0:00 This is Brent coming at you with progressions for external rotator 0:03 activation. Now, in a previous video we did this optimal position, right here, 0:09 this is a wonderful way to get things going. But, the problem becomes, how do I 0:13 take it up a notch? I have my friend Rob to thank, one of our human movement 0:18 science geek-outs, we came up with a way of getting us out of this neutral 0:22 position so we can start working on strength in other ranges. Now, Rob is 0:26 going to get up on the splint here, it's going to be in quadruped position, but 0:30 you kind of have to find something to get the arms elevated on, because we 0:34 are going to have arms bent at 90 degrees. Now the problem with taking him out of this 0:39 neutral position here, is when I see people do, let's say external 0:44 rotation at 90 degrees of abduction, usually what I end up seeing is a lot of 0:48 compensation at the shoulder complex. We get that elevation of the 0:51 superior angle of the scapula, we get this thing, a lot of anterior tipping, I 0:56 don't want to see any of that because now, we might be getting good external 0:59 rotator activation here, but we're contributing to compensation everywhere 1:03 else. This ingenious little exercise that Rob showed me, gets the shoulder girdle 1:09 weight-bearing, which means now I can queue scapular depression and protraction, I 1:15 now know that he is stable, his serratus anterior is nice and active, which is one 1:20 of our under active muscles, and now all I have to do is have him queue into external 1:27 rotation. Actually just the friction, you see we even put a towel down to make it 1:32 slicker, but just the friction of the surface and his body weight is enough to make 1:37 this really, really, hard. Not to mention, his range of motion is fairly limited 1:42 because he's working against all of these muscles that are now stretched at 1:46 90 degrees of shoulder flexion. If I wanted to progress this exercise, it's 1:51 actually really simple. I just give him this fit loop, I know you have seen 1:57 fit loops before, a very, very, useful piece of equipment, very cheap, 2:06 and now he can go one at a time, using one side as a stable arm. So this 2:12 is stable, he can go unilateral, or we can progress it a little further and go 2:15 bilateral, which makes this really, really, really, tough. Rob and I were talking 2:22 about it a little bit, we're still working through this exercise, finding 2:25 out, what I like to call, the personality of the exercise. We're not 2:28 quite sure if it's twice as tough because of how much thoracic mobility it 2:31 takes, or maybe just working against a lot of your own musculature, or if it's 2:37 just the fact of double the resistance on the band. Now, if you didn't have 2:41 all this setup, there is kind of a quick and dirty version of this exercise, 2:45 which is up against the wall. So if Rob does the same thing against the wall, 2:51 it's almost like a plank at this point, like if you thought about setting 2:55 somebody up as in a plank position, against the wall, same nice kinetic chain 2:59 checkpoints, have them walk their feet back just a little bit, so that they have 3:03 a little bit of weight into the wall queue them once again into depression, and 3:07 protraction at the scapula, and then he can do the same external rotation, just 3:11 using the resistance of the wall initially, he could even walk his feet 3:16 out a little further and increase that resistance a little bit, and, of course, I 3:23 could already see that this is really hard, I know you guys can't see his face, 3:26 but we can always add the band back, and of course you know fit loops come 3:30 in many different resistances. So, squeeze your glutes for me, tuck under, good, and 3:36 external rotation. So there you go, a neat little progression on external 3:42 rotator activation. I hope you guys enjoy this exercise. I hope you see more 3:45 and more results for your clients, I look forward to talking to you soon!
