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Prone Cobra on Foam Roll (Activation for muscles of the scapula, thorax & deep cervical flexors)

Change up your usual exercise routine with Prone Cobra on Foam Roll! This simple activation is great for toning the scapula, thorax and deep cervical flexors and will add a new challenge to your regular workout.

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Transcript

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.

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