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

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This is Brent of the Brookbush Institute,

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and in this video we're doing forearm

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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comments and questions below.

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Flexor Activation

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

Flexor Activation

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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