Sebastian Brosche · 5 min · 884 words
Previously titled: Shoulder Sleeper Crank Stretch Part 1
Hey guys Joel Kriska back here again. Today we're going to go over a fantastic stretch for the back of the shoulder. It's commonly called the sleeper stretch. I think it's more so that you can sleep on that side.
But anyways what we're trying to do here is we really want to try and get a hold of flexibility of the back of the shoulder to allow the shoulder to sit back properly. We spend again as I've mentioned many times before we spend lots of our times throughout the day in a slouch position either at a computer or on our phone and then we go to grappling where we're again slouched forward. When the shoulders in a forward position it puts the rotator cuff muscles the ones that pull outwards at a severe disadvantage and it makes it significantly weaker. So for many perspectives we want to try and get flexibility of the back of the shoulder as well as get control over the shoulder blades sitting back on the thoracic spine.
That's another video that I've put out that's called the IR or internal reach back. But anyways what we want to try and do with this one is we're going to try and put our elbow at shoulder height and we're going to internally rotate this. And so you can do it in a standing position but you'll find that it's much better to be laying down on your side. What we're shooting for here as I'll demo is about 60 degrees of internal rotation.
Usually when we have someone who's injured their shoulder or they're just naturally a stiff person with poor posture they'll end up getting to about 45 degrees here. This being zero and we're going to get all the way down to 45. That's what normal people will experience on their stiff shoulder side. We want to get all the way down to here.
Okay so let's go over this. Usually what you'll try and do is have a pillow or a towel stack here but you don't necessarily need it. If you're in the gym and you just want to stretch your shoulder don't worry about it doesn't make that much of a difference. I'm gonna lay essentially stacked shoulder over shoulder minus a little bit.
So I'm gonna open up my chest just a smidge and my elbows at shoulder height. This is zero and what I'm gonna try and do here is use my free hand to pull the arm or forearm down towards the ground here and I should only feel a stretch in the back of the shoulder. I don't want to feel any pinching in the front and if I do what I can try to do is open up a little bit to try and get my chest more up to the roof and that just takes pressure off. You can see if I open up this way I can get way farther down than if I'm stacked shoulder over shoulder.
This is as far as I get. Okay now again the purpose of this stretch is to try and stretch out the back of the shoulder so that we can have the glenohumeral joint sit back in the socket or the labrum and that again helps us with upright posture. So when we're working on thoracic extension and scapular flattening and glenohumeral retraction then we have this nice posture to build on and whether we're doing that for pain relief or to help set the tone for strengthening the rotator cuff or conversely if we're going to use this to our advantage in jiu-jitsu when we've got someone in a kimura is the most notable example is that when we're in this position where the arm can no longer internally rotate and then the shoulder blade dumps forward we know that we've got them in that position they're not getting out of it because the rotator cuff is at such a disadvantage. If you have an injury please make sure you take your time with this.
So what we want to try and do is when we're doing the stretch laying down on our side again we're going to be down here we gently push down with our top hand we're gonna hold it for about five ten seconds and then my my stretching arm is gonna push back like a one out of ten for maybe five seconds then I release and go a little deeper and I repeat this a couple times that's a PNF style stretch and a lot of you will have seen that with hamstring stretches this is a really good way to do it with the shoulder I've got some other ways that we can stretch it out if that isn't working for you but ultimately remember that this is a fundamental stretch that I believe we should all be doing in jiu-jitsu kickboxing MMA to help combat this forward posture as well as to try and set up a nice stable situation where when we're strengthening our arms we're actually getting development and not just wasting time. I hope you've enjoyed this stretch I will see you soon and I'll see you back on the mats real soon. Thanks again!
This is the transcript. Become a member to watch the video.
Watch now →.avif)