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This is Brent, coming at you with an
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cervical flexors, the longus colli, longus capitis, and rectus capitis
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anterior. These muscles have a propensity to get long and under active in those
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individuals with cervical spine dysfunction, as well as individuals with
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upper body dysfunction. As you guys may remember, some of the muscles that move
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our scapula, specifically our levator scapulae, upper traps, and rhomboids to a
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certain extent, also play a role in neck mechanics. So, these dysfunctions tend to
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be very interrelated. Now, despite being this fairly technical group of muscles,
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and some stuff that you may be a little less familiar with, the exercises
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we're going to use are very simple, I think you'll find them very effective,
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and easy to implement. I'm going to have my friend Leann come out, she's going to
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help me demonstrate these exercises. Now, if you thought of your deep cervical
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flexors, kind of like you think about your deep intrinsic stabilization
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subsystem in your core, you know your TVA etc., how we work these muscles is
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very similar. When we work our deep intrinsic stabilizers for the core, we
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generally challenge people to hold optimal posture against resistance. The
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same thing is going to go for the cervical spine. So, the first thing I'm going to
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have Leanne work on, after we've done all of our mobility work, we've done all of
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our release and our stretching, she's just going to do a chin tuck for me. So,
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in essence, she's going to kind of tuck her chin, and try to make her neck as
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long as possible, while pressing into the table. Now, I want to be very careful to
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match up her posture. So I don't want her tilted to one side or the other, I want
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everything nice and straight this way, I want to make sure her shoulders are down
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and back, right, we don't want to let any of these overactive muscles in the upper
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body dysfunction contribute to this stabilization. She's going to hold for
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two to five seconds, and then I'll have her relax again. So go ahead and relax for me.
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There you go. Let's go ahead and do it again. She can do the same number
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of reps and sets that we do for all of our corrective exercise, so we're looking
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at 12 to 20 repetitions. Now, once I feel like Leann has this down, she's able to
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perform these activities, there's no soreness, we don't have any residual
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soreness, I can start integrating these exercises
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into some of the upper body dysfunction exercises we did in previous videos. So,
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if you guys remember "chest out thumbs out", from our external rotator activation
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videos, she can actually do this and "chest out thumbs out" at the same time! So,
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I'm going to have her tuck her chin, make her neck nice and long, keep her shoulders down,
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and then she'll go ahead and perform "chest out thumbs out". So we start
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integrating this good cervical posture, with some of our other upper body
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exercises, this is going to be really important as we move forward. Now if this
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becomes fairly easy, once again, doing 12 to 20 repetitions for one to three sets,
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I can progress her by increasing the amount of resistance that her cervical
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spine has to work against. So I'm going to go ahead and have Leann stand up, and
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now she's going to do this against the wall. So now her neck has to elongate
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againt the force of gravity, as well as the friction and pressure against this
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wall. So we're going to make sure she has optimal kinetic chain checkpoints, her
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lumbar spine is in a neutral position, I'm going to have her bend her knees just a little bit,
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her shoulders are down and back, and then it's just the same exercise. She's
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going to tuck her chin, and try to make her neck really long. A lot of clients
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hate to do this exercise, it is kind of a fun exercise to make fun of, it's the
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double chin exercise, alright. We don't want to let Leann flex down this way, or
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just press her head back because that will actually increase the tone of some
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of those muscles that are already overactive. You might even use, and
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teach your clients how to use, their own hand, to kind of palpate these muscles
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here in the neck. We don't want over activity of the SCM, which is right here,
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we don't want to see over activity of the scalenes, or the levator scapulae, this
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should all be fairly soft. Now, once we get her doing this with great form, she
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can do the amount of repetitions we want with no residual soreness, once again
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we're going to start integrating it back into those upper body dysfunction
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exercises; our an external rotator activation, which we were just doing,
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"chest out thumbs out".
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Once again, with good posture, she's going to tuck her chin and try to hold
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that, while doing this exercise. Once I see her do this really well, I can go
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ahead and move on and have her do her serratus anterior activation. If you
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remember "wall angels" from our previous video, I can have her work on tucking
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her chin, pressing into the wall, keeping nice and long, and working on those wall
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angels. How's that feeling, tough? -Yeah. You are going to find this is a very
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challenging exercise if you pay attention to your queuing. So, if I keep
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her shoulders down and back, this isn't easy. This isn't easy at all. Now, for the
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most part, if you can get somebody to start integrating their cervical
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spine posture with some of these exercises, you're probably in good shape
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moving forward and you'll be able to back these exercises out of your program. But
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some of your more athletic individuals are going to need even more intense
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exercise. So let me have you get back on the table.
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The next exercise we're going to do is the same exercise, except now I'm
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going to really start challenging her deep cervical flexors to hold a
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significant amount of weight. I'm going to put her into that cervical retraction,
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with no support. If she can hold this, and I just use a stopwatch, if
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she can hold this for 20 seconds, maybe several sets of 20 seconds, this gets
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fairly intense, from here I could then go prone, so let me have you go ahead and
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flip all the way over. Same thing, I'm going to set her up, this kind
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of portion of her back is going to look very similar to a cobra. She's
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going to be retracted, depressed here, and then I'm going to make sure I
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put her head into neutral position, and once again I'm going to go ahead and
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time her for maybe up to 20 seconds, maybe having some individuals in this
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position we could get up to 60 seconds. Some of your athletes who take hits, you
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might even want to experiment with being able to stabilize in the frontal plane.
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The way we would do that is have them lay on their side, it's a
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little tough to get somebody in optimal posture, you're going to probably have to
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do a little bit of queuing, but then again I'm going to set her head in
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optimal position, and once again I'm going to time. You've got to be a little careful with
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this variation, once again, I probably only use this with my most intense
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athletes, that they're scalenes don't get fired up here. But, if they are taking
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hits, it is important that they learn how to stabilize in this position, in this
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plane as well. Now, I'm going to go ahead and have you go back to prone for me.
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Once you get these exercises down, you should have a fairly easy time
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integrating them back into some of the exercises you already do. As I mentioned
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before, this is very similar to a cobra. So if you're planning in advance a
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little bit, and you start putting Cobras in their program for upper back work, or
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for some of their core work, and you're paying attention to this, you should be
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able to phase this out of your activation programming, so that you can
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increase the intensity of your programming over time,
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and save yourself a little bit of time. The same thing goes with the supine
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variations, let me have you flip over.
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Hopefully if you guys have trained this position well, you could see where maybe
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on a ball bridge, or a ball chest press, that you should be able to queue, get
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somebody holding this position, and if you are using those exercises in your
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weight training program, you can probably start phasing these exercises out. I hope
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you get great progress from these exercises, I hope you see an
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increase in your posture, I hope you see an increase in your performance, I'll