Upper Body Mobility Exercises You Need

So welcome to class. In this class, we're going to be talking about go-to exercises for joint prehab and rehab. Often people go into a lot of convoluted exercises. What I like to do is focus on exercises that hit a lot of things, big bang for buck things that address a multitude of things. So you want to do these exercises because ultimately you want to look after your joints, because looking after your joints, joints move muscles, and obviously that's the name of the game when we're trying to recompose someone's body for muscle strength and fat loss. So in saying all that, I'm going to show you in a moment my go-tos for upper body and lower body, and they're the big bang for buck. So usually using one or a multitude of these things is going to address a lot of things in one go. And even if someone isn't, say, quote-unquote injured, but they don't have the range of motion that I quite want them to have, I will use these exercises. So depending on how broken the client is, if they're pretty good, I'm going to be using maybe 2 to 3 exercises like this. If they're tremendously like a lot of issues and I can't really progress them, I'm going to use, obviously use a lot more and do a lot more rounds. Generally speaking, my training, I use these exercises as kind of hygiene just to make sure I've always got full range of motion, my body feels good before I start training. So welcome to the world of prehab, rehab, and mobility. And just remember the axiom that flexibility is having the range of motion, whereas mobility is having strength through the range of motion. So you always want to apt for strength through the range of motion and not just have passive flexibility. All right, without further ado, come and look at my favorite go-to exercises for mobility. All right, so one of my absolute favorite exercises for shoulder health is the active hang, but the problem is often you get clients who are very protracted forward and they can't hold their whole body yet. The reason why a hang is so marvelous for so many reasons in terms of strengthening and mobility is because it hits so many, uh, I suppose, aspects of the shoulder capsule. So we're stretching out through the lat, we're elongating the tricep, we're stretching out that bicep tendon. We're doing, we're doing a lot of things at once by just simply putting our hand overhead and stretching everything else. So when you have a client who's pretty banged up, beaten up, and they, you know, they kind of walk in like this and you do a screening test and they can't really bring their hands up over, you know, what's the progression? Because we do want to get a little bit of load, but they're obviously not able to hang yet. So we're going to use basically an active hang. So an active hang can be scaled in a whole bunch of different ways. So right now you can see like this, I'm standing on the floor, I've got pretty much no load. If I wanted to create a little bit of load for a client, I could bend my knees as such. This is a passive hang. So I'm using a little bit of bodyweight resistance. So this is the most regressed form, right? So from here, this is almost no, and I can obviously step forward, I could step over it, right? I'm still on the floor, I'm still supported. Now this is more of a stretch. If I want to start to add load, I can sit into it to eventually maybe I can get my foot off. But again, for a client who's never done this before, if they're a bit scared, it's right there, right? The floor's right there. So if I dump back to make it even more of a demonstration, right, the floor's right there. So the client doesn't have to freak out. This is how I'd introduce it if the client's very weak or has very bad shoulders, but again, starting just with body weight, right? Then I'm going to move over to here. This is a little bit more advanced. Again, this is where it introduces— still very safe, and this is more for the fear factor for clients who've never done this before, that the floor is right there, right? I don't like this for advanced. This isn't my preferred because for my preferred is I'm going to elongate the whole body out, and I'll show you what that looks like. Because really, if we're doing an active hang— so we've just done passive hangs there— if we're doing an active hang, I I really want the whole body to be involved in this. So when I get up here in a second, I'm going to assume a plank position. So the plank position is I'm going to bring my hips up, I'm going to basically pull my, uh, serratus anterior down so everything's there. I'm going to actively push everything in while pointing my toes, adding even more force to the floor, really trying to stretch out through the lat, stretch out through the tricep, stretch out that whole shoulder capsule. All right, so I'm going to jump up All right, so as you can see here, right, I'm not just hanging like this is me just hanging out, right? But it's not just hanging out. What I'm doing is, if you look at my toes, I'm pulling my toes down. As I said, that pelvic tilt is now on, and my serratus, I'm trying to tuck my, my ribs under. So I'm pushing. I'm not here, as you can see my head, I'm not just here. I'm pulling everything forward, right? Because like, say, in an overhead press, one of the markers when we're looking with arms up overhead, right? So if you've got a client and, you know, you say bring your arms up or do the overhead squat test, right? So the overhead squat test, their bicep should be covering their ear, okay? So for that, I'm always trying to prepare the body for just a little bit of an extended range of motion for what they need. So where this is going to directly correlate and crossover is their overhead press, right? So if someone overheads press and doesn't have the mobility to pull in, they're going to cut it short, and that, that's where the load is going to be for the lower lower back. So in this, uh, active hang position, I really want to get the body comfortable pushing everything back and having that strength and mobility in that position there. So I'm hanging, I'm pulling myself into that position to strengthen through that position. As you can see, there's nothing passive about it, it's active. You've got to be involved. Again, right, again, my rib cage head down, I'm pulling my toes to the floor, I'm actively involved, I'm pushing my head forward. So in that, I can really feel my lat, my lats are really getting stretched now, right? Everything is getting stretched. This is where I want to be, not here. Okay, because that's not where I'm gonna press, that's not where I'm ending up. I want these movements, I want my joint preparatory work to marry the movement that I'm getting ready for. If I'm getting ready for an overhead press in my joint preparatory work, I'm here. Again, if we regress back, if someone doesn't have that, we can again regress them back to this position here, right, where it's not quite as exaggerated. Now, there is something which I'll just show you for this video. There is a progression on the active hang. It's called skin the cat. So the skin the cat involves another dimension of this, is where the the bicep now is gonna be a lot more involved and also the pecs. So skin the cat, I'll just do it up on here. So you can progress an active hang. So this is where you come through and now you've got bicep, the biceps are now much more involved in this position. The pecs are a lot more involved. The lats are a lot less involved in that active hang. So if we're looking at trying to open up the pec, that again, less for shoulder health and more for mobility and through the pec and through the bicep. So people do report, you know, bicep pain when they're pressing or when they're— they just have that there. Then the skin the cat is not where you would start someone, but it's a way to think about it. I'll show you how to actually start and introduce the skin the cat if we're going to do that. We're going to do that with a weighted dislocate, which is this exercise. So you can see how these movements start to tie together. The way to introduce that— I mean, there's two exercises to introduce it. One is the weighted dislocate, which is this. The other one is— I don't know what you'd call this one, but it's basically shoulder extension. You know, no one don't really do shoulder extension in our workouts, but you can see in this position my biceps are very much under load when I do this. When I say under load, that's actually— they're isometrically contracted and stabilizing this position. So if someone wants to build up to a skin the cat, these are the two exercises that you would begin. Now, why would you want to be able to do a skin the cat? Again, so this is the shoulder extension and this is the way to dislocate. So again, with the way to dislocate, this is all for shoulder health, right? For the way to dislocate, we're going to assume plank position and see my abs are on, my pelvis is tucked under, my serratus anterior is on, right? So I've hollowed out and I'm pushing away. As I come up, I'm pushing up and then I'm pushing away. Now don't let go, all right? My serratus is on, on, on. And the other thing you should notice here, my elbows are locked and I've assumed a full grip the whole time. So I'm not letting go to release tension. I'm— and see, right there it feels A little icky, but that's good. We want to go towards the fire. Obviously, we don't want anything to snap, but we want to go towards that fire, get comfortable with it, move through slowly, move through slowly. And if you can't— if you're not able to do this, your client's unable to do this, again, there's heaps of regressions which I'll show you right now. If we need to regress this, super easy to regress, right? So that's the way to dislocate. So what you've seen now For me, if I'm warming up, I like to start with an active hang. I like to get straight to my way to dislocate. Sometimes I'll use a skin the cat if my chest is feeling a bit tight, biceps are feeling a bit tight. I'll go to those movements straight away because I've built the mobility over time. But again, you've got a client who doesn't do that, who isn't able to do that, where do you start them? Well, the first place to regress— there's a few different ways we can regress this. We can use the lock big 3. The lock big 3 is the first point of call because we're super safe. We're on the floor. We use this a lot with clients. It's a great one. They've got 30 reps. It's just repetition, and that's what you're going to need for a lot of clients. It's just thousands and thousands of reps to correct bad movement patterns. Again, this is so safe, and they could do this every single day. 1, 2 kilo— I've got 2 kilo dumbbells, but, you know, 1 kilo dumbbell. So lock big 3, relaxing your body, just lifting up in a T-shape as high as you can. So Traditionally you do 10 reps like this. You could also just give a client T-raises if you didn't want to give them the other aspect, but the other aspects are beautiful because here in this position my triceps are definitely working and switched on, as your clients will be, lifting off the floor. So you do 10 here and then you flip around again and then you do another 10. And again, what you're probably going to find, because that tricep tendon does run through the shoulder and can create some stability issues, so depending on what's, I suppose, the weak link in the chain is where the client or you yourself are going to feel it, right? If you, if you're very strong with the triceps and they're a little bit more tight through the pecs, you might find the restriction or the constraint is going to be the pecs. For me on this one, it's the tricep. It doesn't really matter so much, right? But you're going to use these exercises in succession. So you do 10 reps, 10 reps, 10 reps, and then move on to the next one, and then do a round. So you might have 3 exercises in your upper body mobility. So this is where you could start to build the foundations. This, believe it or not, is going to be the foundation for something like a weighted dislocate. What you've got to realize is that there's a lot of— there's always a lot of things going on at once. It could be tightness, it could be weakness. Usually it's weakness as to why someone can't achieve something. So they're too weak in the upper back, that's why they're not able to hold that position when they're coming around with the weighted dislocate. What you'll find commonly with the weighted dislocate is that people people's biceps are way too tight, which could also be a reflection of the triceps are also too weak, right? Because muscles function as teams. The next exercise I like to start to introduce that weighted dislocate— again, the reason why I like the weighted dislocate is because it's bang for buck. And also, as a model, I'm trying to work clients towards being able to do a weighted dislocate and able to do a full active hang. So then I reverse engineer and go, well, how can I get the client to do that? Because these mobility exercises are so fundamental. That would be kind of step zero for a lot of clients, and that's where you're going to need to start them. Step two, I suppose, would be— or you could start clients on this. Again, I like the Y raise with a stick. So the Y raise, and I like to use isometrics here as well. So again, I'm going to assume the plank position. I want to say the plank position, really all I'm saying is I'm going to bring my belly button in towards my spine and tuck my hips under. So now belly button's in towards spine, serratus anterior is tucked ribs are stacked, nose down, arms locked. You don't want to see any of this shortening stuff. Make sure the arms are extended always. And then I'm going to lift up and I'm going to hold it. So you can do this in a few different ways. You can set it for a timer for 30 seconds, you could do 60 seconds isometrics. So you know, this is just where you, you're raising off the floor as high as you can, or you can just simply do reps, right? So my upper back when I do this just lights up. So that would be be the step— second step. Now, if clients are starting to progress from that, starting to build some strength and mobility, the next one is to do a lying dislocate. So the wider you go, the easier it is. And I've had clients who've literally started like this, not able to grab, and very loosely just start to do it. Obviously, the goal is a full grip. Okay, so in this position, I'm going to be up, my arms are locked, The reason why lying exercises like this are valuable is because it removes— the client doesn't have to think about anything else. They're on the floor. All they have to think about is their upper back. It's, it's regressed from standing up. Obviously standing up is more progressive. Lying down is going to be the most regressed. So here, again, you can add weight to this. This is kind of like a halfway way to dislocate. And this is easier than standing up, so I'm actually able to get a bit more range with this if I load it. Just so you can see what it looks like, here we go. So I want control when I'm doing these. Touch. And again, I don't want to let go of anything. So that would be the next one. After that, for the shoulder extension if people aren't getting it. So again, we don't do much shoulder extension, but it's great for the upper back, rear delts. But simply, we can introduce it on the floor, which is a progression of the Andrew— the lock big 3, where we get into that shoulder extension, right? We're just using it with a stick this time. Again, hands supinated. And up. Again, you can weight that. So eventually, when your clients get good at that, you can see now how combining the active hang, or turning a passive hang into an active hang, to, I suppose, a supercompensated active hang where you're pointing your feet, getting all those things right, starting with some of these T thoracic spine extensions and T raises and the lock big 3, then moving into and with the shoulder extensions and then moving into a really nice weighted dislocate. And again, I like these exercises because they hit a lot of things at once. Then you can see now where the— how do I say— the skin of the cat can fall in by opening up the pecs, opening up the bicep. It's different, but it is a more advanced version of just simply hanging and doing a weighted dislocate. So this is our shoulder sequence. Sequence. There is another exercise that for clients who all of this kind of fails, right, the floor stuff is going to be primary for a lot of people who just can't do stuff. But there's another that I actually give a lot of clients who just, I suppose, have problems, uh, how do I say, finding body parts in themselves, right? So this is called no money. So to do a no money, you're going to find a corner in your gym so I like to use this corner right near the toilet, and what I do is I put my heels right into that corner and I put my spine against the corner. Now these are non-negotiables because these are the things that people get wrong. So what you'll see immediately clients do, because this for a lot of people is a really uncomfortable position, but a lot of people do is they'll stand like this and they'll lean back into it. That makes it easier. It's not what you want, right? You need to be particular in coaching your clients here, because one slip, you're not going to feel it where you're supposed to feel it. So again, mandatory, mandatory, your heels are into the corner, your bum crack is in the corner of the wall, your spine is in the corner of the wall. That's where you got to be, right? So clients who stand like this, they're going to start to feel uncomfortable, they're going to want to move forward. So what you want to do is you want to wrap your body. This is going to help you also with with a bench press, say, creating that arc. Because you can see here, because on a bench press you have to stick your bum down whilst creating a nice arc, right, getting that thoracic extension, which is exactly what I'm doing. One of the cues I'll use here is stick your armpits into your underpants. So you can see here, all right, my armpits are getting stuck into my underpants. So my bum is pushing against the corner, and that thoracic spine is pushing on the upper— or even C-spine is pushing into the, the corner, and I've got this nice gap in my lumbar that's creating that thoracic extension. So then what I'm going to do is I'm going to place my hands out, my thumbs— and this extension, by the way, is going to be dependent on mobility, obviously, right? So you just want to get people to work this position because, again, this position is really beautiful to make sure our shoulders are depressed and nice and stable. We don't want to be pressing like this, right? So if a client is pressing like this, this is a great exercise just to teach them what you want. So I'm pulling everything in, then my thumbs, thumbs up, I'm gonna point my thumbs down as hard as I can. Obviously they can't go down any further than that, but I'm trying to point them down. The key here is intense. You have to make sure the intent is there. So I'm pulling my thumbs down as hard as I can, and then this is step 1, right? The reason why this exercise is so amazing is because you're teaching external rotation with thoracic extension. A lot of people just teach external rotation. It's usually not the way external rotation works. External rotation usually works in coupling with thoracic extension. Again, for example, in a bench press, you could try and externally rotate by pulling the bar apart, but that can also place a lot of stress on the external rotators themselves and on the anterior delt. Pull and get into thoracic extension, by way of virtue, you can see here I'm already getting into that external rotation. By thoracic extension. So we want to teach thoracic extension as we externally rotate, and this is what this exercise does. That's why it's a great one, right? So I'm thoracic extension, chest is up, now I'm externally rotating, pointing my thumbs down as hard as I can. Okay, so that would be 1, that would be 2, right? So you can see how I'm doing these here, keeping my body glued to the wall. Now I'd get a client to do 10— 10 of these is usually where I like to go. If someone's learning something really new to an exercise or not getting it, I stick to 6 reps only because after 6 reps, from a learning perspective, uh, technique goes down. If I want to advance this a little bit, I'm going to go out, I'm going to extend and back up. I'm going to go out, I'm going to go extend and back up. You'd be surprised, a lot of clients will find this very challenging. So for a lot of people, I just get them to do this and really help guide them to feel that thoracic extension without raising, right? So extend, externally rotate, out. So there is a version of this where you can use a band. I actually advise you not to. I don't like a band for this exercise. What will happen theoretically, you're adding load and you're adding a part. I, I'd rather do it with a different exercise for that. For this exercise specifically, for the no monies, you really just use it for clients to find that thoracic extension with the external rotation coupled. When you add a band, it adds a level of complexity where people— like, even now, like, I do this and I can feel it. And as an isometric hold, as an activation exercise, amazing, right? You won't need— so if clients are really struggling, you can get them on a no money. So that wraps up, I suppose, the most common shoulder exercises and go-to's that I usually I mean, if you, if you can get a client to nail the active hang, if you can get them to nail the weighted dislocate, uh, the reason why, again, I like those two is because you're achieving a lot with just those two exercises. Again, is it going to solve everyone's injuries? Absolutely not, absolutely not. But big bang for buck things like getting the arms up overhead without getting into, you know, excessive lordosis, it's going to go a really great way and help develop that strength. Again, the other thing to consider is how tight their pecs are. If their pecs are super tight when they go into a way to dislocate, they're going to really find that hard. This is again where the overhead passive hang can really come because they're going to be stretching all that out as well. Hope you've enjoyed this class, and let's check out the lower body in just a sec.