One of the perks of my current position is to work with a handful of professional baseball players during their off-season.
It’s an awesome mix of laid back chat about what kind of music is best played over the speakers during the first few ping pong matches in the morning, and chirping at each other about their respective seasons. You literally can’t find anything like it anywhere else.
A photo posted by Cressey Sports Performance (@cresseysportsperformance) on
Much like that combination, there are a few ways to combine a few seemingly random exercises into an amazing concoction of, how do I say it? “Boom.”
One combination that I’ve been using to mucho success in the past few months can be found in the warm-up and cool down aspect of the lifting session. It involves a positional breathing drill aimed at resetting the nervous system, and followed up by a static hold of the glenohumeral (or shoulder) joint to ensure range of motion is kept in line.
1. Deep Squat Belly Breathing – 2×5 Exhales (2 sets x 5 Exhales)
2. Supine ER & IR Hold – 3x5sec hold/side
Note: The order here is important.
Why?
Performing a Deep Squat Belly Breathing will reduce extensor tone, which means the latissimus dorsi will hopefully be attenuated as a stabilizing muscle group. The posterior pelvic tilt that is also encouraged will also be included to really emphasize the abdominal musculature and to hit home the idea of ribcage position and diaphragmatic contribution to improving all around movement quality of the individual.
Please Raise Your Right Hand…
Meow* for the individual aspect, brought to you by the supine external rotation and internal rotation hold. I’m of the belief that you should give the individual what they need, making sure to not be subjective with your exercise selection. If this person happens to be a right handed baseball pitcher, doesn’t have any injuries that will limit them from moving appropriately, or just happens to be an individual that needs shoulder internal rotation – this exercise may be the correct one for you.
Meow, this isn’t like the sleeper stretch. The way this combination works is this: the ribcage will be better facilitated to help reinforce anterior core stability, and now the adjacent joint of the scapula AND glenohumeral joint have a more adequate range of motion to move about.
Let’s take advantage of our reduced extensor tone, and improve the range of motion that the glenohumeral joint can meow implement – in both internal rotation and external rotation.
Meow, the real sports specific item to discuss is the lack of glenohumeral internal rotation that is often seen in the throwing hand. If you are a pitcher, constantly looking to stretch “to feel loose” – perform these two exercises INSTEAD in order to improve control, stability, and range of motion.
More importantly, if you’re in season and looking for specific help, perform this drill AFTER you’re done pitching.
Why afterwards and not before?
If you’re pitching, you NEED more layback (which requires more external rotation on the throwing arm/dominant hand).
Doing these drills afterwards will help to reduce the amount of glenohumeral external rotation that you are exhibiting – the opposite of what you need if you’re going to be pitching.
However, you want to have the ability to move into and out of specific positions in order to relax your body after a physically taxing task. Reduce the amount of neurological tone that your body is exhibiting, and reap the benefits of multiple and varied movement qualities in order to excel at your sport!
I like benching, but making sure someone has the requisite mobility before bench pressing is muy importante!
If you or someone you know doesn’t have adequate range of motion, or lacks stability within the shoulder joint, there are a few things that you can do to make sure you hit all the correct movements.
What Happens During a Bench Press
When you bench press properly, you will inevitably have to pin your scaps together and back – it just makes for a more efficient movement, and not to mention a bigger base of support during the movement with which your arms (ie: whole body) can move and produce force.
There are a few things that mustoccur in your body to appropriately bench press, whether it is a barbell or dumbbells:
Scapulae must be pinned together (if you have a more stable and bigger base of support, the more weight you can hypothetically put up in the bench)
Slight rib flare (anyone who says they bench press 2x bodyweight without a rib flare of any sort is lying… or has an extremely small wingspan).
Photo Credit: acefitness.org
If you’re constantly bench pressing, or if you find yourself having discomfort during the bench press, you may need more mobility in some areas, and stability in others.
However, this shouldn’t stop you from benching! Keep these points in mind:
Perform a bench press variation that allows your humerus to stop after a certain range of motion.
For example, a DB Floor Press still allows you to improve and increase strength, despite a smaller range of motion.
It also increases proprioception to where your arms are in space, and the movement stops when your triceps hit the ground.
Even if the muscles surrounding your shoulder girdle and scapulae are limiting range of motion, the overarching concept here is…
…can you dissociate humerus vs scapular (and even thoracic flexion) movement from one another?
If you attempt to bench press massive amounts of weight, and all you do is protract and abduct your scapula off the back of your ribs as you bench, you may not be doing it properly.
So hopefully that should prove a point that you will need to keep your scaps back and down in order to effectively bench press.
Now, in order to create a juxtaposition in terms of how your scapulae move, there have been many suggestions in the past for improving mobility in between sets of upper body movements.
1. You can perform a rowing motion of some sort.
2. You can perform a thoracic rotation movement of some sort.
3. You can perform a scapular dissociation movement of some sort (like a serratus wall slide for example).
At the end of the day, I’m looking for a big bang exercise to improve all of these items at once, and to reinforce variable movement qualities. Essentially, I’m looking for appropriate scapular movement, abdominal recruitment, and even reinforce all of the above with hip mobility and stability.
Crawling and creeping are two awesome ways to improve scapular motion, rib motion, oblique recruitment, and overall make yourself seem like a ninja.
What Occurs When You Creep
Creeping is an exercise that alternates the scapulae as you creep from arm to arm. Not only do you creep, you also move ribs, recruit obliques, and utilize hip external rotators and aim to incorporate holistic movement, as opposed to a singular movement.
So what better way to get strong and get mobile than to combine the two!
Now, per our other combinations, let’s improve what mobility we currently have, and then reinforce and reload that with a weighted exercise, such as the bench press.
You can do it in any manner you want, but this is what I find to be the most effective manner with which to progress for movement variability, a quality that is necessary for up and coming athletes.
A1. Forward Creeping – 3×10 Yards
A2. 1-Arm DB Floor Press – 3×5/side
Perform a creeping motion in order to restore and/or improve range of motion, and then perform the bench press in order to get strong and jacked.
This phrase is probably the bane of a few people’s existence.
I can’t continue.
I can’t figure it out.
I can’t go on.
I can’t. I can’t. I can’t.
To prevent this article from being very philosophical, I’ll relate it to a world that I’m very familiar with: fitness.
Now, let’s take a step back.
I’m in the business of changing people.
I change mindsets. I guide people through the avenue of exercise in order to achieve their desires of playing professional sports, fat loss, and improving their appearance.
When attempting to create a solution for change, one thought that has pervaded my mind the past few months is the thought of creating the correct solution for the issue at hand.
If you have the right solution at the wrong time it is still the wrong solution.
While no solution is 100% black or white in a given scenario, I think we can agree that for some solutions, some actions are just in plain hypocrisy of the desired outcomes.
If you want to lose weight, a midnight snack of a dozen mini-donuts every night, along with crushing half a gallon of milk every night after a lift (in addition to your every day meals) won’t necessarily be conducive to your goals.
On the same end, crushing Wheat Thins and only Wheat Thins after you do triceps and biceps at the local gym won’t get you to your immediate goal.
The word “thins” is even in the name — why eat it to get big?
You not only need to decide on a set of actions, but you also need to surround yourself in the proper environment in order to change.
While I don’t fancy myself a wizard for creating change ala Tony Robbins, I do believe the following can create a better view on how your intangibles, such as your environment, can impact your goals.
A Non-Threatening and Encouraging Environment
For most goals, if you surround yourself in an environment that encourages your actions towards these goals, the more likely you will be able to model yourself and preen your actions towards a more streamlined thought process. This is fair enough and straight forward to understand.
A Low Stress, Anti-Change (Internal) Environment
If your environment stresses you out due to lack of change, you can either:
Continue your path for internal change.
Don’t do anything.
Take a step back and follow what your environment is dictating, or allow the external world to decide your actions.
Anecdotally, about once every 2 or 3 weeks, I’ll get a message or email from someone online who is frustrated with their personal training job at their local commercial gym. Understandably so — there are often very little standards for what training looks like, and what management asks of you (often to sell sell sell).
At the same time, this person is yearning for change, yet has been working in the same gym for the past 3–10+ years. This person yearns for deeper knowledge, changes in environment, and improvement in work place.
Confusingly enough, this is the same person that does not know where to go when I ask them, “Have you thought about quitting? Moving?”
The world is bigger than your boutique commercial gym.
A High Stress, Anti-Change External Environment
At the same time, your environment also has the capacity to stress you by having too much pressure for improvement or change — a societal and environmental pressure entropy, if you will.
My use of entropy is not this complicated to understand.
So if your environment stresses you out due to too much change occurring (that is, too much perceived by you) you can either:
Allow your environment to swallow you up.
Organize the disorder and maintain your integrity, staying on your path.
Not do anything.
In the context of weight loss, many often mentally fight against many social pressures, whether it is from the context of after work drinks (and food), or family members’ resistance against eating salads for lunch.
There are correlations between societal and interpersonal pressures on body image and dietary influence, and to utilize the above study as a backside confirmation (that is, the study proves an understood thought process), it is a common thought process that if someone makes pressures you to think in a certain way to fit in, you often will.
I See No Changes…
So let’s put all of this together.
If someone repeatedly says “I can’t do this! (with the underlying tone being I am not physically or mentally prepared for this.)” then it can be assumed that they are:
Not prepared for it physically.
Not prepared for it mentally.
Copping out.
Intangibles (Do not have proper tools to accomplish the job, etc.)
There are both internal and external stressors at play here. On the one hand you have yourself and your belief system on whether or not you can accomplish said task. And on the other hand, you have your environmental “checkpoints” that discourage or encourage you from changing.
So what can you do? What is the correct play here?
Well, sometimes you need to understand that waiting out your environment is important for change.
And for other scenarios, you need to be the catalyst for change.
While this sounds like it is ending up to be another one of those articles that ends up being “It depends.” as the final answer, I’d like to offer another solution.
Decide on your goal, and pick your battles.
Know when to fold them, and know when to call people out on their bluff.
Whichever thought process you want to go with, understand that much like music, creating a solution is all about timing.
“How do you know when to do that?”
I’m glad you asked.
It comes down to experience. While some people may be geniuses and “have it all figured out”, more often then not those people are just rolling with the punches and going from one solution to the next until they do just that — until they figure it out through multiple and various experiences.
These individuals are literally rolling from one change to the next, just to make sure that they haven’t missed anything in the grand scheme of things. They still have a solid foundation, but they will try different things from time to time.
If something works, it will eventually find its way into the hands of someone who is in the habit of constant change. They make themselves open to the idea of change, and thus allow for their body to be a genesis of change. There is no stress involved with change, because it is inevitable for this person. Flexibility for perception will allow this person the ultimate capacity for understanding what type of solution to use at the correct time.
Solutions on Solutions on Solutions
So to end this on a relatively not-so-philosophical note, when it comes down to the phrase “I can’t do [xyz]”, I literally troubleshoot with them to find out about their mindset.
“Can you do this? How about this? If you do this before that, you can do this…”
I watch their body language. I watch their reactions to the various solutions that are possible. I dive deeper into some solutions, others I throw out the window. Sometimes people open up, others coil away due to the rapid fire of questions and solutions that have just occurred.
At the end, I often find out quickly enough if this person is ready for change.
It is unfortunate, but I can’t change you, or the people around you.
I can only guide you through a path, or down a path.
It’s ultimately up to you to find out what kinds of actions to take at what specific time.
