00:00 - 00:03This is Brent coming at you with another one of our collaboration videos. I got my
00:03 - 00:08friend Rob, PT for many years, certified orthopedic manual therapist and faculty
00:08 - 00:13for the Maitland courses, to come out show me a few new exercises which i love.
00:13 - 00:17He came out to my advancements in exercise selection course for upper-body
00:17 - 00:21dysfunction and all of a sudden I got inundated with all sorts of stuff. This
00:21 - 00:26is one of those exercises, this is a modified cobra. I know I showed you that
00:26 - 00:30cobra kind of prone on ball, we're going to do one on a foam roll, and Rob
00:30 - 00:36showed me a bunch of cues where this nice flat stable surface ends up
00:36 - 00:40becoming perfect for reinforcing optimal alignment of our spine. I'm going to have
00:40 - 00:46my friend Rob come out he's going to model for us, figures his punishment for
00:46 - 00:51showing me this exercises, that he actually has to do the exercise now. So
00:51 - 00:55set up being first, how you set up on the foam roll is you are going to be face-down,
00:55 - 00:59and then actually let me have you sit up real quick Rob. Rob's going to end the
00:59 - 01:04foam roll right here, alright so just below his clavicles, just below this
01:04 - 01:10notch here. This is where the foam roll is going to end and he'll be face down.
01:13 - 01:18Great now I'm going to make sure he's in a nice straight line. I got this towel here
01:18 - 01:23so his face doesn't end up in the floor, his feet are tucked in. I like to try to
01:23 - 01:27get those the balls of somebody's feet as close to the floor as i can, and we'll
01:27 - 01:30show you guys a progression here with straight legs. But then what i want to be
01:30 - 01:34able to do is he's going to have to kind of, you're gonna see we're going to need
01:34 - 01:38some extension here, and some drawing in here, which now we have to do against
01:38 - 01:44gravity. Alright this is going to take a little bit of cueing, So Rob go ahead
01:44 - 01:49and draw in, and you want to make sure when they draw in that they're lifting
01:49 - 01:53that abdominal wall off your fingers but we don't see any increase in flexion
01:53 - 01:57here, we don't see any increase in movement here, and then I'm going to have
01:57 - 02:05Rob go ahead and tuck his chin, bring his head back to the point of
02:05 - 02:11neutral, which for Rob seems to be a point where his clavicles come
02:11 - 02:15just off the foam roll, but the rest of his sternum is on the foam roll. We want
02:15 - 02:21to be very careful that we get thoracic extension, and not thoracolumbar
02:21 - 02:27extension and an increase in a lordosis. So Rob go ahead and show me the extreme
02:27 - 02:31here. I see a lot of this in the gym in a lot of different variations of the Cobra,
02:31 - 02:36but this variation in particular we don't want this because we don't want to
02:36 - 02:40over stimulate some short overactive muscles. Alright so Rob's going to go
02:40 - 02:45back down into his neutral position but he's tough, he looks good he's drawn in.
02:45 - 02:51Notice that his hands are already externally rotated, so as he goes down
02:51 - 02:56and back with his shoulder blades alright, we're reinforcing that that
02:56 - 03:02posterior tipping, good that retraction. And then he can bring his hands up and
03:02 - 03:08into extension and external rotation, and we have a pretty good looking Cobra. Now
03:08 - 03:13there's a couple of tempo markings we can use, we can either use a 4-2-2 so
03:13 - 03:17that would be a two-second up, two second hold and then four second eccentric on
03:17 - 03:24the way down. I've also seen a 2-4-2 count which would be up for two, hold this
03:24 - 03:31end position for four, three, two, one, and then back down for two. And then Rob
03:31 - 03:34brought up a really great point, sometimes if he really wants to focus on
03:34 - 03:37this more than anything else they'll have somebody go all the way down in
03:37 - 03:42between reps, and the he'll cue them back into that position. In that case if
03:42 - 03:47you're cueing through all of the different cues involved, you might have
03:47 - 03:51to kind of toss your tempo markings away for a little bit, and just work on slow
03:51 - 03:58and controlled. So I would be draw in go ahead and draw in, head back come up just
03:58 - 04:03a little bit, shoulder blades down and back up, and thumbs towards the ceiling.
04:03 - 04:09Great, good back down, nice and slow Rob. Rob did that really well so maybe I
04:09 - 04:12could progress him, add even more cues in. So I'm going to have you
04:12 - 04:18draw in all right, I want you to go ahead and straighten out your knees, quads
04:18 - 04:21tight, glutes tight, like you're holding a dollar bill. Try to drive the balls of
04:21 - 04:29your feet into the floor. Let's go for that cervical retraction good, draw down
04:29 - 04:39and back, up with the arms, thumbs towards the ceiling, good. Hold, three, two, one, down
04:39 - 04:44nice and slow. Alright guys as you can see this is a very cue heavy exercise. It
04:44 - 04:47may take you a few sessions before you can actually put it into somebody's home
04:47 - 04:51exercise program or trust them to do it effectively on their own, but I think
04:51 - 04:55what you guys will find as an integrated postural exercise for all of those
04:55 - 04:59individuals with upper body dysfunction, this is an incredibly effective exercise.
04:59 - 05:03You can go ahead and get up Rob, thank you big thank you to Rob guys for
05:03 - 05:06showing me this variation. I hope you guys have a lot of fun with this
05:06 - 05:08exercise.