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This is Brent, President of B2C Fitness,
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and you can see here Mike is doing a
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posterior shoulder stretch, or a sleeper stretch. Now, this stretch stretches a few
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structures in the back of our shoulder including our posterior capsule, as well
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as our posterior deltoid, and these muscles have a propensity to get tight
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and overactive in those individuals with upper body dysfunction. Now, Mike has
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a bit of upper body dysfunction, it is of special concern that we fix it with him
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because he is a baseball pitcher. We don't want to take the chance that those
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short and long structures, not being at optimal length, are going to reduce his
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performance and increases risk of injury. Now, you can see Mike has kind of a
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complicated setup going on here with this stretch, and the stretch is one of those
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stretches that gets poorly done more often than I see it actually get done
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with good technique. First things first, you can see I've used a yoga block here,
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you could use a rolled up towel or anything else, to try to get his head
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level. We have to remember that the shoulder attaches to the scapula, and a
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lot of what controls scapular movement are muscles that attach to the neck, so
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I want the neck in neutral position so that those muscles are in neutral position.
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Then I want you to notice that I have him at 90 degrees of flexion at the
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shoulder, as well as 90 degrees at the elbow. His scapula is actually retracted
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and depressed, and we'll show you that at a different angle here in a second. The
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scapula is retracted and depressed and the lateral border stabilized against
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this table so that his scapula doesn't move, so that when we do actually push
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into internal rotation, we can ensure that we are getting a posterior
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shoulder stretch, and not just moving the scapula. So once he got to 90, is
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retracted, depressed, his head's level, all I've had him do is he's actually not pushing
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down his arm, he's just letting this arm kind of fall forward, he's been
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stabilizing his elbow with the other hand, and it's really just the weight of
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his arm that's helping to assist with a little
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extra force on this stretch. These are small structures, They're small
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muscles, we don't need an excessive amount of force, the only thing we're going to
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get from more force is either injury, or potentially just so much muscle spindle
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activity that we never get a relaxation response. He's going to hold this
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position for 30 seconds to 2 minutes. You can see here Mike's tight, optimal
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internal rotation, which is the direction we're going in here would be about 70
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degrees. A good queue for that is if Mike had an optimal internal
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rotation, he should be able to get his arm far enough that he can get his
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fingertips to touch the table. So let me show you what's going on in the back
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here before we end this video. Where a lot of people get
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confused with this stretch is they get messed up here. Here's Mike's scapula, here's
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the medial border, and then his lateral border is in the table. His lateral border is in
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the table, I want him to press for me, retract, once I get his lateral border stabilized
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on this table he can then start messing with his arm to get this stretch. How
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does that feel, Mike? Definitely tight. Definitely tight, all right let me have
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you turn back around one more time, we'll go over a couple little things that sometimes
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happen. Sometimes people get a little pain with this stretch and you can make
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a couple of easy modifications. As long as you can get the lateral border
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stabilized, if somebody is having pain in their anterior shoulder you don't have
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to retract them back so far. Probably the easiest modification to make, is
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rather than having them all the way in 90 degrees of flexion, which is going to
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start to butt that humeral head up against the acromion process, we can
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actually have Mike come down to about 70 degrees of flexion, or maybe even 60
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degrees of flexion, once again, we get the same position, except now he's kind of
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pushing towards his stomach rather than straight towards the table this way.
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Does that feel a little better Mike? -It definitely does. Alright so for Mike this
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is actually better. We don't want any pain during any of our stretches. If we
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start gearing up our pain response we are going to get a reflexive contraction,
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once again, we won't get the release that will ensure that we get a lengthening of
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this tissue so that we can set it back to optimal length tension, so we can get
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optimal performance out of his shoulder. Thanks again, Mike, from Metropolitan