Shoulder Mobility: 11-Min Cat-Cow Flow for Grapplers (10-for-10 #3)

And then as I look down back up. Good. And then sitting back onto your heels here and we'll just open out the hands a few times. So bring the hands up with the thumbs pointing behind you.

Then open out, keep the thumbs pointing behind you, open out the hands, drop them down. Slide them across the floor, then hands back up, thumbs behind you. Open out. Just a few circles here, just really opening the chest out.

And now let's change that. So back of your hands, I'm pointing back and I'm lifting my hands as far back as I can. Open them out, open the chest out and then down. Then back up, back of your hands, back.

Keep driving the hands back when we get to the top. It's not reaching up, I'm trying to reach my hands back and then open out. And then back down. One more of them.

And down. Now let's think about as I come up, my thumbs are pointing forwards, my little fingers are pointing back. And back. Keep those little fingers pointing back, thumbs forwards.

Then back up, little fingers. You almost feel it in the biceps as we go back. Now as we go back, we're going as I come forwards on the way forwards. Drive your shoulders forwards as well.

So I'm shrugging forwards with my shoulders. Again, shoulder blades, I'm trying to bring them round here. Then I'm reaching up, now my shoulder blades are back, pinching together. Open out.

One more of them. Drive the hands forwards. Open out. And down.

Good. Okay, so let's swing through onto our backs here. Knees nice and bent, get your back flat on the mat and we'll move the shoulders. So my hands are coming above my head, the backs of my shoulders are on the mat here and the backs of my hands are on the mat.

Now I'm opening my hands out and I'm dragging my elbows down the mat so that my elbows come in line with my shoulders here. Okay, if your hands or your elbows start to lift up off the mat, that's fine, which means you're a bit tighter. But from here, just bring the back of the hands back up above the head, reaching them up nice and high and then open out again. So let's do a few of these.

Inhale up. Exhale down. Two more. Inhale up.

Exhale down. And this time keep the elbows going so I'm going to keep bringing my elbows down towards my hips but I'm keeping the backs of my hands on the mat. And you're probably not going to get there but just when you get to the point of feeling a real stretch, just stop there and breathe. Just take two or three breaths just letting everything open.

Okay, let's bring the hands back up now above the head. Reaching the hands as far above the head as we can, shrugging the shoulders up towards the ears, opening everything out here. Just one more breath, keep reaching and ease that off. Okay, slowly seat yourselves up and then hands behind your hips, knees bent, knees are up towards the ceiling, hands behind your hips.

If your wrists do hurt here, you can point the fingers away from each other, that's fine too. Just see how you feel with your fingers pointing in the same direction as your toes. And then from here, I'm not doing this with my chest, I'm shrugging my shoulders back and opening my chest. Then elbows go back and forwards and back and forwards.

Good. Then we lift the hips, bring the hips towards the heels slightly which is going to open the shoulders and chest out a bit more. Then elbows back and forwards and back and forwards. Okay, now we're going to bring the hips.

Let's move the hips one more time towards the heels. Elbows bend back, this time we'll just pause wherever we are and just breathe here, your head can be back or your head can be down here, just whatever's comfortable. Just breathe in here, letting the shoulders and chest open. Then we're going to bring the hips back and forwards and backwards.

Okay, let's bring ourselves back up, hips back towards the shoulders. Okay, now just sitting down, cross legged if you're comfortable, we're going to open the hands out and now my right elbow is going to come over my left and then my left arm, so the bottom arm bends and now I'm bringing my right hand up as well and then we're thinking about trying to link the hands here. If you can just grab your little finger with your thumb, that's fine or if you're just here, that's fine too but what we want to do is we want to start opening everything out. Okay, if you can link the hands together, that's brilliant but I'm trying to drive my shoulders away from each other now and drive my chest forwards.

Okay, so just see where you can get to here. You might be here, nearly getting there but just opening the shoulders out and breathing. Good, so at the moment our shoulders are driving out and away. Now drive your shoulders forwards again, so we're trying to get our shoulder blades on our sides again, almost like bring them round, like wing them round and then my elbows are pointing forwards.

I'm driving my elbows up towards the ceiling, still driving my shoulders forwards as well, keep driving them up, just breathing here and then super slowly bring them back down, straighten the right arm, straighten the left, open the hands out just a few times, pulsing the chest open, maybe lowering the hands, maybe raising the hands. Okay, let's change sides now. Okay, so left hand or left elbow on top of the right, right elbow bends and the left elbow bends and now we're trying to link the hands together again, just see wherever you can get to, that's fine if you're tight, just see whatever's comfortable for you, just find that and then think about driving the chest forwards and the shoulders away from each other and back and breathe. Okay now, elbows forwards, lifting them up, shoulders forwards again, trying to wing your shoulder blades around your back.

One more breath here and slowly coming down and coming out of that, again pulsing the chest open a few times, just hands up and down and then hands down onto your knees and that is it for this active recovery session on the shoulders. I hope you enjoyed it, I will see you in the next video, thanks for watching guys.