This is Brent of the Brookbush Institute,
and in this video we're going over
something I learned as the NASM prone
ball combo. Now this is a mash-up of
exercises we've shown previously as
trapezius activation namely prone Cobra's,
prone horizontal abduction with external
rotation, and prone scaption also known
as ITY's. I'm going to have my friend
Melissa come out, she's going to help me
demonstrate this mashup and very
difficult progression. She's going to
start off in prone ball -position pro
ball Cobra position. So we're going to
have good kinetic chain alignment
between her ankles knees and hips. She's
going to plantarflex for me, extend
her knees and squeeze her quads, she's
going to squeeze her glutes, and drive her
hips into the ball so we're reinforcing
triple extension. She's also using that
hip drive to keep her torso up. What I
don't want to see is cuing torso up and
ending up in this excessive lumbar
extension. This is a lot of erector
spinae activity and this could reinforce
some of our compensation patterns like
an anterior pelvic tilt. So I want to go
ahead and cure to get long this way
really push off that wall with triple
extension, drive her hips into the ball and
that will keep your torso nice and
aligned. I'm going to have her go ahead
and grab our dumbbells. All of that is
just a nice isometric hold while we do
our target exercise of trapezius
activation starting with a cobra. Now the
challenge of this exercise is once we
get them in a cobra and they're
depressed, we know they got their lower
traps working, we're going to try to keep
them depressed, keep those lower traps
active as we smoothly transition
into scaption. You guys can see it's
very difficult to maintain those scapula
down, she's going to lower her arms just as
she did and then back into a Cobra. Good,
hold down and back, there we go, up up up up
up, stay, keep those scapula depressed,
pinch, good, real good. Notice she's doing
a good job too of keeping in external
rotation, so her thumbs always stay facing
the ceiling, always stay facing the
ceiling, and you see all that was
actually a pretty good rep. I thought she
was going to lose it there.. I thought she
was going to fall into some scapular
elevation. Go ahead and keep going. You
guys will find that trying to get 12
perfect reps nice and slow without any
excessive elevation or anterior
tipping of the scapula is very difficult.
Not to mention this ends up being a
pretty good core exercise for the glutes,
and drawing in and back down, just seven
more, okay. So we're going to go ahead and
let her have a break. I have seen this
taught in the reverse order so from scaption
to Cobra, we can try that. The reason
I tend not to use this progression as
much, is I find it's a lot trickier to
get somebody to go into scaption
without excessive elevation and then
stay down, as opposed to if I have
somebody, let's go ahead and start in
Cobra this time, I have somebody start in
Cobra they're already depressed in their
scapula and then they're just trying to
maintain it, and most of this is a really
good job from there but let's go ahead
and try the scaption one again. So you're
going to start up and you can see she
like wants to, she wants to elevate so
we're reinforcing that pattern, and then
maybe I can cue her out of it, but I'd
rather start good and end good, than
start bad and have to queue out of bad
to get to good. Either way guys I think
you'll find the 12 to 20 reps at a nice
slow tempo is serious, notice that
Melissa's is only using three pound
dumbbells and Melissa is strong,
she's really really strong. This is one
of those exercises where you pull out
the small dumbbells and people go
what are you going to do with those?
Like, like
go get the 20's, because they know if the
small dumbbells come out there's
something really difficult in their
future. I think you'll find that even
just using bodyweight on this exercise,
Why don't you try a couple without the dumbbells,
even just using bodyweight is very
challenging. It's very challenging to get
people to work on depression and upward
rotation, without upward rotation and
excessive elevation. This is a great
thing to use in group classes. It's a
great thing to use in small group
training right, you're looking for
exercises that don't take a lot of
equipment. You could do something like
this to get the shoulder girdle warmed up
as part of your movement prep, before
doing some more complicated exercises
for the upper body. I hope you guys enjoy
this exercise. I hope you guys enjoy this
progression. I look forward to seeing
some videos, maybe of somebody who could
pull off 20 slow controlled reps with
the five pound dumbbells. I think you
guys are going to find that even your
biggest guys have a hard time with that
one. I'll talk with you guys soon.