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This is Brent of the Brookbush
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Institute at the Independent Training
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Spot, and I wanted to show you guys an exercise that I've been using personally
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to help me get back on the basketball court. Now I have cervical dysfunction. I
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have a history of herniation, you guys might start thinking to yourselves well
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now I know why he came up with all the cervical activation exercises and
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grouped them together. Yeah I've been working on them myself. I have good
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strength, good range of motion, but I still have a problem that is, when I get
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on the basketball court after I finished playing ball, oftentimes i'll get
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flared up and i'm sore for a couple weeks, which has made it really hard to
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get back into regular training. So i started letting that spin around in my
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head, and started thinking to myself what am i missing from this corrective
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exercise, this intervention model i've been using for the cervical spine, and it
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hit me that I haven't been doing any sort of reactive activation for my deep
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cervical flexors. Now you guys are thinking to yourself how am I gonna get
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myself to react quickly with my deep cervical flexors. Well obviously I don't
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want to throw things at people's heads. I don't want to like knock people across
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the head, make them like react to that that's going to look a little abusive.
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I had to come up with an exercise that would force the rectus capitis
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anterior, the longus colli, and the longest capitis to contract hard and
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quickly, while I threw something. So i started thinking through this movement
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pattern, realized it was pretty close to that deep cervical flexor isolated
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activation exercise we did, and realize that if i did that while throwing a ball
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that i could get that increase in force, that quick increase in force on my neck,
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that would help teach those muscles to react quickly. So I'm going have Mike
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come out, Mike is going to help me demonstrate this exercise i came up with
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for deep cervical flexor reactive activation. Now first things first, I'm
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just using a bit of resistive band tape, I've tied two loops in the ends
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here that are good size for his hand, without his thumb involved. We want it to
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be over his hand and then you guys can see it's tied here in the middle to make
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it a little shorter, in this case make it harder on Mike. I'm going to go
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ahead and slip that over his neck, he's going to put his hands through these
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holes, and now he's kind of all t-rexed up. All right so we got him in t-rex
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position, and I think you guys can already see from this set up what
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exactly we're going to do. Mike's then going to grab this ball, and as he pushes
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the ball into the wall as fast as he can, you'll see that he has a quick increase
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in tension on this band, which is going to force him to work real hard and real
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quickly to keep that chin tucked position. So let's see it Mike, good,
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higher, good try not to hit me, good keep that chin tucked. Alright so every time
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he does that you can almost see his body jolting, as he has to like try to keep
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his chin tuck. Good, let's see 20 reps. That was like 12, and so I do 12 to 20 reps of
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this exercise, and how would we progress well that's actually pretty easy, I just
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increased the resistance of the band, or I could tie the band even shorter, right
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so that he has even more of an increase in resistance, so that would be the
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easiest way to progress. We have been experimenting a little bit with can we
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work on a little bit of holding the head in rotation, and using the peripheral
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vision to catch the ball. This hasn't been working out as well, but we're
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giving it another shot today. So I'm going to have him look maybe five, six feet off
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center. Alright so you can still see the ball in his peripheral vision, Mike's a
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great athlete so I have no worry about him actually hitting himself. He's
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going to still keep that chin tuck position with rotation, and now see if he
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can do the same thing.
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Takes a little practice guys, takes a little practice. Good, so now i'm still
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strengthening those deep cervical flexors, but with a little rotation, and
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of course i could have them do that in the other direction. Great, try to keep a
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little more chin tuck for me. Good and relax. Now i should mention guys, if you
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don't have resistive band tape, you can use one of these resistant bands with
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handles, it's just not quite as easy.
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Alright, actually we need to go ahead and tie a knot back here so it's a little
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shorter, and I just tie a slipknot guys so I can get the knot out again, there we
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go. Same thing, good, good, good, good, good. Now be careful, if you guys use this,
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realize it's not as tight around his hands. I have accidentally let go of one
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of these a couple times, and once you turn yourself in, you basically turn
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your neck into a giant slingshot and hit whoever's behind you. So make sure that
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you have some clearance behind you. Thanks Mike for helping me demonstrate
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this exercise, because what I've noticed since I added this exercise, is my flare
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ups are starting to decrease, which makes me think that I'm on the right track. Now
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before you go use this with a bunch of different people, realize the scope of
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this exercise is fairly narrow. I'm not going to throw this at my mom right. If my
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mom came in with with cervical dysfunction and she's having neck pain,
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I'm probably not going to progress you to the point of doing reactive
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activation. However if I have an athlete like Mike who comes in, and he tells me
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he has neck pain and he's a throwing athlete, a pitcher, this better be
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something I do before he gets back out onto the field, because if his deep
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cervical flexors can't activate fast enough to stabilize his neck when he
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throws, what good is all the work i did. Guys I hope you get great great outcomes
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from this technique, have some fun with it, experiment with the looking in
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different directions. You can experiment with maybe hitting different targets on
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the wall. You guys could use maybe medicine balls instead of a stability
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ball, or maybe a bigger stability ball for a bigger challenge. I look forward to
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hearing from you.