- So, you want to learn how to increase overhead mobility.
Well, in this video I'm gonna show you an awesome strategy
that's gonna teach you everything that you need to know
in order to achieve great overhead mobility.
Make sure you stick around to the end
because I'm also gonna teach you some common mistakes
that people make on this journey.
All that and more coming up.
- [Rad] The gym that teaches people
how to move instead of just exercise
because we believe that health
is about performance not just body image.
Hi, in case we haven't met I'm Rad Burmeister,
cofounder of the Foundation Movement System and Unity Gym,
where health is measured by the way you move and feel,
not just the way you look, and where you're taught
to nourish and move, not just diet and exercise.
The thing you need to know about with overhead mobility,
the first thing is that we're looking for
is to increase shoulder flexion.
That's shoulder flexion when your arms go
above your head, and also thoracic extension.
So, if you've got poor thoracic extension,
if you're locked up here, and if you've got
poor shoulder flexion so your arms can't get up here,
the only way you're gonna get your arms
above your head is to get lumbar extension.
And that's not good at all.
Now, disclaimer, what I want to say here
is that there are a lot of people out there
who are genetically predispositioned
to having poor shoulder flexion.
And, unfortunately, there's nothing
that you can do about it if that is you.
But everyone can increase mobility in the muscles
that prevent shoulder flexion and thoracic extension.
Those are biceps, pecs, lats, and anterior deltoid.
That's what we're gonna focus on in this video.
Oh, sorry, and also all the muscles
that are part of the thoracic spine,
so the extensors, the multifidus, all the good ones.
So what we're gonna do in this video
is we're gonna teach you how to mobilize
those muscles so that you can get
the best overhead mobility that you've got.
Now, I want to say going back
to some of you will never be able
to get the overhead mobility that you want.
If you're one of these people,
if you can't get good overhead mobility watch out
what you're doing for your exercise
because there are some training methods
where people go in off the street.
And they're getting them to do
Olympic weightlifting snatches
and clean and jerks straight off the bat.
And it fucking pisses me off,
and a hell of a lot of other people in the fitness industry,
or the exercise community, because really it's neglecting
what people really need and putting them
into things that put them in a major risk of injury.
And at Unity Gym we get a hell of a lot of people
that are very cross after they've gotten fit
because they fucked up their shoulders
from the pursuit of health and fitness
by people that should have known better.
So if that's you work on this stuff,
and you're gonna see some great mobility gains.
Okay, the first thing that we're gonna do here
is with one of these little foam rollers.
If you don't have one of these we've got a link
in the description where you can grab yours off Amazon.
We're just gonna lay dow on this here,
and we're gonna focus on thoracic extension.
So I'm gonna put my fingers behind my head like this.
Don't grab onto your head because we're trying
to get movement in the whole spine.
And the cervical spine is gonna benefit from this as well,
that's your neck, so just fingers here.
And what we're gonna do is just basically arch
over the foam roller, and then we're gonna crunch our abs,
and come as far forward into flexion as we can,
and then as far back into extension as we can.
Now, you've got 12 vertebrae, so 12 joints in your spine
that are part of the thoracic spine.
They're the ones that are connected to the ribs.
We're gonna start just at the bottom of the ribcage.
You know, you can do as many as you want,
but I like to do maybe just two or three of these, okay?
And then we're gonna move about one inch down, okay?
And then we're gonna go again.
Coming up and down, okay, and then we're gonna go again,
and again, and again until we get through those 12 vertebrae
in the spine, in the thoracic spine.
Now, a good note for this is do not do this over your neck.
Once you get to the top of the shoulders
and you start getting into your neck
you want to stop straight away.
You don't want to go any further than that.
That's a really good way to get started.
Another thing that you can progress to,
this is more aggressive, but it is really amazing.
These are called back balls, and me lying on these
is not gonna do much because you can't see it.
But if you imagine I'm gonna put this
on either side of my spine like that.
Okay, and from here, again, starting at the bottom
of my thoracic spine I'm gonna lay down,
take a deep breath like this. (breathes deeply)
Then I'm gonna go like this,
take a deep breath. (inhales deeply)
Each one of these positions is a little bit
more intense than the last one.
And then I'm gonna cross my arms over,
give myself a big hug. (breathes deeply)
And then I'm going to move about
one inch, just a little bit, okay?
You want to think, you want to visualize
that this thing is gonna move bit by bit.
And what it's doing is if these
are your vertebrae stacked on top of each other
and they all move like this a little bit,
but when you get all of them moving together
that creates that movement in the spine.
What this is doing is pushing in against this vertebra
so that each vertebra gets a little bit of movement in it.
And over time these two exercises here
are going to do a hell of a lot
to improve your thoracic mobility.
Now we're gonna move into a stretch
for the lats, and I love this one.
What you're gonna do is we're gonna hold onto
a gymnastics ring or a chin-up bar.
But if it's a chin-up bar it's got to be pretty low.
If you don't have yourself a set of these gymnastics rings
we'll link them in the description,
so you can grab them from Amazon.
And from here we're just gonna step over.
So if I'm holding it with my right hand
the ring is out to the right side of my body.
And I'm going to step over with my left foot, okay?
Big step, I actually should've probably started out here.
Big step, now, from here I'm just
gonna put my weight down into the arm.
So my foot's here to support me,
but the weight is in my arm.
And I'm getting a really beautiful stretch up my lat there.
And what I'm doing here is I can rotate
from side to side like this.
Okay, and just really lean into it.
This is also a really good stretch
for down in the lumbar spine as well.
And what you can also do, this is another really good one,
this is probably at the right height for me
so if you'd just move back a bit Carl.
Roughly at about chin height from here
I'm gonna step back and come forward like this here.
I'm gonna let my whole body just drop down.
And then I'm gonna rotate from side to side.
Not only does that get into my lats,
soright now I'm into my lats here,
but this also works the whole anterior chain.
You can see clearly this is pulling my arms
right above my head into flexion.
And I can just go from side to side here,
and just work this position as well.
Those are two really good stretches for the lats,
and also for the whole anterior chain.
The next one we're gonna do is for the biceps.
Now, for this one the setup is very, very critical.
So it's very important to understand
the angle that your arm goes on.
Now, I've lined up directly towards the camera
so that you can see the angle I'm putting my arm on.
What I'm gonna do, I'm gonna lay down
on my stomach like this.
And I want to bring my arm out to a 45 degree angle.
This is 90 degrees, or let's say
this is 0 degrees, 90 degrees.
I'm gonna go halfway between that point.
I'm gonna turn my hand over
like I was pouring out a drink, okay?
From here the next point that I want is that
from my fingertip to my shoulder is flat on the ground.
I can not have any part of my arm off the ground.
For a lot of people they can barely even do that.
So if that's you, then you're gonna be just making sure
that that shoulder and the whole arm is on the ground.
And that might even be a stretch that's enough for you.
For anyone that's a bit more flexible
what you're gonna do here is bring this leg up,
the left leg, put the left hand on the ground.
And we're now going to push and twist the body,
making sure that that shoulder stays down into the ground.
The whole time you do this you're also trying
to drag your body this way.
You can't see that, but what I'm actually doing
if I exaggerate, I'm trying to pull my body like this,
okay, very gently, and that creates
this beautiful stretch in the biceps for me.
If all I do is twist it actually locks the shoulder up,
and you don't get as good a stretch.
Now, for those of you that are really flexible
what you can do from here, probably not gonna be
anyone watching this video,
otherwise you wouldn't be watching this would you?
But if you are flexible enough,
from here if you can keep all of those cues
that I've just said, what you're gonna do from here
is bring that right leg forward for balance.
Bring the left leg over the top.
And then we're gonna open this hand right up here
to get a really good stretch there, okay?
And you'll know if you're doing it right
because you're gonna feel it very targeted in the bicep.
Now, if your arm is too much this way
or too much this way you won't feel it in the biceps.
So you need to just play around with the positioning there.
Now, a key mistake that I see
people do is this, have a look.
I go down, I set the shoulders up
really nicely at that 45 degree angle.
Now, watch what happens with my body when I twist.
My whole hips and lower body has moved
so much around there that now the stretch
has actually put me into a 90 degree position with my arm.
And that is no longer a bicep stretch.
That becomes a pec and an anterior deltoid stretch.
So you must make sure that when you twist
you twist the way that I'm twisting here
so that I keep the 45 degree angle, okay?
Maybe you need to film yourself
so that you can see if you're doing it right.
Now we're gonna release the pec minor.
And you'll see there's an image on the screen here
where you can see what the pec minor looks like.
It's a really small muscle that comes down
and connects onto the third, fourth, and fifth rib.
And what we are gonna be doing
is getting this little sucker right in there.
So get a visual idea of what the pec minor looks like.
But what you want to do for yourself
to be able to find it is walk your finger
along your collar bone until you get
to this little boney outcrop at the end of the collar bone.
And then go straight own just a couple of inches.
And in there there's kind of like a (grunts)
kind of a feeling, that's your pec minor there.
What we're gonna do, get this ball in,
and we're just gonna roll it up and down like that.
So, what we're gonna do when we get this here
we're gonna come down to the ground.
Put it into that position that I've just showed you.
And we're going to get as much weight
into this side of the body as you can.
And just roll back and forth just a little bit, okay?
There's not much else to show you there.
This, I like to do it for a couple of minutes on each side.
It feels really good to release the (mumbles).
Now, when the pec minor is tight,
because it connects up onto the coracoid process
of the scapula what happens is it
actually pulls the scapula forward.
So it pulls it into an elevated and protracted position.
And when the scapula is elevated and protracted like this,
and you try and get your arms up it just stops it.
So this is a really big part
of fixing that overhead mobility.
Now we're onto the pec major,
and for the pec major what we're going to do
is use one of these foam rollers
here, a full size foam roller.
I'm gonna lay down so that length of my spine
is supported by the foam roller.
So my head is very well supported
here as well as my tailbone.
Now, from here we're gonna hold
onto some very light weights.
I've only got one kilo weights,
or you can use dumbbells, whatever you want.
And you're going to basically just move your arms up
like this, and then down like this.
Now, if you watch when I do this even without weights
my arms just drop to the floor like that.
That's what you're looking for.
We want to see mobility here in the pecs
where your arms just drop straight down.
For a lot of you if you've got shoulder mobility problems
you're not gonna be able to get
your arms all the way down like that.
So you're gonna be here, and you're basically
just gonna do sets of 10 reps
where you're going up and down like this, okay?
And a more advanced level, we're just trying
to keep the arms on the ground.
Without a doubt, one of the biggest parts
of developing overhead flexibility is hanging.
So from here I'm just gonna bring my arms up
above my head, and I'm gonna hang.
Now, if you look this is actually not high enough for me
to get my feet off the ground,
so look at what I'm doing here.
I'm basically just putting my legs behind me
and letting my toes touch the ground
so that my body stays completely relaxed.
I don't want to hold my legs up off the ground like this
because that creates tension right through the lower body,
which ripples through your entire body.
And we want to keep everything relaxed except for the grip.
So you're gonna just completely hang.
Now, obviously, ideally you want to be able to hang
from a position where your legs are off the ground.
So that's the best, and I'm just completely relaxed.
The only cue that you want to give yourself
when you're hanging is that you can very gently suck
the sternum in just a little bit, I just pull that in.
If you watch, this is me being completely relaxed.
Now watch what happens with my sternum,
I just pull it in a little bit.
And what that does is it aligns my spine a lot better, okay?
And when you do your hanging you want to try
and do seven minutes of accumulated hanging in a day,
every single day until this problem's fixed.
So you can do 7 times 1 minute,
you can do 14 times 30 seconds,
whatever it is that you can do.
But try and get an accumulated total.
Actually, I should clarify, between four and seven minutes.
This is a really awesome protocol
that Ido Portal put out to the world.
And so many people just got such great results from it.
And we've been using it in
the Foundation Movement System for years now.
We get amazing results with hanging, so don't overlook this.
This is a major, major part of developing overhead mobility.
One more stretch that I'm gonna show you
which is really gonna bring all of this together
on the gymnastics rings here.
We're gonna lean forward, okay,
put your arms into this position.
And then I'm going to externally rotate,
and open up my chest, and try and come
with my arms above my head.
And I'm gonna come back down, and we're gonna rep that out.
I'll go down here a little bit so I get a better stretch.
For a lot of you that's gonna be impossible.
A lot of you won't be able to get passed there.
Your shoulders just won't go there.
So as you get better this is a more advanced stretch here.
We're gonna learn to bring
the shoulders all the way through.
Okay, and that's a really good stretch
for the pecs because it takes them
through all the different ranges of motion there.
Now, before we finish I just want to give a big shout-out
to my mate Darren Sharp, Sharpie,
thanks for requesting this video.
And I really hope you get something out of this bro.
And everyone out there that wants
to develop more shoulder mobility,
overhead mobility, I hope you enjoyed this video.
If any of you have got any videos
that you would like us to make,
any issues that you're struggling
with that you can't get passed,
leave a comment, and we will get onto it,
and make sure we make that video for you.
And if you haven't already done so make sure
that you download the Flexibility Blueprint.
It is free, it's linked in the description there.
And it goes into great detail
as to how to achieve flexibility
and mobility over your whole body.
So grab your copy now.
And if you liked that video, if you want to see more
make sure you subscribe to our channel.
Hit the notification bell so you get notified,
and you'll be part of our tribe getting our videos
when we release them every week.
Until next time, see you later.
We're gonna talk about overhead mobility.
And now I don't know what I'm gonna...
God, I need to sneeze. (sniffles)
Okay, I think it's gone. - (laughs)
(rhythmic instrumental music)