I've been on kick regarding Infant Rolling Patterns for a little bit now. When I first became exposed to them I though it was a gimmicky but novel way to approach thoracic spine mobility. Despite some reservations incorporating some of the rolling movement patterns into my mobility and stretching work easy and I plowed ahead with rolling all over the floor in our living and guest room.


I became a convert, and started thinking much more seriously about rolling patterns, when our fellow groups member, and awesome girlfriend , 2012 Party was editing some family picture while I was rolling around on the floor. In between patterns I looked up and saw a picture of her brother taken as an infant. The picture of course captured him in the middle of a perfectly executed, and unmistakable, rolling pattern. From there I've been all in.

Today I ran across a great paper discussing this topic:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2953329/?tool=pubmed

Pasted below is part of the introduction that will give some grounding in the general idea behind the theory.

Over the next few days I'll add a few posts showing examples of different patterns etc...


INTRODUCTION
As humans develop from small, relatively immobile infants at birth into fully developed, amazingly mobile adults, they pass through many predictable patterns of body control and movement. In motor development, these patterns can be described as both reflexive and intentional movements, both of which serve as developmental milestones.1 These concepts are familiar to the therapists who treat pediatric clientele with neurodevelopmental diagnoses. Many therapists who treat adult patients and clients may fail to remember the principles of developmental postures and their sequence. In settings where patients with orthopedic and sports injuries predominate, the therapist can easily become focused on discrete local problems (or impairments) and miss the global effects (functional limitations) these problems create. In mature movement strategies/motor programs, the presence of developmental skills are not readily identifiable, but may in fact be a part of movement. An example of this principle is the movement of rolling. Although most adults do not consider the act of rolling to be an important part of complex movement skills, rolling may be a novel method to assess for, and intervene with, inefficient movements that involve rotation of the trunk and body, weight shifting in the lower body, and coordinated movements of the head, neck, and upper body.

The developmental milestones through which humans progress are related to developmental postures.2 Human infants are initially able to exist in sidelying, prone, or supine and are unable to move between these positions without assistance. These postures offer the infant the greatest amount of support/contact from the surface, and are the beginning of the developmental sequence and the development of motor control. As the infant matures, head control is achieved by four months of age leading to the ability to transition from one posture to the other, also known as rolling.2 Rolling is defined as “moving from supine to prone or from prone to supine position” 1 and involves some aspect of axial rotation. Rotational movements are described as a form of a righting reaction because, as the head rotates, the remainder of the body twists or rotates to become realigned with the head.1,2 Rolling can be initiated either by the upper extremity or the lower extremity, each pattern producing the same functional outcome: movement from prone to supine or supine to prone.

The authors propose four variations of rolling which can be used to accomplish movement from prone to supine and supine to prone. Movement from the start position (either supine or prone) can be accomplished by using one upper extremity or one lower extremity to initiate movement. These four variations will be described in detail in the assessment section of this article. Each of the four variations is performed first with one upper extremity or lower extremity and then with the contralateral upper extremity or lower extremity in order to assess for symmetry, control, quality, and the ability to complete the roll.

When using rolling as an intervention, the upper extremity patterns make use of the fact that movements of the neck facilitate trunk motions3–5 or stated more simply, “where the eyes, head, and neck go, the trunk will follow.” By applying the proprioceptive neuromuscular facilitation (PNF) principle of irradiation (defined later in this article), the following can be utilized therapeutically: neck flexion facilitates trunk flexion, neck extension facilitates trunk extension, and full neck rotation facilitates lateral flexion of the trunk.3,4 Neck patterns can even be used to achieve irradiation into distal parts of the body, for example, neck extension can facilitate extension and abduction of the hip.3,4

Typically an infant can perform basic log rolling, with the body moving as a unit at four to five months of age, typically moving from prone to supine at four months of age, followed by moving from supine to prone (although the order varies in infants). Finally, segmental or “automatic” rolling occurs at six to eight months of age, which involves deliberate, organized progressive rotation of segments of the body.1 Some children actually combine multiple rolls, performed consecutively, as a method of locomotion across a floor. Adults use a form of rolling that is segmental, but has also been described as “deliberate.” Adult rolling described by Richter and colleagues6 found that normal adults use a variety of movement patterns to roll, most likely related to the flexibility and strength (or lack thereof) in the individual performing the movement. Several of the movement patterns described by Richter et al,6 were similar to the original patterns of rolling movement described by Voss et al4 in their original text on PNF. The variability of movement patterns used by adults to roll gives therapists multiple options to use when training or retraining adults in the task of rolling.6

Although the skill of rolling is an early developmental task that continues to be used throughout a lifetime, rolling may become altered or uncoordinated due to muscular weakness, stiffness or tightness of structures, or lack of stability in the core muscles. Several potential dysfunctions and assessments for these problems that affect rolling in adults will be addressed in detail in a subsequent section. Adults often use inefficient strategies to complete the task of rolling, some of which are compensatory and disorganized, serving to perpetuate the dysfunction(s) associated with the movement. The authors assert that when rolling is asymmetrical, the client demonstrates a break in normal patterning (symmetry), which can help the clinician visualize the interplay between the local (impairment level) problem and the global effect (functional limitation).

Developmentally important positions, such as kneeling and quadruped, are useful to the breakdown of complex motor patterns.7 While these two postures are used commonly by the sports physical therapist in interventions for orthopedic pathology by addressing muscular strength, core control, balance, and coordination, rolling is not. Although this article deals with the movement of rolling, these other postures are still important to the examination and training of athletes whose sports involve the use of rotation (tennis, golf, swimming, baseball).

Once a human is upright for motor tasks, rolling becomes less important for movement or access to the environment and, thus, is used less. Adults generally only use rolling to transition from prone to supine, as if turning over in bed. Most adults do not consciously make use of rolling in everyday mobility tasks, exercise routines, or as a part of more difficult rotational movements/skills. Rolling is a good choice for assessment and training because rolling is not commonly practiced. Therefore, compensation and incorrect performance can be easily observed. Rolling can be used as both a functional activity and an exercise for the entire body.3 It is the assertion of the authors of this article that many sports physical therapists forget or ignore rolling as an assessment and rehabilitative technique.