Standing Cobra

Standing Cobra is a powerful yoga pose that engages the abdominal muscles and strengthens the core. By stretching the chest and shoulders, this pose also enhances postural alignment. It is an energizing pose that helps improve concentration and balance. Standing Cobra can introduce deep backbends into an asana practice and is an essential part of any yoga routine.

Transcript

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This is Brent, President of B2C Fitness, and we're going to talk about one of my favorite
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resistance training exercises for the back, the standing Cobra. I'm going to have my friend
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Salvi come out and help me demonstrate this exercise. So, first things first, I'm
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going to have Salvi stand a little bit behind this band, lineup her
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kinetic chain checkpoints, make sure her feet are hip width, so just a little bit
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wider apart there Salvi. Good. Her knees are over her feet, she's in a neutral pelvic
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position, so I'm going to have her squeeze her glutes, draw-in, good. What Salvi's going to do is
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she's going to pull this band down and back, so arms into extension and external
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rotation, while she squeezes her shoulder blades down and back. So we're working on
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depression and retraction of the shoulder blades. So Salvi, let's see
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that one more time.
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Now Salvi's trying to go for that open chest, palms facing forward. Let's give
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them a view from the side. So, turn sideways.
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Good. So, one of the things you guys will notice right off the bat, a form queue that
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tends to get a little messed up as you go along, you're going to have to
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keep queuing it, is people tend to want to go into an anterior pelvic tilt when
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they go into a cobra, so you're going to have to keep requeuing, squeeze the glutes,
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posterior pelvic tilt, and draw-in.
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Notice she's retracting her scapula. Hopefully you can see that in the camera.
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Go ahead and relax, let your shoulders come forward as the band pulls you up.
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Down and back, and keep squeezing.
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Let's show the posterior side. Turn to face away.
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Draw-in. Down and back.
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And you should see just a little bit of her scapula coming down and into retraction.
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Now, Salvi obviously has this exercise down pretty good so we're going to go ahead
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and start progressing it from a stability fashion.
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First thing we'll do is we'll have her balance on one leg while doing cobra.
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So draw-in, glutes tight, one leg up.
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Let's do both at once first.
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So Salvi kind of preemptively went into our next progression which is the
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alternating cobra on single leg.
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Now, if my goal wasn't to increase stability with this exercise, but increase
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strength, I would have Salvi just go back down to our two legged, bilateral, so
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both arms at the same time, cobra, and I would just increase the resistance
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of the band, or move to a cable where I could adjust the resistance even higher. So
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you have your Cobra, you have your stability progressions which were single
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leg, and then single leg with alternating bands, and of course, if you
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wanted to increase resistance for strength you could. I hope you enjoyed