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This is Brent, coming at you with another
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going to do the biceps femoris. The biceps femoris is one of those muscles
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that has a propensity towards overactivity, some signs of that would be
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feet turn out, knees bow in or knees bow out, and some individuals with
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lumbo-pelvic hip complex dysfunction who have a little bit of SI joint
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involvement will also get an overactive biceps femoris. I'm going to have my friend
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Leanne come out, she's going to help me demonstrate this exercise. First, just
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a little kinesiology. So, the biceps femoris is the lateral hamstring muscle
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here. It connects just pass the fibular head here. It's going to cause that
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tibial external rotation, which is where we see that feet turn out thing, by
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causing tibial external rotation, that's the same as femoral internal rotation, so
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if she does have that propensity to have her feet turn out, it could also bring her
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knees in. Since your biceps femoris can also externally rotate the femur at the
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hip, it could cause knees bowing out, and then it can also cause a posterior
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pelvic tilt, which we basically only see when the SI joint is involved. So what am
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I going to need to watch for as she's doing this exercise? Well, I'm going to
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need to watch for all of those things not happening. I don't want her feet
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turning out, I'm going to make sure her knee stays in a nice neutral position,
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and I might actually force a little bit of internal rotation and adduction at
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the femur, and I'll show you a couple of clever ways how we're going to do that.
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Now, the biceps femoris dynamic stretch is actually a modification of an
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exercise you have already seen, in fact, Leanne was the model in that video.
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That's the single leg deadlift touchdown. The only difference I'm going to do here
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is, if I'm going to work on dynamic flexibility, which is that increase in
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tempo for stretching, I'm going to give Leanne a little bit of a kickstand, so
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she's going to get a little bit of a kick stand so that she can go down with
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a little bit more tempo, get a good stretch, without having to worry about
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stability quite so much. So let's go ahead and see that Leanne.
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Good, and then step up, and then you can actually step that foot back, cool, and
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then step back a little kickstand, reach forward, squeeze your glute, and step back -
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I'm sorry, step back with that foot. Let's try that again. So, little
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kickstand here, squeeze your glute, and back up, that foot forward. Good, and then
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you can go the other side. So as Leanne gets this she can start speeding it up
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slowly but surely. I'm actually going to have Leanne turn forward for you. So let
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me have you back up just a little bit. So you know what I'm looking for from
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kinetic chain checkpoints. So Leanne's going to step back, and then she's going
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to reach with this hand to that toe. Now, stay down there for a second for me Leanne.
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Now, what you will notice is that's actually forcing her pelvis this way,
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which is that internal rotation and adduction I was looking for at this hip.
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I'm going to watch her kinetic chain checkpoints, making sure her knee stays
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over her foot, so I don't want that knee to cave. I also don't want this knee to cave.
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And then she gets back up, I don't want her to use her biceps femoris which
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has been synergistically dominant, I want her to thrust her hips forward and
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use her glute complex. Good. Go ahead and stand back up, use your glute complex. So
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we can kind of kill two birds with one stone here, get a good biceps femoris
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stretch, and then reinforce good glute activation. Now, if I wanted to progress
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this, I could go from this step back progression, to a stepping forward
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progression. So let me have you back up this way, now what you're going
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to do is just repeated touchdowns. Step forward.
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I know this doesn't look like it would be all that much more complicated,
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but it is. It's a little harder to get the distance, it's a little harder to
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make sure you're getting a good stretch with each one. From here, if
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they're really, really good, I could have them just go back to a single leg
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touchdown. Of course, at that point I also might phase this out of the dynamic
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stretching portion, and phase it into another exercise. I want to show you
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a couple more tricks that you can use to increase this dynamic flexibility
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and get a little bit more glute activation. One of my favorite tricks is
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this anterior to posterior pull with a band. So I'm going to have Leanne go ahead and
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wrap this around her waist, she's going to step forward towards me. Now, obviously
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she can't do that repeated forward step as she was doing before, because
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eventually she'll just hit the end of the band. But we can do that little
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step-back variation we started with. This anterior to posterior pull is going to
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force her tibialis anterior to work a little bit harder, and then after she
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comes back up she's going to really have to
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squeeze her glutes and thrust her hips forward against this band to get back up.
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So, once again, now we have two birds with one stone, I'm getting a good biceps
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femoris stretch, and good glute activation. Now, a couple mistakes I
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see that you've got to be really wary of, is notice how Leanne is not locking her knee
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and she does this. She's getting a little bend in her knee, and getting most of the
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stretch of the biceps femoris by going into hip flexion, so let me see a couple more
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of those. If you lock this knee, the only thing you're going to end up doing is
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recruiting that deep longitudinal subsystem, which is the biceps femoris,
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glute is going to shut down, and we're going to actually be reinforcing the
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problem that we're trying to get out of. The other thing is this is not a reverse
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lunge. So we do want it to be a deadlift mechanic, and then from here
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realize that you don't have to continue doing just biceps femoris
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stretching all by itself. You could phase this into other exercises. One
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of the things we have to do is we have to plan ahead. If we just keep adding on
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more and more exercises: static stretch, dynamic stretch, release techniques,
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reactive stabilization, subsystem integration, we end up with these huge
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programs that take forever and we never have enough time. So one thing I would do
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with this exercise, if she can do this really well, she can get into the
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single-leg touchdown, I might go, 'okay well I can make a subsystem integration
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exercise out of this, and instead have her do
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a single leg touchdown with PNF carry away
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as her subsystem exercise, and now I don't have to do it during dynamic
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stretching because it's already getting done'. You guys have probably seen this in
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a previous video we did. So go ahead and let's let's see this one. You can
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see it's the same lower body mechanic that we did before, maybe at a little
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slower tempo honestly, but now I get a lot of posterior oblique subsystem
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recruitment, a little shoulder work, and a good full-body program. Of course, I could
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turn this into a single leg touchdown to posterior kinetic chain toss to balance,
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which would be our reactive stabilization exercise, and I'm sure
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there're many other directions we could go to start killing two birds with one
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stone. I hope you enjoy this progression, I hope you enjoy this
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dynamic stretch and get tons more performance out of it. I'll see you in the