This is Brent of the Brookbush Institute live
at the Independent Training Spot,
bringing you guys a thoracic spine
strengthening exercise. Now we have some
mobility exercises that I've showed you
guys before in previous videos, one of
the empty spots the gaps in our exercise
programming is, once we get that mobility
back how do we keep it? How do we
strengthen those muscles that have
become under active, those transversal
spinalis muscles around the thoracic
spine and your iliocostalis? How do we
strengthen those muscles without also
strengthening the already overactive
lumbar erectors. Well here's the solution,
I'm going to have Jordan come out. Now I
have to give a shout out, this is an
exercise I learned from Grey Cooks SFMA.
I know they use this as an assessment
but I've literally taken this and it's
ended up in a lot of my exercise
programs, to help reinforce getting this
thoracic mobility back. So the first
thing we have to do is figure out how
are we going to isolate this part of the
spine, and one thing we can do is we can
create a little bit of a ligamentous
lock in the lumbar spine, by having
Jordan go back onto his heels into
Child's Pose. So I got him in a posterior
pelvic tilt, flexion of the lumbar spine
that pulls all those ligaments tight.
Right now he's not going to get as much
rotation from the lumbar spine. From here
I'm going to have him lock this side
down closest to me, so you guys can see
what he's doing. The way he's going to do
that, he's going to bring this arm and
put that elbow right between his knees.
So now I got him all locked up all, all i'm
going to get out of him is right here.
He's going to bring this hand just
behind his head and what I'm going to
cue him to do, is try to get this elbow
up high, look straight ahead, but keep
this is an important point guys, he's got
to keep the rib closest to me the bottom
of his rib cage, closest to me on his
thigh. If he doesn't, go ahead and show
what happens when you don't,
he gets s a nice mobility exercise for his
entire spine. I'm not sure that this is a
terrible exercise, but if I want to
concentrate on the thoracic spine he's
got to go ahead and keep that rib down,
keep in flexion, keep that ligamentous
lock here, so that it stays right in
thoracic spine. Where do you feel that
Jordan? Right in the thoracic. Oh yeah,
this exercise sucks in a good way, in a
good way. You can feel all these muscles
light up real quick, all these
transversal spinalis muscles, those
deep stabilizers right.
You can feel probably your rhomboids and
trapezius muscles come in as they're
helping with rotation. You know that
scapular rotation is a big part of the
kinetic chain rotation we use in dynamic
motion. He's in this position, he's having
to work against his latissimus dorsi, his
pectoralis major, his pectoralis minor just to
straighten up. Now if for some reason, I
want to show you guys a variation that's
a little bit of a regression, if for some
reason you didn't need to work on
shoulder mobility and you were specific
to thoracic mobility, but felt that the
lats and the pecs were getting in the
way, you don't have to use this position
here; you can actually use this position,
which now I've shortened the lats and
the pecs getting them out of the way. So
if Jordan takes his hand just puts it on
opposite shoulder, and now I cue him to
go elbow up and turn, you can see I've
shortened all this stuff up so now it's
just thoracic spine.
Alright so you guys could start here
as a regression and move to the one
overhead. You could start with the one
overhead if you were trying to go for
this whole upper segment, or you could
start with this progression if you
wanted to be specific to the thoracic
spine rotation. I hope you guys enjoy
this exercise, it is a great exercise to
add into that isolated activation
section of our template. So you're going
to do your releases, your mobilizations,
your stretches, and then have them start
working on this so that they gain the
strength they need to keep that range of
motion you just got them. I will talk
with you guys soon.
you