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Posterior Shoulder Stretch: Sleeper Stretch

This video shows you how to do a posterior shoulder stretch, also known as the "sleeper stretch". Learn how to stretch your shoulder and prevent tightness, pain and injury in just a few simple steps.

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Transcript

00:06 - 00:10This is Brent, President of B2C Fitness, and you can see here Mike is doing a
00:10 - 00:16posterior shoulder stretch, or a sleeper stretch. Now, this stretch stretches a few
00:16 - 00:19structures in the back of our shoulder including our posterior capsule, as well
00:19 - 00:23as our posterior deltoid, and these muscles have a propensity to get tight
00:23 - 00:28and overactive in those individuals with upper body dysfunction. Now, Mike has
00:28 - 00:32a bit of upper body dysfunction, it is of special concern that we fix it with him
00:32 - 00:35because he is a baseball pitcher. We don't want to take the chance that those
00:35 - 00:40short and long structures, not being at optimal length, are going to reduce his
00:40 - 00:45performance and increases risk of injury. Now, you can see Mike has kind of a
00:45 - 00:48complicated setup going on here with this stretch, and the stretch is one of those
00:48 - 00:52stretches that gets poorly done more often than I see it actually get done
00:52 - 00:55with good technique. First things first, you can see I've used a yoga block here,
00:55 - 00:59you could use a rolled up towel or anything else, to try to get his head
00:59 - 01:02level. We have to remember that the shoulder attaches to the scapula, and a
01:02 - 01:06lot of what controls scapular movement are muscles that attach to the neck, so
01:06 - 01:10I want the neck in neutral position so that those muscles are in neutral position.
01:10 - 01:15Then I want you to notice that I have him at 90 degrees of flexion at the
01:15 - 01:22shoulder, as well as 90 degrees at the elbow. His scapula is actually retracted
01:22 - 01:25and depressed, and we'll show you that at a different angle here in a second. The
01:25 - 01:29scapula is retracted and depressed and the lateral border stabilized against
01:29 - 01:34this table so that his scapula doesn't move, so that when we do actually push
01:34 - 01:39into internal rotation, we can ensure that we are getting a posterior
01:39 - 01:45shoulder stretch, and not just moving the scapula. So once he got to 90, is
01:45 - 01:50retracted, depressed, his head's level, all I've had him do is he's actually not pushing
01:50 - 01:55down his arm, he's just letting this arm kind of fall forward, he's been
01:55 - 01:59stabilizing his elbow with the other hand, and it's really just the weight of
01:59 - 02:02his arm that's helping to assist with a little
02:02 - 02:06extra force on this stretch. These are small structures, They're small
02:06 - 02:10muscles, we don't need an excessive amount of force, the only thing we're going to
02:10 - 02:15get from more force is either injury, or potentially just so much muscle spindle
02:15 - 02:20activity that we never get a relaxation response. He's going to hold this
02:20 - 02:25position for 30 seconds to 2 minutes. You can see here Mike's tight, optimal
02:25 - 02:30internal rotation, which is the direction we're going in here would be about 70
02:30 - 02:35degrees. A good queue for that is if Mike had an optimal internal
02:35 - 02:38rotation, he should be able to get his arm far enough that he can get his
02:38 - 02:42fingertips to touch the table. So let me show you what's going on in the back
02:42 - 02:51here before we end this video. Where a lot of people get
02:51 - 02:57confused with this stretch is they get messed up here. Here's Mike's scapula, here's
02:57 - 03:04the medial border, and then his lateral border is in the table. His lateral border is in
03:04 - 03:09the table, I want him to press for me, retract, once I get his lateral border stabilized
03:09 - 03:16on this table he can then start messing with his arm to get this stretch. How
03:16 - 03:20does that feel, Mike? Definitely tight. Definitely tight, all right let me have
03:20 - 03:23you turn back around one more time, we'll go over a couple little things that sometimes
03:23 - 03:27happen. Sometimes people get a little pain with this stretch and you can make
03:27 - 03:33a couple of easy modifications. As long as you can get the lateral border
03:33 - 03:37stabilized, if somebody is having pain in their anterior shoulder you don't have
03:37 - 03:43to retract them back so far. Probably the easiest modification to make, is
03:43 - 03:46rather than having them all the way in 90 degrees of flexion, which is going to
03:46 - 03:51start to butt that humeral head up against the acromion process, we can
03:51 - 03:55actually have Mike come down to about 70 degrees of flexion, or maybe even 60
03:55 - 04:00degrees of flexion, once again, we get the same position, except now he's kind of
04:00 - 04:04pushing towards his stomach rather than straight towards the table this way.
04:04 - 04:08Does that feel a little better Mike? -It definitely does. Alright so for Mike this
04:08 - 04:11is actually better. We don't want any pain during any of our stretches. If we
04:11 - 04:16start gearing up our pain response we are going to get a reflexive contraction,
04:16 - 04:19once again, we won't get the release that will ensure that we get a lengthening of
04:19 - 04:24this tissue so that we can set it back to optimal length tension, so we can get
04:24 - 04:27optimal performance out of his shoulder. Thanks again, Mike, from Metropolitan
04:27 - 04:33Fitness, I appreciate your help showing the video, and thank you guys!

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