This is Brent doing another exercise for your back. This is a great stability
progression for those of you guys who've been doing lat pull downs for years this
is a way to take it up a notch. I'm going to have my friend Mike Tierney from
metropolitan fitness come out and help me demonstrate this exercise. He's going
to show you how it's done while I take you guys through some of the cues and
the progressions you can use. Now first things first body position. Mike here is
going to be kneeling, alright he's going to start on both knees and he actually has
his feet dorsi flexed so that he doesn't smash his foot into plantar flexion.
Alright and he's kind of sitting back on his heels. This is a very comfortable, fairly
stable position providing you don't have knee pain. Now I'm going to hand Mike these
two cables and you guys can probably already start to visualize where this is
very similar to a lat pulldown, but because of the independent cables a
little less stable. His kinetic chain check points are going to stay the same
notice his knees are underneath his hips, he's drawn in, his shoulder blades are
down and back and his head is back. I actually have these cables set up
slightly in front of his face. Just like we wouldn't want to do a lat pulldown
behind the head because of the compromised position it puts the
shoulder, we also don't want to put this behind the shoulder either. Besides this
is a better angle in general for scapular mechanics as well as creating a
nice line or a line of resistance for the lats themselves. So Mike is going to
demonstrate this exercise in a relatively stable position sitting back
on its heels first, drawing his shoulder blades down and back, and just bringing
those elbows right towards his back pockets. And there you go we have a nice
bilateral cable pulldown. Now the first progression we could do is just go from
our bilateral to our alternating. So now he's going to keep both of these in his
hand but he's going to go one at a time. Now the trick is he has to maintain his
centerline. So if you guys draw a little line between Mike's nose right between
his pecs, right between his knees, this shouldn't shift back and forth as he
pulls this weight down unevenly. You guys also see that it takes a lot more
endurance from his shoulders as an alternating pulldown takes about
twice as long as a bilateral cable pulldown. So the next thing he's going to
do to increase the stability and actually he's already done this because
it's a more comfortable position for him, because some of the knee pain he has.
He's actually kind of come up to a, on both knees, but almost vertical position
with his body. You guys see that, so that's a little less stable position for
some people it will be more comfortable though. So go ahead and demonstrate a
couple with that. Now once we get into this position I might even take this
upper body progression up another notch and go from bilateral to unilateral.
This gets real tricky though. The trick isn't being able to pull down the weight.
The trick is, can Mike pull down the weight without leaning either away to
try to counterbalance this weight, or leaning towards as he pulls like he
can't stabilize himself. You guys see that Mike's actually very good at this
exercise, he has been doing this exercise a while, he's drawn in, let's see a couple more
of those. Now I can take this up another step, get a little bit more complicated
with my lower body position by going into a kneeling cable press. You're more
comfortable, okay good. So if it's this arm that he's working on, it's going to
be the opposite leg that's forward. This creates tension in his posterior oblique
sub system, makes this a little bit more comfortable. If you guys are doing
bilateral then the leg forward doesn't matter. So let's go ahead and see a
couple more reps just like that. How's that feel? Alright let's see you switch
sides I know you've done about 20 reps on that side. Since this is a stability
exercise guys I probably wouldn't use this in a strength training phase and
obviously wouldn't use it in a max strength training phase. We're probably
looking at 12 to 20 reps here, and your focus is going to be on increasing
stability and maintaining perfect form. Alright so that's 12 to 20 repetitions.
You guys had the bilateral to alternating to unilateral in the upper body.
We had the sitting back on the heels, to
sitting up on the knees, to kneeling progression
in the lower body. And of course you guys can use different pieces of stability
equipment to make it even more unstable. These Airex pads themselves were only
used to keep comfort in his knees. Hope you guys enjoyed the video enjoyed the
progression, I'll talk with you soon.