- Hello everyone, I'm Anthony Vessecchia
with Scratch Golf Academy
Level three TPI golf fitness instructor
and today I want to talk about three simple drills
that you can do for thoracic spine extension.
The reason we want to work on this is
if you can be extended, if you're in this position,
or you have what's called upper-cross syndrome,
when you're ready to play golf, when you set up to the ball
and you try to turn, you're gonna be very restricted
in the amount that your torso can turn.
If we can start to get that spine extended more,
you're gonna find that this moves much more free
and you're gonna be able to get a higher range of motion
in your thoracic spine mobility, upper body torso rotation
so that you can hit the ball proper, stay in posture,
and stop a lot of times coming into this position
or going into a flat shoulder plane in your back swing
would be your swing falls that you'll have
if you are very tight in this area and rounded.
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So, we had talked about thoracic spine mobility
and getting more extension in your thoracic spine
so the first thing that I'm gonna show you
is gonna be on a foam roller.
So you would like to have a long foam roller,
long enough to be able to go from your tailbone
to the back of your head.
And this is usually a good start
for just getting some extension through your thoracic spine.
Again, your thoracic spine is the area the base of the neck
to midway down your back and that's gonna help
with most of your mobility in your golf swing
from your waist up.
And if you don't have mobility there
the chances are you will end up not getting a proper turn
and you will also start to develop neck pain
or lower back pain because you will have to compensate
for the lack of mobility in the thoracic spine.
So you will have to become more mobile in your neck
and more mobile in your lower back than you should be.
And that will take some of the stability you should have
in your lower back away and unfortunately
that will start to cause the back pain in the lower back
that you have.
So this drill, it's gonna be basically lying
on this foam roller and doing a lat stretch.
So you'll put your rear end at one end
and your head at the other,
you'll sit down on it
and you're just going to lie with your spine
aligned with the foam roller in this position.
Now you'll take your hands,
if you have a shoulder impingement it's okay
to just kind of be in this position, but if you don't,
let's go ahead and take your hands all the way
over your head and just let 'em dangle there.
Very important key here.
Keep the lumbar down.
So if you can, tighten and push your lower back
down into the foam roller.
If you have a problem getting
into this slight posterior tilt position,
we have other videos that go over just that
and it would be lumbar stability.
So it'll be in those videos if you have to look that up
on our page.
So again, arms straight, push that lower back down,
and we're just gonna drop our arms above our head.
So this is gonna be a foam roller lat stretch.
And then the same time, our lats are here,
we're trying to stretch this muscle at the same time
you will also feel a extension of your thoracic spine,
a pushing forward towards your front of your rib cage
of your mid back.
So just stay in this position and we're just gonna,
if you want, if you wanna keep flowing into it,
you can bring your arms up and bring 'em back down.
Up and bring 'em back down.
Now the next exercise using this same foam roller
is we're just gonna turn it perpendicular to our back.
So now we'll spin it this way.
The important thing again, we only wanna hit that area
that I pointed out at the beginning of this video
where base to about mid,
so basically in between your shoulder blades
is where we're gonna try to work and roll this.
So being in this position, if you wanna support your head,
put your hands behind your neck
so we're not pulling on our head,
put your hands behind your neck,
just let your head rest and you're going to just roll
between the shoulder blades
trying to keep your rear end low to the floor
'cause I don't want you to arch your rear end
or arch your lower back just like this
so that you're rear end can touch,
it's okay if it's off.
We don't a arch in the lower back,
we just want to roll between the shoulder blades,
trying to get extension between the shoulder blades.
We don't want to try to get that extension
from our lower back and just because your head's low
and your lower back is low, it doesn't mean
you're really extending from your thoracic spine.
You could be compensating from above or below.
So again, just roll this area out.
Now we will have drills strengthening the muscles
to try to keep this extension in your back
but for now, we're just getting your body used to unblocking
that thoracic spine.
Okay, so for the third exercise in this series
on thoracic spine extension and working on that
so we can gain more mobility in our golf swing,
we're gonna use these two tennis balls here.
What we've done is we've just duct taped them together
so that your spine will fit right in between here.
I have another tool here.
I have the stability ball.
You can use this, you can set up next to a chair
or your bed or whatever you can put your feet up on
and I'll explain what the object of that is going to be
in a moment.
But again, you're gonna put this in your vertebrae
right along your, right between your shoulder blades
is the main area that we're gonna work with,
your thoracic spine.
So I'll go ahead and put this down on the floor
and we're gonna just line it up straight across
so that you can lie on it.
Also, for one quick note too,
it's gonna be pretty intense on a hard surface like this
so it might be better to start with this one on a bed
or on a mattress so that the balls can sink down
in the mattress a little bit so you're not gonna get
such a high, it'll sink it down to about half of it.
So it won't make you have to arch so much
in your thoracic spine.
So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna lie down.
I'm gonna move it one vertebrae at a time
and I'm gonna kinda keep working
about seven different sections,
eight different sections or so, you can go all the way to 12
if you know exactly where they start and begin
but let's just try to stay between the shoulder blades.
And you're gonna go ahead and lie on it first
and you're gonna kinda see how intense it is.
It's gonna be pretty intense
compared to the other ones that we just did.
If you have the ability to do a proper posterior tilt
of your hips and force your lumbar into the floor,
go ahead and do so now and you're gonna tuck your hands here
behind your neck and you're just gonna rock it.
If you feel your lower back lifting off the floor,
you wanna kinda work in a little bit deeper into that area,
that's why I got the ball here.
You can keep your feet up this way
and kind of pull your knees up towards your chest
with this helping
and that's gonna keep your back down automatically
without having to use your muscles to do so
and you're gonna rock it out.
So you'll do about three or four rocks,
not fast, nice and smooth, get nice smooth breathing,
and then you'll lift up.
You can slide yourself up just a little bit
so you go about one vertebrae and we're gonna start over.
And just rock that area out keeping that lumbar down
on the floor in your lower back.
Another thing that you really wanna pay attention to on this
is if you have any herniations in your back
or herniated discs or any other issues in your back,
talk to your doctor.
This is pretty intense like I said.
If you get down on the floor
and this feels really hard to do, go back to the mattress
and work your way up doing it on a mattress
until you can start doing it on the floor
and get a little bit more extension
out of your thoracic spine.
Also, if you like any of these three drills that we've done
and it's making you feel
like you can actually get into a little bit more
of a rotation in your thoracic spine
without using your lumbar,
so in your golf swing you can get a better back swing,
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Thank you.
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