Sebastian Brosche · 8 min · 1,337 words
A sport-physio exercise to build posture, rib robustness and thoracic rotation, an underdone area for grapplers.
Hey guys, it's Joel Kresge again, sport physiotherapist. Welcome back. Today we're going to go over a fantastic exercise that's meant to try and help with posture, add some robustness to our ribs and to also help with strengthening thoracic rotation, which in my opinion is really underdone, especially for jiu-jitsu. I don't necessarily think it's going to stop injuries to ribs.
Again, that typically happens when we're wrestling, when our hips are going one way, our shoulders are going another way against resisted force. But what we're trying to do here is really try to help encourage proper posture to offset what we see in a lot of combat sports of this rounded shoulder. And so on one hand, I think, yes, you have to be aware of posture. We have to be sort of not down here like this.
We're going to be nice and tall and proud through our sternum. We're going to think about a gentle retraction of our shoulder blades and trying to flatten them rather than just pull straight back. We're trying to flatten the shoulder blades. And again, previously I've put out a video on the sleeper stretch.
The sleeper stretch and the one I'm going to show today, which is called the internal rotation or IR reach back, work really well together. They really complement shoulder posture, shoulder strength, thoracic rotation. And I highly recommend them, especially if you feel stiff. You know, a lot of us are not professional jiu jitsu or MMA or kickboxers.
We do it as a hobby. And so what happens is we sit at a computer all day long like this or on our phone like this. Again, just on a side note, if you're going to be on your cell phone like one of those at least be up tall with your elbows pinned against your rib cage. We really want to stay away from holding the phone in our lap so that our heads are down, our shoulders are down.
We're at a computer all day long. And then we go to jiu jitsu and we got rounded shoulders. It's very hard to kind of to beat that and offset any of those things. So anyways, I'll get off my soap box here.
And what we're going to try and focus on again is this exercise where ideally what we want to try and do is go into a turtle, albeit a not great turtle. We're going to have very open pockets. So my elbows are down like this. I'm on my elbows and knees.
And again, in theory, you should sit back on your feet only to try and minimize any kind of cheating that you're going to do through your bum. It doesn't really matter if you're on your feet like this, as some people will call seal feet or up on your toes. I personally think it's better to be up on your toes. It's a really good practice to have both in yoga, jiu jitsu and in life in general.
So we're going to make another video about that after. But in any case, so we're on our elbows. We're like this. Now, what I want to try and do here, my goal is to get my hand on my bum and then we're going to rotate back.
Now a couple of key features here. It's really important not to put my hand as far back on my back as I can, because you'll notice here that when I bring my hand behind my back, it essentially dumps my shoulder forward. And the whole point of this exercise is to actually get the shoulder going backwards. So I always tell people to put it on your butt.
And from here, what I'm going to do is think about gentle flattening of the shoulder blade. So again, I'm trying to minimize starting off the exercise with an anterior tilt on the shoulder. So hand on the butt, flat shoulder blade, and I'm going to look over my shoulder. And it seems like it wouldn't really matter, but it's really important to look where you're going.
Again, another really important point in jiu jitsu is make sure that if you're trying to go a certain way, make sure you're looking there. And that was a really good thing that I learned from Joseph Capizzi. He put out this amazing instructional on the Capizzi lock. I highly recommend it.
But one of the things that was just sort of like glanced over was, again, if you're doing some of these inversions, make sure you look where you're going. In this case, it's the same thing. You'll really feel the difference. If I'm looking down at the ground and I try to twist back, it doesn't work at all.
And if I turn my head and I'm looking, say, at the camera and I do it, it works, but it's not quite there. And if I look over my shoulder, I get an absolutely different kind of exercise. So again, please focus on that. So hand on your bum, set your shoulder blade.
I'm going to look over my shoulder like a really strong shoulder check. And I'm looking up at the ceiling as I squeeze my shoulder blade gently into my spine. I take a big breath in, breath out and go a little farther. Now what's really interesting about this is you can see my goal here is to almost get stacked vertical.
It's about 80 degrees that I want to see in an ideal situation. But what's interesting, again, this is a fantastic exercise because look at the difference here between my right and my left. My right side, I have no problems going almost vertical. When I do the left one and I come up like this, that's as far as I go.
And it's, I don't know what, maybe 45 degrees. Even when I look up at the roof and I'm, you know, all that breathing. So this, and this is my problem side. So for me, when I do this, it's also a little bit of a diagnostic type exercise where if I've been feeling tight on my right thoracic spine between my shoulder blades, I want to mobilize that area with whatever means that works for you, whether like a massage gun or rolling out on a foam roller or you get someone to massage it or whatnot, and then do this exercise after.
We want to increase mobility in the thoracic spine. And then we work on thoracic stability, which is what this exercise is, which is incorporating scapular stability and all the little rotator muscles of the thoracic spine. Also important here again, is the importance of looking and cervical rotation, your head rotation and breathing. Please make sure that you start out slow and steady with this one.
If you've never done it before, I've had lots of patients get cramps right between the shoulder blades and that's okay. You're waking up those mid and lower trap muscles, which for again, a lot of people, if they spend a lot of time slouch forward on a computer, on their phone or whatever reason they're doing it. And now we're basically trying to get into this extended position, adding rotation at end range. People don't like that if they've never been there.
So take your time and ease into it. And I personally find this is really good for jujitsu specifically in trying to do, if I play a lot of turtle and so it's really nice to try and do some sit outs and like the Syracuse type spin outs from the bottom and then get onto the top. And so it helps connect your neck strength and your scapular strength in that particular pattern. I hope you enjoy this.
Please, if you have any questions, give me an email. I will see you guys on the mat soon. Thanks again.
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