What's up, guys?
Jeff Cavaliere, ATHLEANX.COM.
If you are getting pain when you're doing Pull Ups or when you're just simply hanging
from a bar doing any kind of ab work, we've got to do something about it.
You see because pain in those movements is usually something that's not going to go away,
but there are ways that you can tweak the movement itself to make the exercise one that
you can do and continue to get gains.
Now, coming from the world of professional athletes, shutting someone down completely
for the season is never the best option.
It's usually the worst option you have, and it's your last option.
If we can maximize what you can do with the function you have,
and we can continue to build strength everywhere else, that's the perfect solution.
And that's what I'm going to try to help you with here today in this video.
So, if you're in this hanging position, what is going on?
What possibly could be causing the problems?
Well, first of all, the position itself is pretty extreme.
If your arm is way up over your head, it's pretty much at end range flexion, ok.
End range flexion could be a problem for anybody especially if you're not that mobile in the
first place.
But then you add to it the force of gravity pulling our body down and that can cause some
issues especially if you have a labrum tear.
Now, for you guys that don't know what the labrum is and I know you've probably heard
about it but don't necessarily know what it is, I'm going to show you right here on the
skeleton.
Here we have our Raymond, XRay, he is showing you that inside of his shoulder joint, what
lines this ball and socket capsule, right inside the socket, is the labrum.
It basically is a lining around the entire socket portion of the ball and socket.
Now, it acts as a suction cup.
It provides suction so that the head of your humerus sits in that socket and actually stays
there with some stability.
What would happen if you got a tear in your labrum which I happen to have from taking
someone up on a bet years back with the Mets, that I could throw a baseball so far.
Yeah, I won the bet, but I blew out my shoulder like an idiot.
The labrum, when it gets torn is no different than a suction cup.
If you took a suction cup and stuck it to a window, it would work.
But if you then took a little knife and cut just a little sliver into that suction, it
no longer works because the air can no longer be trapped.
There's no more differential in pressure between the window and that suction cup.
Well, the same exact thing happens here.
So, if you have some sort of a labrum tear and you want to go hang on that arm, usually
you don't even feel it so much until you let go because that rebound,
that rebound pain that you'll get with a labrum tear mostly again characterized by feeling
it after you let go which is what I sort of deal with with my shoulder.
If instead you get pain just when you get into this position, ok, and even worse as
you start to do more and more reps, that could be because you have impingement in your shoulder.
And any time you put your arm up overhead, you're going to have more and more problems
if you have impingement going on.
To figure out the actual diagnosis, and again that would be more pain during the movement,
but to figure out the actual diagnosis.
It's always a good idea to see if you can get an evaluation by a physical therapist.
Here's a good tip though that you can use in either case.
First of all, what are you doing with your shoulders?
If this is what you look like at the bottom of any Hanging Leg Raise or Pull Up, then
you already have problems.
Why?
Because if you can turn your head and hit your chin into your chest or into your shoulder
over here and make contact with that,
then you're not packing your shoulders properly for stability.
And again, if we had this unstable or this compromised labrum, we don't have stability
as it is.
We've already lost a lot of that.
So, we need to have stability some other way.
We need to have other muscles kick in and help out.
And we can do that by making this simple tweak.
If this is you right now, the first thing you want to do is try to keep your elbows
straight and raise your head up.
Ok, once you do that, now if I turn left and right, I don't hit my front delt or chest
at all.
I've packed by shoulders down for stability.
I already get my traps, I get my rhomboids, and I even have other muscles inside the joint
itself here that are contributing to make this joint a lot more stable, ok.
So, now when I do my exercises whether it be the Hanging Leg Raise or the Pull Up, I'm
much more prepared and ready to do that.
The next thing you can do is if you have that much pain, first of all, again, be evaluated.
But secondly, if you have that much pain, you don't have to necessarily
stick to Pull Ups for now.
You can change to Chin Ups, and by changing to Chin Ups, you've got another opportunity
to now
incorporate the biceps to help you with some stability and when we externally rotate the
arm to get into the Chin Up position, we get the rotator cuff to kick in as well.
So, you've got options.
You don't have to say, 'Ah.
That's it.
Can't do Hanging Leg Raises.'
And that's a simple solution by the way.
If you can't do anything up here for the Hanging Leg Raises but you still want to get the benefits
of those more difficult exercises,
then use the Roman Chair where you sit with your forearms supported on pads.
But like I said, the key here is that when you're hurting and a lot of us are,
I bet you that 90 percent of my guys that are watching this video right now have some
sort of discomfort when they hit the gym.
That's normal.
But it doesn't mean that you have to train like that or skip workouts because of the
pain.
There's usually something you can do that allows you to avoid a little bit of discomfort
but still continue to work on getting stronger overall, and really, in the long run, it will
accelerate your progress in your rehab in getting back from these discomforts.
Because if you can figure ways to continue to train but avoid that pain, that's the home
run right there.
And that's what we try to do with ATHLEANX guys.
I think it's videos like this that separate us from what a lot of other programs out there
offer.
As a physical therapist, I feel like I can bring to you guys a little bit more of the
science behind what we do so we can start helping you guys train at a whole new level.
If you haven't already guys, join Team ATHLEAN.
Head to ATHLEANX.COM and get our ATHLEANX Training System.
And in the meantime, if you found this video helpful and you continue to like these sort
of PT videos
and explaining why and what and what goes on when you're training, then make sure you
leave some comments and a thumb's up below
and the other things you'd like to see me address, and I'll make sure I do that in a
future video.
I'll see you guys soon.