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This is Brent coming at you with
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activation. Now, in a previous video we did this optimal position, right here,
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this is a wonderful way to get things going. But, the problem becomes, how do I
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take it up a notch? I have my friend Rob to thank, one of our human movement
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science geek-outs, we came up with a way of getting us out of this neutral
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position so we can start working on strength in other ranges. Now, Rob is
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going to get up on the splint here, it's going to be in quadruped position, but
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you kind of have to find something to get the arms elevated on, because we
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are going to have arms bent at 90 degrees. Now the problem with taking him out of this
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neutral position here, is when I see people do, let's say external
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rotation at 90 degrees of abduction, usually what I end up seeing is a lot of
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compensation at the shoulder complex. We get that elevation of the
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superior angle of the scapula, we get this thing, a lot of anterior tipping, I
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don't want to see any of that because now, we might be getting good external
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rotator activation here, but we're contributing to compensation everywhere
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else. This ingenious little exercise that Rob showed me, gets the shoulder girdle
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weight-bearing, which means now I can queue scapular depression and protraction, I
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now know that he is stable, his serratus anterior is nice and active, which is one
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of our under active muscles, and now all I have to do is have him queue into external
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rotation. Actually just the friction, you see we even put a towel down to make it
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slicker, but just the friction of the surface and his body weight is enough to make
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this really, really, hard. Not to mention, his range of motion is fairly limited
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because he's working against all of these muscles that are now stretched at
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90 degrees of shoulder flexion. If I wanted to progress this exercise, it's
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actually really simple. I just give him this fit loop, I know you have seen
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fit loops before, a very, very, useful piece of equipment, very cheap,
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and now he can go one at a time, using one side as a stable arm. So this
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is stable, he can go unilateral, or we can progress it a little further and go
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bilateral, which makes this really, really, really, tough. Rob and I were talking
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about it a little bit, we're still working through this exercise, finding
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out, what I like to call, the personality of the exercise. We're not
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quite sure if it's twice as tough because of how much thoracic mobility it
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takes, or maybe just working against a lot of your own musculature, or if it's
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just the fact of double the resistance on the band. Now, if you didn't have
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all this setup, there is kind of a quick and dirty version of this exercise,
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which is up against the wall. So if Rob does the same thing against the wall,
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it's almost like a plank at this point, like if you thought about setting
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somebody up as in a plank position, against the wall, same nice kinetic chain
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checkpoints, have them walk their feet back just a little bit, so that they have
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a little bit of weight into the wall queue them once again into depression, and
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protraction at the scapula, and then he can do the same external rotation, just
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using the resistance of the wall initially, he could even walk his feet
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out a little further and increase that resistance a little bit, and, of course, I
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could already see that this is really hard, I know you guys can't see his face,
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but we can always add the band back, and of course you know fit loops come
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in many different resistances. So, squeeze your glutes for me, tuck under, good, and
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external rotation. So there you go, a neat little progression on external
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rotator activation. I hope you guys enjoy this exercise. I hope you see more
