have too high a load placed on them very quickly makes movement flow from the extremities into the center, the opposite of what you want.

 A beautiful way to immediately experience this is to simply reverse your grip on the rope, so instead of using your wrists and hands to help swing the rope, you must originate the movement from your spine and hips.

 The reverse grip means the knot is in your hand and the rope plays out from your hand towards the baby finger side. Once your hands are taken out of the equation (you may initially feel it’s difficult to swing the rope back), you will usually feel your triceps and shoulders working and your spine and hips as well.

 Keep learning to relax your hands to open up the shoulders. With reverse grip, try let the elbows go high; you should have a sensation of striking up with the elbow, and yes, your spine will side bend to get that elbow up and the reverse strike going - this is perfect. As your shoulders relax and start gliding over your ribs and getting off your neck, this spinal movement will become more fluid and less pronounced. Welcome to the awesome! If this movement is too hard for you, try the Closed loop grip discussed next and be patient. Try frequent little practices, always put the rope down if you feel tired or overwhelmed or frustrated.

 If you want to improve your swimming and martial arts skills, you should also work on your shoulders and the muscles in front of your body; the anterior chain. These muscles help you move forward and push. However, you should not neglect the muscles in the back of your body, the posterior chain. These muscles help you balance and stabilize your spine and hips and are important for posture and performance. Start with the posterior chain exercises before moving on to the anterior chain ones.

 Ultimately, you should be able to fluidly swap between anterior chain and posterior chain swinging and be able to seamlessly transition between the two in running and walking.

Closed loop

If you overlap the rope and hold both strands in both hands, palms down, thumbs pointing towards each other so that the rope is now a closed loop and then swing it, you again will immediately place a huge emphasis on the shoulders and spine, this is because you simply cannot generate power from your hands. Try “roll” at the top with high elbows as you do the figure of 8. Your forearms should be driving the rope up at a 45-degree angle to the horizontal, again the lower back will initially side bend to achieve this, but very soon the shoulder range will open up and the movement will be less pronounced. This diagonal strength and side bend is critical for athletic movement and a healthy posture and shoulders.

 It is fantastic to roll the rope backwards with your chest angled up to the north star, think open heart and soft breath, a slight pigeon toe will help you to not dump into your lower back.

 Open up, let go, feel.

 Rolling the rope forward or overhand will also immediately make the movement of swimming relevant for you. Learn to swim with relaxed shoulders, powerful lats and soft hands and forearms.

 Next steps

 If you powerfully correct either a timing issue or activate your posterior chain or both with the rope, then your running may change significantly, and it is probably a good idea to back off a little on intensity and or mileage.

 Running with your posterior chain is far more efficient and less injury prone than running on the anterior chain, but a change is a change, and you need to be aware that you are stressing the body differently no matter how good, awesome, easier, or faster it feels.

Monitor Health and Efficiency

As soon as you can swing the rope underhand in a figure of eight you can very quickly progress through the above steps and techniques. It is a lot of information to process and assimilate, but the rope is such a fast teacher that rapidly you will become smoother, more fluid and comfortable with the rope and movement in general.

 I encourage you to monitor your flexibility and health markers as your posture and movement improves. Check your heart rate, breathing rate, sleep quality, and heart rate variation (HRV), blood lactate, pain, and discomfort in your body, and see if they don’t improve as your movement improves.

Dragon Roll

The first rope flow technique after you have mastered the underhand figure of eight is learning the dragon roll (drag and roll or swing and roll). This movement rapidly improves shoulder and upper body flexibility and helps reset your posture; it will help you develop your perfect running posture.

 The strongest aspect of the dragon roll is that it teaches you transverse motion from the hips and thoracic spine while the shoulders ride relaxed on top of the hips. This is most people’s breakdown point in running and at the crux of why your cadence may be too slow. Getting comfortable with the dragon roll will give your running and life wings.

 To learn dragon roll its helpful to break it down into its component steps. It is also easier to say the words as you are doing them out loud or in your head: saying swing as you swing and then roll as you roll the rope overhead.

 Start with, drag in front, stop, roll the rope overhead, stop, drag behind, stop, roll overhead. Get the rope off your legs by opening your chest and shoulders and keeping your hands back. Do them one at a time, then link one front drag and one roll together, stop, drag stop, roll stop, then drag, and roll, stop etc. Now do the same for the back drag and roll, then stop. Rope off your legs remember. By now you should feel it as a swing, roll, one movement. Once you have the front swing-roll and the back swing-roll dialed, it’s time to take the plunge and dragon roll. Say out loud swing, roll, swing roll, swing roll…. And just go for it.

 If you notice that you keep rushing, getting ahead of yourself, trying too hard, getting frustrated, make note of it. This is also happening in other aspects of your movement, learning and life. The rope is a fantastic teacher. Anterior chain dominant people tend to be hurried, get ahead of themselves and are always reaching for what’s next. Posterior chain people tend to be more grounded, learn movement faster, gain ground faster, and are patient and secure. Do the work and let the results come to you. Try to use your hips to get the rope to swish in the swing phase. Remember to have soft feet and hips, so you can feel and find your flow. Swinging the rope slower and in a relaxed fashion will also make it easier to move from the spine out. Be lazy in your swinging or languid in form.

 Dragon Roll is a must-do activation prior to running and is a fantastic method to help correct cycling or travel posture.

Matador Roll

When you swing the rope overhand you can end up with a dominant hand on top, especially if you are rolling your wrists. Matador roll helps you swap dominant hands and is a part of other flow rope moves ahead, so it is worth getting your head around it.

Overhead propeller

It feels fantastic to learn the overhead propeller as it is a type of hula hoop motion of the spine. Remember to practice it in both directions. A great variation of the overhead propeller is to do it on your knees to really feel the spine working.

Front propellor

Want to add 20 yards to your golf drive? Double or single hand front propellor is great for this. Time the side shift of your pelvis to propel the rope, as the rope swings across your toes, pulse your hips to the side in time with the rope, remember to practice both ways. This pattern is fantastic in helping you get your hips to swing the rope in the dragon roll pattern.

 You can also use your hips to pulse the rope over the top, which is great practice for throwing and serving in tennis.

Cheetah Tail

The cheetah tail pattern opens your hips and helps prepare you for the next pattern, the underhand sneak. This is reverse or underhand swing with both hands behind your back, takes time to learn how to get enough momentum to start and be careful of hitting yourself in the face with the rope.

Underhand Sneak

The underhand sneak is a healthy shoulder rehab movement. The sneak part is the pulling apart of the hands that you need to help get the rope going. Think of reaching behind your back to undo a bra. The sneak will support you by unlocking your posture and giving you a healthy running posture.

 You will notice that much of the way we focus on the rope is from a grounded perspective, almost as if being rooted to the ground, and as your skill and competence opens, you can explore more and more techniques.

 If you research flow rope online you may find the demonstrations of flow rope are very handsy and are anterior chain focused, and people dance or jump with their hips to help the rope’s motion. This is all good, but don’t forget to master the basics outlined above.

If you have purchased a rope from me, please e-mail me at [email protected] and I will send a link with YouTube videos on all of the above.

Good luck finding your flow, your life, joints, and wellbeing.

 Thank you for your support and I wish you the most amazing rope flow and movement experience.

 Lawrence van Lingen