What's up, guys?
Jeff Cavaliere, AthleanX.com.
Today I'm going to show you how to start stretching your biceps the right way.
Let's kick it off by telling you why it's so important.
A lot of times the biceps get ignored when it comes to stretching our muscles because
we just don’t think about them that often in terms of muscle that we would stretch.
But they are one of the postural muscles that tend to be shortened a lot of times during
the day.
If we're sitting at a computer our biceps are in a flex position, pretty much all the
time.
If we're on the phone, our biceps are in a flex position all the time.
We don’t often have our arms stretched out so far to give our biceps and adequate stretch.
Therefore, it makes it more important that we pay some attention to it.
How you stretch the biceps, though, is really important.
A lot of times guys will do this: you'll see them doing this.
They'll try to hold their elbow straight and they're pushing down and trying to push out
the biceps.
There's a few thins majorly wrong with this.
Number one, when you hold your hand on top here, our bodies tend to do what comes naturally,
and that is fighting the isometric force.
We give back as much as we're being pushed down.
It's more of a protective mechanism for our joints.
So what we're doing here is almost creating our own battle between our hand pushing down
and our arm pushing up, which means the bicep is never really going to relax.
That doesn't work.
The second problem with this is our hand is supinated, or our writs is supinated here.
We know that the bicep functions to supinate the arm.
So if we want to stretch it we're going to want to pronate.
The third component is one that people overlook all the time when it comes to biceps, and
that is the function in the fact that they do actually flex the shoulder.
They bring the shoulder up in front of us.
So if we really wanted to stretch the biceps out – especially the long head – you want
to get extension of the shoulder.
To combine all these together, this is what you'd want to do.
You'd want to grab on behind you to something you can grab on behind you.
First you pronate your hand down.
You want to take the bicep – again, I drew on myself to show you this – you can see
that just by supinating here, supinating out of the oxtrete, obviously it activates the
bicep itself.
You can see it moving right there.
So if we pronate the hand – in other words, turn the forearm down – we can put it on
a stretch.
The second thing we do is get ourselves – again, with a straight elbow because we know that
it flexes here in the arm – we go down to a straight elbow.
Straighten it out as far as we can, then with it pronated we go and reach back behind our
body, here, so we have our arm now in extension.
Then the last thing we do is step a little bit away.
Right now I kind of have it in line with the side of my body.
The last tw3o things we do is tighten and contract the triceps.
By doing that, now we're actually putting – by reciprocal inhibition – we're shutting
off the bicep to allow for a bigger stretch.
You contract the triceps, and at the same time I step a little bit away, this way, so
now I've actually got my arm at that angle, away from my body.
Not just straight behind.
The reason why we do that is, by taking that last little step away here, now with the arm
positioned out we're getting the bicipital groove to be turned a little bit further away
from us.
Right now the groove lines up down in here and it's pretty close to the front of our
shoulder, as far as the upper arm; how the bicep's groove lines up.
When we turn it a little bit away you can see that these are the two points – when
I do that – now I'm stretching a little bit further away from each other.
So you've got that arm behind us, contract the triceps here, then step away here just
a little bit, and now I've got that angle and man, I can feel it.
My hand is pronated down, and I can feel that stretch on the bicep.
So, there you go guys.
If you want to start stretching your biceps out, this is the way to do it.
If you never realized you should, this is your cue to start doing it because, as I said,
everything we do in a day, it's going to be done with our arms flexed.
Even me here talking to you, yes, I have the tendency to keep my arms in this position.
It's a little more comfortable speaking position than doing this and standing here like a tin
soldier.
But it will not help you in terms of getting your arms and your biceps stretched out, which
you're going to need to do if you want to let those muscles start developing fully,
the way they should.
I hope you guys found this video helpful.
If you like these stretching videos and you want more of them, make sure you leave your
comments and thumbs up below.
If you're looking for a program with me at the helm to take you through as a physical
therapist, and not just tell you what to do, but teach you why you're doing it – I think
that has more long lasting effects – make sure you head to AthleanX.com and get our
90 day training system, Athlean-X.
I'll be back here, guys, in just a few days.
Again, four times a week I'm bringing my videos, you let me know what you want to see and I
will try to bring them to you each and every week.
See you soon.