0:06 This is Brent, President of B2C Fitness, and you can see here Mike is doing a 0:10 posterior shoulder stretch, or a sleeper stretch. Now, this stretch stretches a few 0:16 structures in the back of our shoulder including our posterior capsule, as well 0:19 as our posterior deltoid, and these muscles have a propensity to get tight 0:23 and overactive in those individuals with upper body dysfunction. Now, Mike has 0:28 a bit of upper body dysfunction, it is of special concern that we fix it with him 0:32 because he is a baseball pitcher. We don't want to take the chance that those 0:35 short and long structures, not being at optimal length, are going to reduce his 0:40 performance and increases risk of injury. Now, you can see Mike has kind of a 0:45 complicated setup going on here with this stretch, and the stretch is one of those 0:48 stretches that gets poorly done more often than I see it actually get done 0:52 with good technique. First things first, you can see I've used a yoga block here, 0:55 you could use a rolled up towel or anything else, to try to get his head 0:59 level. We have to remember that the shoulder attaches to the scapula, and a 1:02 lot of what controls scapular movement are muscles that attach to the neck, so 1:06 I want the neck in neutral position so that those muscles are in neutral position. 1:10 Then I want you to notice that I have him at 90 degrees of flexion at the 1:15 shoulder, as well as 90 degrees at the elbow. His scapula is actually retracted 1:22 and depressed, and we'll show you that at a different angle here in a second. The 1:25 scapula is retracted and depressed and the lateral border stabilized against 1:29 this table so that his scapula doesn't move, so that when we do actually push 1:34 into internal rotation, we can ensure that we are getting a posterior 1:39 shoulder stretch, and not just moving the scapula. So once he got to 90, is 1:45 retracted, depressed, his head's level, all I've had him do is he's actually not pushing 1:50 down his arm, he's just letting this arm kind of fall forward, he's been 1:55 stabilizing his elbow with the other hand, and it's really just the weight of 1:59 his arm that's helping to assist with a little 2:02 extra force on this stretch. These are small structures, They're small 2:06 muscles, we don't need an excessive amount of force, the only thing we're going to 2:10 get from more force is either injury, or potentially just so much muscle spindle 2:15 activity that we never get a relaxation response. He's going to hold this 2:20 position for 30 seconds to 2 minutes. You can see here Mike's tight, optimal 2:25 internal rotation, which is the direction we're going in here would be about 70 2:30 degrees. A good queue for that is if Mike had an optimal internal 2:35 rotation, he should be able to get his arm far enough that he can get his 2:38 fingertips to touch the table. So let me show you what's going on in the back 2:42 here before we end this video. Where a lot of people get 2:51 confused with this stretch is they get messed up here. Here's Mike's scapula, here's 2:57 the medial border, and then his lateral border is in the table. His lateral border is in 3:04 the table, I want him to press for me, retract, once I get his lateral border stabilized 3:09 on this table he can then start messing with his arm to get this stretch. How 3:16 does that feel, Mike? Definitely tight. Definitely tight, all right let me have 3:20 you turn back around one more time, we'll go over a couple little things that sometimes 3:23 happen. Sometimes people get a little pain with this stretch and you can make 3:27 a couple of easy modifications. As long as you can get the lateral border 3:33 stabilized, if somebody is having pain in their anterior shoulder you don't have 3:37 to retract them back so far. Probably the easiest modification to make, is 3:43 rather than having them all the way in 90 degrees of flexion, which is going to 3:46 start to butt that humeral head up against the acromion process, we can 3:51 actually have Mike come down to about 70 degrees of flexion, or maybe even 60 3:55 degrees of flexion, once again, we get the same position, except now he's kind of 4:00 pushing towards his stomach rather than straight towards the table this way. 4:04 Does that feel a little better Mike? -It definitely does. Alright so for Mike this 4:08 is actually better. We don't want any pain during any of our stretches. If we 4:11 start gearing up our pain response we are going to get a reflexive contraction, 4:16 once again, we won't get the release that will ensure that we get a lengthening of 4:19 this tissue so that we can set it back to optimal length tension, so we can get 4:24 optimal performance out of his shoulder. Thanks again, Mike, from Metropolitan 4:27 Fitness, I appreciate your help showing the video, and thank you guys!
