In this instructional video, Mark Ottobre works with client Linda to diagnose and immediately alleviate her shoulder pain through a focused five‑step protocol. He first identifies a noticeable elbow and shoulder asymmetry, indicating muscular imbalance. Step 1 is a T‑raise emphasizing upper‑back squeeze and controlled movement (“thin sheet of ice” cue) to activate the triceps as a shoulder stabilizer. Step 2 uses banded lat work with a tactile “hide your armpit” cue, teaching Linda to disengage the traps and fire the lats. Step 3 is a levator scapula stretch, disguised as a triceps stretch, that mobilizes the neck‑to‑upper‑back muscle and creates space for the shoulder capsule. Step 4 involves a modified lat pulldown performed in thoracic extension (“boobies up”) to further engage the lats while maintaining proper chest positioning. Step 5 is a floor‑based Y‑raise with a stick, integrating upper‑mid trap activation, core bracing, and a light load to intensify the upper‑back feeling. Throughout, Mark provides hands‑on tactile cues and vivid analogies, and Linda reports feeling the target muscles and experiencing immediate pain relief. The session ends with a final test confirming the shoulder is pain‑free.
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Okay, and you get pain doing them like this?
Mm-hmm, I've got pain already.
Yeah, that's what I thought.
Yeah, it already hurts.
Yeah, all right. Third in, look at the elbows. So there's a big disparity between right and left, this one particularly, and that's where she's getting the pain. So we started off with the lock big 3. So we're in a T-raise here. I'm really getting her to squeeze her upper back together, and that's hitting those triceps as well. And the tricep is actually a shoulder stabilizer. The cue I'm giving her here is imagine there's a thin sheet of ice And when you come down, I don't want you to break the ice. So you really gotta control on the way up and control on the way down. Don't just let it down and crack the ice. And she gets it. She's telling me that she's feeling it, which is exactly what you wanna be doing. Then after this, we move to a lat banded, basically lat work, right? So the cue that I'm giving here is you wanna think about it is you, if your trap is on, the lat can't be on. And if the lat is on, the trap can't be on. What I'm doing here is I said to her, I'm gonna tickle you. Because one of the cues to really get that lat firing is to hide your armpit. So being my girlfriend, I'm actually trying to get my finger in her armpit to get her to squeeze it, and she connects with it eventually. And she really gets that lat switched on. So you can see here, she's moving her elbow right into her hip. Now we move to a levator scap stretch. The levator scap stretch is an interesting one. So we've banded it. And it, by disguise, it looks like a tricep stretch. It's not a tricep stretch. The levator scap basically hooks from your neck to your very upper back. It's like a straight muscle down, and you wanna move your head. So you wanna get in that tricep stretch, and then you wanna move your head in a diagonal axis. So you can see here, I'm moving her tricep and her head away from her body. And you can feel the levator scap when you do that, just really stretch up. And that was really causing her a lot of grief and a lot of pain. As soon as I got her into that position, she was like, wow.
Yep.
That's exactly what's been giving her grief with that shoulder because you're gonna remember that shoulder capsule, the shoulder capsule needs space to move. And what we're doing here is we're allowing that space. And if that levator scap is really tight and bunched up, it can't move. So now we move to some direct lat work. And this is part of the workout now, right? So we're moving really into the workout. So what I'm getting her to do with this is a real lat, a lat pulldown as she would normally do a lat pulldown, but I'm getting her to lean away to really exaggerate where she feels it in the lats. So that's why I get in such a position where she moves away. Normally, I wouldn't get someone to do lat pulldown like this. But for her, because she had problems with activating her lats specifically, I got her to do it this way. So the cue is, if you want to be technical about it, it is you want to get into thoracic extension. When you get into thoracic extension, you're going to be externally rotated. The other way to say it is boobies up, right? So you want to stick your boobies up to the roof. And the initiation point is you stick your chest up as high as possibly as you can. And in that, you can see here, I'm getting her to hide her armpits again. That's that cue for that lats. I'm getting her to pack everything down and push herself up as she does it. So you're not bringing the bar down to your chest, you're pushing your chest up to the bar. You can see from another angle here, she's pushing her chest up to the bar as she does it. So she really feels her lats. I'm just guiding her with my hands to really push and pack everything down in that depression. So then we move on to the Y-raise, which is a stick variation. You're on the floor. This is a great exercise For that upper mid trap. So the way you do this is feet together, then you want to flex your bum as hard as you can, squeeze your bum as hard as you can, then you're going to drive your belly button into your spine. And then your arms and elbows are going to be locked. So see here, I've got her arms locked out. And then you want to make a pistol with your fingers. So you can see here, she's at slightly 45 degrees with her hands. I'm cueing her abs there to make sure she's on. And that is a big difference. A lot of people who just relax their abs, they're not going to feel it anywhere near as much in the upper back. So once you've got the position right, that's when you want to lift the stick. Now there's a few different ways you can do this. You can do it as a hold, you can do it for reps, you can do it for 60 seconds at a time if you want. And there's Linda, she's telling me that she's really feeling it in her upper back, which is exactly where we want to be. So I add a little bit of load to it. You can see here I've added, I think that's what, 1 kilo? And 1 kilo makes a huge difference to this exercise. You do not need to go heavy on this at all. And she again does the exercise, lights up her whole upper back. Triceps in this included are lighting up. She can feel it. And now we do the final test. Normally doing— are we in your way, Jamie? How's that feeling?
Good. Pain?
All right, can you try what we did before where you leant forward? Sorry, you leant forward. Try it now. Pain?
No.
Gone?
It's gone, yeah. It's just like very different to training with other trainers, I think, in terms of like the posturing. Like, I've actually been— I've had— I've trained with so many trainers, even with online coaches, and the critiquing. And even with the lat pulldown thing, the whole reset thing, that has never been— I've never had as many cues. And then it wasn't until the very end when we were on the lat pulldowns Like, finally clicked. Like, I actually finally got what you're trying to get me to do to isolate my lats. I didn't get that. Like, I've never actually been able to isolate my lats. Right.
