Hey everybody it's Doctor Jo, I'm just chilling out here by the fire nothing to
do. it's the doorbell! Jack! Come on in. Hey Doctor Jo. Hey how ya doing!
Good to see ya! Everybody, this is my buddy, Jack. I met him at
YouTube's NextUp. Tell us a little bit about your channel. So my channel is
called a healthy gamer, and I make a bunch of fitness videos to help video
gamers get healthier, and strong, and confident. Awesome! So I hear you've got a
little little hurtin going on. Right so when I started exercising, I just did the
traditional bodybuilding stuff. I just did tons of bench presses, and I mean
tons of chest presses. If I would do it in the overhead, I would be like like
dumbbell overhead, but I would be on a bench, and basically doing another bench
press, so over the years my chest and my lats have become really really dominate and
really you know, too strong, and you know now I can raise my arms like this far
before they just don't go any higher. And I and I get, right, and then I
start to get shoulder pains, especially if I don't do anything anything like any
growing exercises, I just start getting real bad shoulder pains, I'm waking up in
the morning if I slept on my side. I just have especially my left shoulder, just
shoulder pain. Okay that's that's pretty common especially with lots of
lifting going on, and I think I've got some stretches and exercise for that so
let's check it out!
So a lot of lifters like Jack, when you're first starting out, you really want to pump out
that chest area, you're working on a lot of those movements and you kind of miss
out on the back, and then you end up having those shoulders roll forward
because you have those tight pecs and then when you have those tight pecs, when
you roll forward, then you end up having a lot of those shoulder issues as well.
So we'll stretch out the chest, and we'll stretch out the shoulders, and then we'll
work the upper back a little bit to strengthen that and get you back in a
good proper position. One of the best chest stretches that I like is using a
foam roller. If you don't have a foam roller, you can just roll up like a beach
towel just to give you a little bit of a lift. So what you want
to do is put it in a vertical position. It's going to be where your spine is, so
you're just going to kind of roll onto it and make sure that your head is
supported so then your neck doesn't fall off of it and get super extended, and
then you're just going to bring your arms up. Come into a stop sign position,
and then let those elbows drop, and so that's really gonna open up that chest,
stretch those pecs muscles, all those chest muscles, and you can hold it for
about thirty seconds. You can change your position a little bit just to get the
different muscles, so you can go up higher, you can kind of go into a wide
position, but I like starting off with this one and just letting those elbows
drop. So again holding that for 30 seconds, and then doing that three times.
I also like, to help stretch the shoulders and a little bit of the chest area, is to
go into a prayer stretch. For the prayer stretch, you want to get on your knees
and you're going to bring out your arms as far as you comfortably can, kind of
placing your head on the ground. For getting a little bit of the lats to
stretch as well, you can go in an angle, so I'm going to do all those. So just
starting off, you're gonna kind of go into that prayer stretch, and you can
creep your hands forward, and you'll feel it in the shoulders there to get more of
that shoulder flexion, and then coming back up. You can just hold it 10 to 15
seconds or so, and then go add a little bit of an angle to get more of the
shoulder and to get those lats a little bit, so then you're going to come off to
the side this way, so again holding 10 to 15 seconds, you can work your way up to
30 seconds if you want to, but you don't have to.
Coming up, and then just going straight down. So if you have a chair that has an
opening like this one, this works great because you just come back and kind of
grab on the seat back there. You want to keep your upper body straight, keep your
chin kind of tucked in, not looking down, and just lean forward so that's gonna
get a nice stretch in your shoulders and your chest area. If you don't have the
opening here, but you have a backrest where you can put your arms around you
can do that as well, so just kind of put it back and then still just leaning
forward, so that'll still open up that chest and stretch those shoulders a
little bit too. You can also just kind of put your elbows there and come forward
as well and that again kind of stretches that chest and PEC area, so just doing
that, leaning forward as much as you can, but I really like the one that has the
opening because I feel like you can get a better lean with that. So that works
really nicely as well and holding those if you can for about 30 seconds and
doing three of those. So the next stretch again will stretch the shoulders and the
lats a little bit, so get yourself into a lunge position, and then what you're
gonna do is you bring up the arm of the side that you want to stretch, and take
the other hand and kind of place it below so you're going to come up and
then lean over, so almost like you're taking your hand towards the other
corner of the ceiling, and if you want to get your hip flexors a little bit, you
can lean forward and get that stretch as well, but you're coming up and over and
kind of pushing that other hand towards that side to get that stretch. So again
holding that for 30 seconds, and then doing that three times on each side. So
I'll show you forward as well so you can kind of see that lean, so this hand
across this one, up and over, and then kind of pushing that hip out a little
bit will give you that extra stretch, so almost like you're reaching towards the
ceiling on that side and kind of pushing that hip out so you'll get that stretch
all the way through here, and then the next stretch is going to be with the
Swiss ball. Look at that it just showed up! So again
with chest stretches, there's a whole lot of ways you can do it, you can do it on
the foam roller, you can do it in the corner, and stretch that when people do
that one. But you can also stretch it on the Swiss ball. So just kind of
leaning on it where it's on your mid-back, so you have a little room to
let your your chest and your shoulders open up a little bit, and the same kind
of thing, like when on the roller, start off with your hands kind of in that stop
sign and just let them stretch, and if you want to get a different position you can
come up a little bit and then just let those arms hang down. And this is nice
because you can just relax on the ball and let that chest open up so holding it
for 30 seconds and doing that three times. Alright now we're gonna do some
awesome exercises, so these exercises are for the upper back they're gonna be the
Is, Ts, Ys and Ws. A lot of times you'll see people do them just
lying on their stomach flat on the table, but doing it on a Swiss ball makes it a
little bit harder because you have this unlevel surface so it works your core as
well, it makes your core and your upper back work together, so I really like it
on the Swiss ball. So you're gonna get it kind of in this position where you're up
on your toes because once you get on the ball you want to bring your knees off
the ground, that's what's gonna make it a little bit harder, and have you have to
work your core a little bit. So trying to get it a comfortable position on the
ball, and as you can see I'm on my toes my
knees are off the ground, and then you're going to start off in that I position
with your thumbs up, and just bring them up this way, so just starting off with
about ten of those and then you're going to come into a T. Still with those
thumbs up, and come really trying to squeeze those shoulder blades together
doing ten of those. Then you're going to go into a Y position. Same thing
trying to squeeze those shoulder blades together, and then the last one is the W.
So bring your elbows bent now and put your palms down and then still trying to
squeeze those shoulder blades together. So ten of each of those. So there you
have it, those are some stretches and exercises for the chest, shoulders, kind
of back area, and hopefully they will get you to loosen up and get ya back in all the
gaming without hurting. So don't forget to subscribe to Jack's channel, and don't
forget to subscribe to AskDoctorJo, and remember, be safe, have fun, and I hope you
feel better soon.