0:00 This is Brent, coming at you with an activation exercise for your deep 0:03 cervical flexors, the longus colli, longus capitis, and rectus capitis 0:07 anterior. These muscles have a propensity to get long and under active in those 0:11 individuals with cervical spine dysfunction, as well as individuals with 0:15 upper body dysfunction. As you guys may remember, some of the muscles that move 0:18 our scapula, specifically our levator scapulae, upper traps, and rhomboids to a 0:22 certain extent, also play a role in neck mechanics. So, these dysfunctions tend to 0:27 be very interrelated. Now, despite being this fairly technical group of muscles, 0:32 and some stuff that you may be a little less familiar with, the exercises 0:36 we're going to use are very simple, I think you'll find them very effective, 0:39 and easy to implement. I'm going to have my friend Leann come out, she's going to 0:44 help me demonstrate these exercises. Now, if you thought of your deep cervical 0:48 flexors, kind of like you think about your deep intrinsic stabilization 0:52 subsystem in your core, you know your TVA etc., how we work these muscles is 0:57 very similar. When we work our deep intrinsic stabilizers for the core, we 1:00 generally challenge people to hold optimal posture against resistance. The 1:06 same thing is going to go for the cervical spine. So, the first thing I'm going to 1:09 have Leanne work on, after we've done all of our mobility work, we've done all of 1:14 our release and our stretching, she's just going to do a chin tuck for me. So, 1:19 in essence, she's going to kind of tuck her chin, and try to make her neck as 1:23 long as possible, while pressing into the table. Now, I want to be very careful to 1:28 match up her posture. So I don't want her tilted to one side or the other, I want 1:33 everything nice and straight this way, I want to make sure her shoulders are down 1:37 and back, right, we don't want to let any of these overactive muscles in the upper 1:41 body dysfunction contribute to this stabilization. She's going to hold for 1:45 two to five seconds, and then I'll have her relax again. So go ahead and relax for me. 1:50 There you go. Let's go ahead and do it again. She can do the same number 1:57 of reps and sets that we do for all of our corrective exercise, so we're looking 2:00 at 12 to 20 repetitions. Now, once I feel like Leann has this down, she's able to 2:05 perform these activities, there's no soreness, we don't have any residual 2:09 soreness, I can start integrating these exercises 2:13 into some of the upper body dysfunction exercises we did in previous videos. So, 2:19 if you guys remember "chest out thumbs out", from our external rotator activation 2:23 videos, she can actually do this and "chest out thumbs out" at the same time! So, 2:34 I'm going to have her tuck her chin, make her neck nice and long, keep her shoulders down, 2:38 and then she'll go ahead and perform "chest out thumbs out". So we start 2:42 integrating this good cervical posture, with some of our other upper body 2:48 exercises, this is going to be really important as we move forward. Now if this 2:52 becomes fairly easy, once again, doing 12 to 20 repetitions for one to three sets, 2:56 I can progress her by increasing the amount of resistance that her cervical 3:01 spine has to work against. So I'm going to go ahead and have Leann stand up, and 3:07 now she's going to do this against the wall. So now her neck has to elongate 3:11 againt the force of gravity, as well as the friction and pressure against this 3:15 wall. So we're going to make sure she has optimal kinetic chain checkpoints, her 3:19 lumbar spine is in a neutral position, I'm going to have her bend her knees just a little bit, 3:23 her shoulders are down and back, and then it's just the same exercise. She's 3:27 going to tuck her chin, and try to make her neck really long. A lot of clients 3:32 hate to do this exercise, it is kind of a fun exercise to make fun of, it's the 3:35 double chin exercise, alright. We don't want to let Leann flex down this way, or 3:40 just press her head back because that will actually increase the tone of some 3:45 of those muscles that are already overactive. You might even use, and 3:48 teach your clients how to use, their own hand, to kind of palpate these muscles 3:53 here in the neck. We don't want over activity of the SCM, which is right here, 3:57 we don't want to see over activity of the scalenes, or the levator scapulae, this 4:01 should all be fairly soft. Now, once we get her doing this with great form, she 4:06 can do the amount of repetitions we want with no residual soreness, once again 4:10 we're going to start integrating it back into those upper body dysfunction 4:13 exercises; our an external rotator activation, which we were just doing, 4:17 "chest out thumbs out". 4:22 Once again, with good posture, she's going to tuck her chin and try to hold 4:27 that, while doing this exercise. Once I see her do this really well, I can go 4:35 ahead and move on and have her do her serratus anterior activation. If you 4:39 remember "wall angels" from our previous video, I can have her work on tucking 4:43 her chin, pressing into the wall, keeping nice and long, and working on those wall 4:48 angels. How's that feeling, tough? -Yeah. You are going to find this is a very 4:52 challenging exercise if you pay attention to your queuing. So, if I keep 4:57 her shoulders down and back, this isn't easy. This isn't easy at all. Now, for the 5:04 most part, if you can get somebody to start integrating their cervical 5:09 spine posture with some of these exercises, you're probably in good shape 5:12 moving forward and you'll be able to back these exercises out of your program. But 5:16 some of your more athletic individuals are going to need even more intense 5:20 exercise. So let me have you get back on the table. 5:30 The next exercise we're going to do is the same exercise, except now I'm 5:33 going to really start challenging her deep cervical flexors to hold a 5:38 significant amount of weight. I'm going to put her into that cervical retraction, 5:42 with no support. If she can hold this, and I just use a stopwatch, if 5:48 she can hold this for 20 seconds, maybe several sets of 20 seconds, this gets 5:54 fairly intense, from here I could then go prone, so let me have you go ahead and 5:59 flip all the way over. Same thing, I'm going to set her up, this kind 6:07 of portion of her back is going to look very similar to a cobra. She's 6:10 going to be retracted, depressed here, and then I'm going to make sure I 6:14 put her head into neutral position, and once again I'm going to go ahead and 6:18 time her for maybe up to 20 seconds, maybe having some individuals in this 6:22 position we could get up to 60 seconds. Some of your athletes who take hits, you 6:28 might even want to experiment with being able to stabilize in the frontal plane. 6:32 The way we would do that is have them lay on their side, it's a 6:39 little tough to get somebody in optimal posture, you're going to probably have to 6:42 do a little bit of queuing, but then again I'm going to set her head in 6:46 optimal position, and once again I'm going to time. You've got to be a little careful with 6:51 this variation, once again, I probably only use this with my most intense 6:55 athletes, that they're scalenes don't get fired up here. But, if they are taking 7:00 hits, it is important that they learn how to stabilize in this position, in this 7:04 plane as well. Now, I'm going to go ahead and have you go back to prone for me. 7:11 Once you get these exercises down, you should have a fairly easy time 7:16 integrating them back into some of the exercises you already do. As I mentioned 7:19 before, this is very similar to a cobra. So if you're planning in advance a 7:25 little bit, and you start putting Cobras in their program for upper back work, or 7:30 for some of their core work, and you're paying attention to this, you should be 7:34 able to phase this out of your activation programming, so that you can 7:38 increase the intensity of your programming over time, 7:41 and save yourself a little bit of time. The same thing goes with the supine 7:45 variations, let me have you flip over. 7:49 Hopefully if you guys have trained this position well, you could see where maybe 7:53 on a ball bridge, or a ball chest press, that you should be able to queue, get 7:58 somebody holding this position, and if you are using those exercises in your 8:02 weight training program, you can probably start phasing these exercises out. I hope 8:06 you get great progress from these exercises, I hope you see an 8:10 increase in your posture, I hope you see an increase in your performance, I'll 8:14 talk to you soon. Thanks again, Leann.
