0:07 This is Brent of the Brookbush Institute at the Independent Training 0:10 Spot, and I wanted to show you guys an exercise that I've been using personally 0:14 to help me get back on the basketball court. Now I have cervical dysfunction. I 0:19 have a history of herniation, you guys might start thinking to yourselves well 0:23 now I know why he came up with all the cervical activation exercises and 0:26 grouped them together. Yeah I've been working on them myself. I have good 0:30 strength, good range of motion, but I still have a problem that is, when I get 0:33 on the basketball court after I finished playing ball, oftentimes i'll get 0:37 flared up and i'm sore for a couple weeks, which has made it really hard to 0:40 get back into regular training. So i started letting that spin around in my 0:45 head, and started thinking to myself what am i missing from this corrective 0:49 exercise, this intervention model i've been using for the cervical spine, and it 0:55 hit me that I haven't been doing any sort of reactive activation for my deep 1:01 cervical flexors. Now you guys are thinking to yourself how am I gonna get 1:05 myself to react quickly with my deep cervical flexors. Well obviously I don't 1:10 want to throw things at people's heads. I don't want to like knock people across 1:14 the head, make them like react to that that's going to look a little abusive. 1:17 I had to come up with an exercise that would force the rectus capitis 1:23 anterior, the longus colli, and the longest capitis to contract hard and 1:27 quickly, while I threw something. So i started thinking through this movement 1:34 pattern, realized it was pretty close to that deep cervical flexor isolated 1:38 activation exercise we did, and realize that if i did that while throwing a ball 1:44 that i could get that increase in force, that quick increase in force on my neck, 1:49 that would help teach those muscles to react quickly. So I'm going have Mike 1:55 come out, Mike is going to help me demonstrate this exercise i came up with 2:00 for deep cervical flexor reactive activation. Now first things first, I'm 2:05 just using a bit of resistive band tape, I've tied two loops in the ends 2:11 here that are good size for his hand, without his thumb involved. We want it to 2:15 be over his hand and then you guys can see it's tied here in the middle to make 2:18 it a little shorter, in this case make it harder on Mike. I'm going to go 2:22 ahead and slip that over his neck, he's going to put his hands through these 2:25 holes, and now he's kind of all t-rexed up. All right so we got him in t-rex 2:31 position, and I think you guys can already see from this set up what 2:35 exactly we're going to do. Mike's then going to grab this ball, and as he pushes 2:42 the ball into the wall as fast as he can, you'll see that he has a quick increase 2:46 in tension on this band, which is going to force him to work real hard and real 2:52 quickly to keep that chin tucked position. So let's see it Mike, good, 2:58 higher, good try not to hit me, good keep that chin tucked. Alright so every time 3:05 he does that you can almost see his body jolting, as he has to like try to keep 3:10 his chin tuck. Good, let's see 20 reps. That was like 12, and so I do 12 to 20 reps of 3:20 this exercise, and how would we progress well that's actually pretty easy, I just 3:26 increased the resistance of the band, or I could tie the band even shorter, right 3:30 so that he has even more of an increase in resistance, so that would be the 3:34 easiest way to progress. We have been experimenting a little bit with can we 3:40 work on a little bit of holding the head in rotation, and using the peripheral 3:44 vision to catch the ball. This hasn't been working out as well, but we're 3:47 giving it another shot today. So I'm going to have him look maybe five, six feet off 3:52 center. Alright so you can still see the ball in his peripheral vision, Mike's a 3:56 great athlete so I have no worry about him actually hitting himself. He's 4:01 going to still keep that chin tuck position with rotation, and now see if he 4:05 can do the same thing. 4:08 Takes a little practice guys, takes a little practice. Good, so now i'm still 4:14 strengthening those deep cervical flexors, but with a little rotation, and 4:17 of course i could have them do that in the other direction. Great, try to keep a 4:28 little more chin tuck for me. Good and relax. Now i should mention guys, if you 4:35 don't have resistive band tape, you can use one of these resistant bands with 4:41 handles, it's just not quite as easy. 4:51 Alright, actually we need to go ahead and tie a knot back here so it's a little 4:54 shorter, and I just tie a slipknot guys so I can get the knot out again, there we 5:01 go. Same thing, good, good, good, good, good. Now be careful, if you guys use this, 5:17 realize it's not as tight around his hands. I have accidentally let go of one 5:22 of these a couple times, and once you turn yourself in, you basically turn 5:25 your neck into a giant slingshot and hit whoever's behind you. So make sure that 5:28 you have some clearance behind you. Thanks Mike for helping me demonstrate 5:31 this exercise, because what I've noticed since I added this exercise, is my flare 5:36 ups are starting to decrease, which makes me think that I'm on the right track. Now 5:40 before you go use this with a bunch of different people, realize the scope of 5:44 this exercise is fairly narrow. I'm not going to throw this at my mom right. If my 5:50 mom came in with with cervical dysfunction and she's having neck pain, 5:53 I'm probably not going to progress you to the point of doing reactive 5:56 activation. However if I have an athlete like Mike who comes in, and he tells me 6:02 he has neck pain and he's a throwing athlete, a pitcher, this better be 6:08 something I do before he gets back out onto the field, because if his deep 6:13 cervical flexors can't activate fast enough to stabilize his neck when he 6:17 throws, what good is all the work i did. Guys I hope you get great great outcomes 6:23 from this technique, have some fun with it, experiment with the looking in 6:27 different directions. You can experiment with maybe hitting different targets on 6:31 the wall. You guys could use maybe medicine balls instead of a stability 6:35 ball, or maybe a bigger stability ball for a bigger challenge. I look forward to 6:39 hearing from you. 6:47
