Flexor Activation

Flexor Activation is an innovative physical therapy program designed to increase strength and range of motion in the legs, hips, and spine. This program emphasizes flexibility and proper stretching techniques, allowing athletes and regular gym-goers to significantly improve their bodies' performance. Flexor Activation utilizes a variety of passive and active stretches and exercises to target tight muscles and restore overall strength, flexibility, and balance. Ideal for a range of uses, Flexor Activation helps increase your body's flexibility and

Back To Videos

Transcript

00:00:0400:00:08

This is Brent of the Brookbush Institute,

00:00:0400:00:08

and in this video we're doing forearm

00:00:0800:00:12

exercises for those exhibiting forearm dysfunction. That would be issues with the

00:00:1200:00:16

wrist, or forearm, or elbow. I'm going to have my friend Crystal come out,, she's

00:00:1600:00:22

going to help me demonstrate flexor activation. Now all of these exercises

00:00:2200:00:27

for the forearm are fairly simple, and fairly simple to mess up. So we need to

00:00:2700:00:33

be very careful with the devils and the details of these exercises. Now we

00:00:3300:00:38

know that forearm dysfunction involves excessive pronation, ulnar deviation, and

00:00:3800:00:43

extension, right it's that typing position essentially. So what we want to do is try

00:00:4300:00:48

to get out of that extended position by strengthening our flexors. The detail

00:00:4800:00:51

comes in, is when we strengthen the flexors we have to make sure we're not

00:00:5100:00:56

going into flexion and ulnar deviation, because that's going to strengthen our

00:00:5600:01:02

flexors sure, but into the compensation we're trying to get out of. So what

00:01:0200:01:05

you're going to use is this FlexBar here. These are the FlexBars from

00:01:0500:01:08

Theraband, they come in a bunch of colors and strengths. They're not that

00:01:0800:01:13

expensive so it's easy to give these for home exercise programs. Now the

00:01:1300:01:17

difference with this particular exercise is the side that you're working on

00:01:1700:01:22

actually goes on the bottom, and then your top hand is going to be an anchor

00:01:2200:01:28

for the FlexBar for you to twist against. Now if I just asked her to twist

00:01:2800:01:34

the FlexBar, yes--that's flexion, so this way, and I have

00:01:3400:01:38

a feeling that if I just ask her to to do flexion, she's already doing it. You

00:01:3800:01:42

can see how she's going into this ulnar deviation, how she's breaking at the

00:01:4200:01:47

wrist here, down. We need to figure out a way to get her to stop doing that, and

00:01:4700:01:52

then we can actually also add a trick here to increase the range of motion of

00:01:5200:01:58

this exercise. The trick first for ulnar deviation is -if you guys get them to

00:01:5800:02:03

think about putting this little part of their wrist, this indentation right

00:02:0300:02:08

above the styloid process of their ulna; if they think about keeping

00:02:0800:02:13

that down on the table, and you don't have to like crush the table, just

00:02:1300:02:18

so that's touching. It's actually impossible for them to

00:02:1800:02:23

keep that touching during the exercise and ulnar deviate. And so I want you to

00:02:2300:02:30

flex but keep that down. You guys can see already now she's not breaking at the

00:02:3000:02:34

wrist and going into ulnar deviation, because if she does that would lift that

00:02:3400:02:40

little divot just above the styloid process off the table. You can see

00:02:4000:02:43

now she's all of a sudden pursed lips, all of a sudden this exercise just went from

00:02:4300:02:47

oh yeah this is easy, to i got to think about what I'm doing.

00:02:4700:02:52

You'll see a lot of tongues sticking out too, like people try to figure out how to

00:02:5200:02:56

get their wrist to move that way. Like I said not hard, devils in the details

00:02:5600:03:01

though. Now the other trick I can do just to get her a little bit more range of

00:03:0100:03:05

motion because sometimes it does feel a little limiting to just kind of only go

00:03:0500:03:09

into flexion from neutral, is we can actually have you go into flexion from

00:03:0900:03:13

an extended position right. It really gets you a little bit more strengthening,

00:03:1300:03:17

and all you have to do is is kind of start back like this. Start in that

00:03:1700:03:22

extended position, make sure that little divot above the wrist is down, reposition

00:03:2200:03:27

this hand and hold, and then go ahead and go into flexion. Of course it's going to

00:03:2700:03:31

make that a lot harder too, because as she gets into end range flexion she's going

00:03:3100:03:39

to have twisted this FlexBar up a lot more. How does that feel? Tough, We'll do that 2-2-4

00:03:3900:03:45

count, or i'm sorry 4-2-2 count, so two-second concentric two-second

00:03:4500:03:51

hold, and then two, three, four second eccentric that we use for activation

00:03:5100:03:58

exercises. I'd want her to do 12 to 20 reps, assuming that she could do 12 to 20 reps

00:03:5800:04:02

with at least the lightest FlexBar pain free. Of course if she started feeling pain

00:04:0200:04:08

I would just have her stop there for today. We can do these exercises daily or

00:04:0800:04:13

twice a day, and given the position she's in, this is really easy stuff to do with

00:04:1300:04:19

a desk, so it's great home exercise. If she could do, at your desk yeah, or well I

00:04:1900:04:24

guess it's not home exercise anymore it's work exercise. Okay it's

00:04:2400:04:28

a work exercise program, we're making up new terms now.

00:04:2800:04:37

But you guys can go up to heavier FlexBars as they get stronger, and

00:04:3700:04:40

I'd expect somebody's flexion strength to be able to get pretty strong,

00:04:4000:04:46

even with all these cues of starting in an extended position, making sure they

00:04:4600:04:53

stay out of ulnar deviation. And we want to make sure that they stay out of ulnar

00:04:5300:04:57

deviation because we don't want synergistic dominance of our ulnaris

00:04:5700:05:01

muscles, that would be like our extensor carpi ulnaris and our flexor carpi ulnaris

00:05:0100:05:16

muscles. That's a little harder here, this might be a little

00:05:1600:05:23

rough. Yeah probably not going to happen through full range, but at least now we

00:05:2300:05:27

kind of know that the red one works. The yellow one looked a little too light,

00:05:2700:05:31

blue ones a little too heavy. Okay I can send her home with the red FlexBar and

00:05:3100:05:35

she can work on that this week, and then we can move up on to the next level the

00:05:3500:05:39

next time she comes in. There is a progression of this flexion exercise

00:05:3900:05:43

which is called a reverse Tyler twist, which we're going to talk about in our next

00:05:4300:05:47

video. But I'm going to go ahead and make the point that you should probably do

00:05:4700:05:53

this exercise first, for no other reason than teaching the cue of staying out of

00:05:5300:05:57

ulnar deviation. Once I show you guys that Tyler twist video I think you'll

00:05:5700:06:01

realize that there's no easy way to cue somebody out of that once they get to

00:06:0100:06:06

that progression, so this is a really good foundational exercise to start

00:06:0600:06:12

teaching proper wrist mechanics during these exercises. I hope you enjoyed this

00:06:1200:06:16

video. I hope you guys get great outcomes with these techniques, feel free to leave

00:06:1600:06:19

comments and questions below.

You can only view 3 videos without an account. Become a Member to access all videos on the website.

Flexor Activation

Transcript

Any Questions, Concerns or Recommendations?

Please contact us through the
Support Page

Legal

Social

You can only view 3 videos without an account. Become a Member to access all videos on the website.

Flexor Activation

Transcript

Certifications, Courses & More

Any Questions, Concerns or Recommendations? Please contact us through the Support Page

Legal

Social

Any Questions, Concerns or Recommendations?

Please contact us through the
Support Page