What's up, guys?
Jeff Cavaliere, ATHLEANX.com.
Three muscle markers today to try to help you understand how to stretch out each head
of your shoulders more effectively.
You see, we talked about how to train them in the past, but a lot of people forget to
stretch them and they're just like any other muscle.
We need to pay attention to them.
Especially due to the fact that they tend to get tight because they get over developed.
So what we want to do is attack them one head at a time.
To do that, as I said, I broke out the muscle marker.
So what we're looking at here is the front delt, the middle delt, and the rear delt.
They're actually really easy to see if I go to my undrawn side here, and I just raise
my arm up.
You can see here that the front delt, I could actually grab it.
It attaches here to my clavicle; to my collarbone.
You can see that right here.
Here's the bone, and it comes in right off of here, and it comes down in front, and then
serves here.
They're all in the same spot here on our upper arm.
Then we've got our middle delt, which is the chunk right behind the front delt, which is
all here, and it comes down again.
Feeds down into here.
So again, we can see that displayed on the other side.
Finally, we've got the rear delt that's in the back here that comes off our scapular
spine.
That is, if you were to go grab onto your shoulder blade here you can feel this ridge
that you can grab onto with your fingers.
At the very end of that ridge, which is right here, is where the rear delt will start.
You can see that I actually had it popped up for a second there.
Then it comes down and around, and then again it inserts in here.
So you can see that's going on back there.
So, obviously the muscles are positioned in different places.
So they need different angles of stretching if we're going to get at them.
A lot of times people stretch them incorrectly.
So to start off we'll start on the front delt.
To do the front delt, if we know that the function is to raise your arm up in front
of you, what you'd want to do to stretch it is get it behind you.
But not just that, remember I said that it attaches to the clavicle?
So if we could somehow get our clavicle to come this way as the arm goes back this way,
then we'd be doing a good thing here to stretch out the front delt.
So what we do is, we position our hands behind our back.
Just like this.
Then we're going to raise them up.
At the same time we want to stick our chest out.
So as we watched it here from the front and up close, my hands are behind my back.
They're coming up.
You can see that it's stretching out that front delt, but then what I want to do is
I want to get my clavicles forward.
So I could do that by sticking my chest out.
You can see that stretch that's being placed here on that front delt is big.
Guys, these are things that you're going to be able to instantly feel when you do it.
So again, hands behind your back.
They're sliding up.
Once you get to that point you can't go any further, stick the chest out.
Next, the middle delt.
I see a lot of people try to stretch this out by going like this, or they go like this.
They sit there and they're stretching that middle delt out.
It looks like they are getting a decent stretch, but they're missing a big component.
If it attaches down here, and it starts here, if I were to do this – yes, I'm pulling
my arm across.
I'm stretching this out as you can see, but I don’t want to have my arm up here.
What I want to do is, you're going to instantly be able to feel the difference.
Take it, and then flatten it down that way as I pull across.
So now watch it on this side where you can actually see the fibers.
I'm up here, I can stretch it, but now when I actually pull down against my chest you
can see that the fibers of the middle delt are now getting a really good stretch.
Again, like I said, instantly feel that as you can see here.
It's tight against my chest, not floating up here.
So still 90 degrees, but then down against the chest.
Finally, we have the rear delt, and this is another one where people will do, and they'll
try to keep going up at an angle because they say you've got to take the elbow further away
here from the back to try to create more length in that muscle.
The problem here, especially people that sometimes tend to stretch their shoulders because they
feel they have to, because they have pain and discomfort in the shoulder; if I drag
this across and I keep going up, up, up, up, up, while I am stretching the rear delt out
I'm also creating more of an impingement feel here.
Potentially, in my already tight, or crowded shoulder joint.
So by doing this and raising it up I'm actually, potentially, limiting my stretch because the
pain starts to set in that prevents me from wanting to go any further.
So what you do instead is, you get behind the elbow here, you bring it across, and you
just scoop it.
So I'm still trying to go for length, but what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to scoop
it up and under this way.
Around here, I scoop it up and under.
So I'm leaning a little bit forward – as you can see here – and I'm trying to basically
scoop it from here, underneath.
Now I'm getting a little bit more of that length, but I'm not getting that raising here
that can create that tightness and impingement in the shoulders.
So again, up close, in here, scoop it, lean forward a little bit, and stretch it out.
So there you have it, guys.
You can stretch your shoulders, all three heads, as long as you understand the A) the
anatomy of the shoulder; and B)
how to reverse engineer that to allow you to get as best a stretch as possible without
having to rely on elaborate equipment, or anything like that.
These things you can do just as I did here with nothing but my own bodyweight, and no;
you don’t need the markers to do this.
You feel it instantly.
All right, guys.
If you like the muscle marker videos though, of course, leave your comments and thumbs
up below and let me know.
In the meantime, if you're looking for a program that puts the science back in strength so
we have a better idea of, not just what we do, but why we do it; head to ATHLEANX.com
and get our ATHLEANX training system.
All right, guys.
I'll be back here again in just a few days.
See ya!