Mobility Series: Strong Stable Shoulders

Hey, everybody. I'm Amy from BodyFit by Amy. And this is Ryan from Simply Sport CBD. And this is your strong, stable shoulders workout. This is part of our mobility series that I am doing in partnership with Simple Sports cbd. If you want more information on any of their products, please check out the links in the description below. In this workout, we're going to be focusing on mobility and flexibility and movement for our shoulders. A lot of us get tight in our shoulders, our upper back, our arms, and we're going to be working that out through mobility, through stretching, and through a little bit of strength. Of course, I'm going to give you lots of different options along the way. Are you ready? I'm ready. Let's do it. Okay, so we're going to start just with checking in with our posture. Posture is so important to everything that we do. So let's start. Feet slightly wider than shoulder width apart. Soft knees. And I want to think about stacking my ears over my shoulders, shoulders over my rib cage, rib cage over your hips, right over that pelvis. Hips over the knees, over the ankles. So just take a minute and just see how that feels in your body. So we do want those shoulders to be up, back, and down, but not to the point where we sticking the ribs out. We call that rib flare, or we're arching our back or our pelvis. But we do want to be aware that many of us have that forward posture from sitting at our computers, our desk, looking at our phones, driving, so finding that in between. So shoulders are up, back, and down, but we're closing the rib cage and again aligning the ribs with the pelvis. A lot of us get that anterior posterior pelvic tilt. And again, a lot of us with our shoulders, they get tight because we hold a lot of tension there. So you want to be relaxed, but you want to be aware of that posture. So just take a minute to get into that, breathing through it, and then we can start with just a little march, moving your feet, moving your arms, and then let's roll those shoulders. So I love rolling the shoulders. If you've done any of my workouts, we usually start with this exact thing because, again, we hold that tightness in our shoulders, in our upper back. So you're letting it go while you're moving through, right? Keeping it kind of loose, but getting that movement. And you can even. I'll step forward. Ryan's got long arms. You can even take them a little bit bigger to the back and to the front. And then let's Plant our feet from here. Let's take one arm and we're going to open up to the back. Let's go three times. Your goal here is not to move through the torso, but really to move through the shoulder. And then same shoulder, let's take it to the front. So I even sometimes, yeah, we'll just put a hand here just so I notice if I'm twisting or not. And same thing, other side. So the thing about our shoulders is like our hips, they move in all different directions. So we want to be working them in all different directions. We do a lot of upper body push. We can kind of swing them across here, an upper body pull involving our shoulders. But we want to make sure that we're moving away from the body into the body, up, down. All the different things that we can do with those shoulders, we want to have the mobility do to do that. So starting with one of my favorites, this is I wise and T's so exactly like it sounds. You're going to come up straight up by those ears with your eye, and then you're dropping those arms down by the side and then out to the side for that Y and then down to the side and then out to that T. So within that, going at your own pace, you can also have your thumbs up if that makes it a little easier to know where to go. You want to be pulling those shoulders back towards your ears without arching that back, right. You want to really open up the mobility, but trying to really use your shoulders to do it. Right. We're not arching, we're not leaning. We're coming up. And this is where most of us notice that tightness. Right. It's very hard with that eye to get right by your ears. So we want to open that up. And if you want, sometimes I like to add a little hinge to it. Just a little drop to release in the back and then come up. But you can keep it straight either way. It's just sometimes helpful because obviously all those muscles are connected down through our spine. So getting a little movement through there helps as well. Let's get one more. All the way through. I let's get why. And we got one hair that won't leave me alone. Nt right through here. All right, great. One to do throughout your day if you have time. Let's take it to the wall. So if you have a wall, if not, you can do this standing. You want to stand up as close to the wall as you can. So heels, hips, whatever you can get. Everybody's body is a Little bit different. Let's come up with those goal post arms. So we're here, and Ryan and I were just talking about this before. You don't want it to be parallel where you're holding tension. You just want what feels natural to you in that goal post. And then we're going to do a little raise. So rear delt raise. Taking it down, taking it up. And your goal here is to stay as close to the wall as possible and not arch your back and not pull forward. So you're really, if you're doing it, you don't have a wall. You're just here to here, but not moving through the back, not moving through the torso. Last one. And then from here, we're going to do what we call wall slides. So harder than it sounds. We're going to slide those arms up, pull those arms down. And again, the idea, not that you're glued against the wall because we all have a little natural curvature in our spine and it depends on your body type, but to make sure that you're not leaning away or really arching or leaning just like that. And you feel that, right? We're all really tight through again, all the things we do. Maybe you're like me. I have an old shoulder injury that I tend to feel and I need more mobility. Work with that. And let's get one more right through here. And relax. Roll through those. So the next exercises we're going to do, we're going to be working with a band. If you don't have a band, you can just do this motion or you can use a yog strap or just creating the movement in the ways that we're doing it. But we're going to take it with just little band pulls. So you've got your band here. And this can be a loop band, it can be a flat band. We're going to take it out in front and we're just going to pull back. So I want you to think about opening the chest. A lot of shoulder mobility comes with chest opening, right. Because we get pretty tight. So not only are we working our back, right, we're getting a little bit of that strength as well. But we're also opening in the chest. Let's get one more. And then I want you to take it down at the bottom. So without any pull. And this is something again, you could do body weight or you could hold a broomstick, something like that. I just want you to come up and then take it down again. The idea being that we're not arching our back or Leaning into it, but you're trying to pull above your head or even a little bit behind. And then if that feels good, we can take it all the way over. Right. So that's pretty challenging. So just do the best you can. It's great if you can do this with something like a broomstick or a bar. But what's great is, if you have a band, is that you have a little bit of flexibility, literally and figuratively, to move through the elbows a bit. So if you're doing with this with just body weight, I just want you to really flip it over and open up again, not here, but here. And if you want to add a little more of that strength, you can add a little pull at the top. But this is a great shoulder mobility exercise that we should all get every day if we can. And let's get one more. Let's just take it at the top this time. And now we're going to pull down, almost like a little lat pull down right across our chest. So instead of from the front, we're going up and we're here. So working the same muscles, those lats and shoulders, but again, opening up the chest to improve our mobility. And coming from the top, a lot of times, I'll do this in core work, deep core and pelvic floor. We'll add a little knee to add a little core, but you don't have to. That's totally optional. Breathe. And one more. Relax. Right. A little more of a strength workout than we thought we were going to get. But remember, strength and mobility go hand in hand. So we're going to take it down onto our mat. So coming on our knees, find what's comfortable for you. We're going to start with a little child's pose. Maybe we'll just take a minute just to hang out in that. So hands out in the front, hips to the back, and you're just going to reach back. And from here, you can rest your shoulder, you can rest your head down, and you can just kind of press your shoulders. I'm going to show you one side to the other. Just getting a little dropping. You can even lean a little bit to that side, but you're going to feel that stretch through your upper back. So obviously, we love child's pose for a lot of reasons, but we get a lot of shoulder mobility. Let's add some movement to it. So we're going to come up to all fours in that quadruped position and just take one arm, reach under, sit back into your child's Pose. You can hold for a couple counts or whatever you need for you, and then come back up to quadruped, and then you're just going to switch. So this is where you decide what works for you. If you can get that arm down even more and lean into it, you can. Sitting back into your hips is going to help you get in that position. Or if you need to, you can just keep it here. You're just reaching under in a way that feels good for you. Let's get one more each side. I got a couple things on our back, then we are done. Last one. And relax. I'm gonna have you come down on your back. So, Ryan, if you just want to lean this way, and we're going to start with exactly what we did on the wall. We're gonna take it here on the floor. So slide down even a little bit more so you have space. So again, we're starting with that goal post. You can do a couple of those little rear delt, just coming down, coming up just to get a feel for it. Sometimes on the floor might be an easier setup for you. The wall is just a great way to make it accessible throughout your workday, throughout your day, or if standing is better for you. And then from here, floor slides. So same idea. You're gonna reach up, you're going to pull the elbows down and really thinking about that full range of motion. If you're able to bring those elbows down by your side, we're getting that scapular retraction all the way down. And then let's take the bend out of those elbows and just take a little snow angel. Right, so you're reaching around through here all the way. Nice and slow, trying to keep those arms close to the ground. And one more and relax. Excellent. So drop those knees to one side. So we're going to get a little back and hip stretch out of this as well. But we're going to lean that. We're going to open up wide here. So we're going to do that open book, which I love this in mobility workouts. We're going to keep it just focused in that upper body. So Ryan's going to take his opposite arm and just cross over, starting just by keeping his torso on the floor just to get that movement through the shoulder. Just a couple of those. And then he's going to add lifting just a bit to really lean into that. And then opening up right through there, taking it over, and then opening it up. And one more, and then we're going to stay on the same side. Go ahead and cross that arm over and we're going to do an arm sweep. So we're going to take it all the way around, so. Yep, exactly. Making a big circle and then come back. So this is where you're really going to feel that mobility. It's going to feel really good. I can't even do it without being on the ground. Taking it around and sweep. You're trying to get down by that leg. And then big half circle. We call this sunrise. Sunset. Ryan made that up, but I like it. Last one and then let's take it over to that other side. So roll your knees over to the other side. So again, you're getting that little built in back stretch, starting with that open book crossing first, just the reach, keeping your torso steady. A couple of those to open up through the shoulder. And then we can add that movement, opening up even more. So when we're working this mobility, it's important that we think about those areas that we're trying to work. We're trying to improve that shoulder mobility. But again, everything's connected. So we're doing somewhere. We're a little more isolated somewhere. We are going to involve that torso because we need spinal mobility to work along with our shoulders. One more just like that. And then go ahead with that scoop, that arm sweep. So take it up and around and then back all the way down. Sunrise, I like it. Sunset set. And you can take it even slower than this. Whatever works for you that gives you the most range of motion, not rushing it. And we'll get one more all the way through. Good. And go ahead and turn over. We're going to come in that position, start on all fours and then we'll take it all the way down. Flat on your tummy, last thing. So we often do those superman holds or superhero holds to work through our back to strengthen our shoulders, our back, our hamstrings. We're going to keep our feet on the floor and Rice is going to do that big scoop like we did with our Snow Angel. But I want you to bring your hands behind your low back and then take it back. So the idea is not just that you're getting out, but that you're also rotating through the shoulder internally, externally, rotating again. Our shoulders move in all different directions, so we want to be working them in all different directions. And if we were to go do a shoulder workout right after this, we'd be able to lift pretty heavy because we'd have that full range of motion. And that's why this work is really good pre workout, post workout or whenever you can get it into your day. Good, Ryan, relax. Good. Go ahead and come up to a seated position. You could finish this out with a child's pose. You can hang out on the mat, whatever you need for you. But those are just a few things that you can be doing within a workout like this. Getting all in about 15 minutes. Yeah, you just hang out or taking it. Getting one or two of these throughout your day from your bed, on the wall in your office. All of it will add up. Mobility is going to inform our strength and everything that we do with our bodies. Thanks so much for joining.