shoulder mobility

Building an Indestructible Body with “Outside the Box” Exercises

August 12, 2014 By Logan Christopher 32 Comments

Al Kavadlo Back Of The Wrists Push-Ups

Push-ups. You move in one plane of motion, up and down.

Squats. The same thing. Pull-ups too.

Everyone here will agree that bodyweight exercises are great, but it’s important to realize that there are many, many different ways of doing them.

If all you ever do are one dimensional exercises, even if you build a lot of strength in them, your overall fitness and athleticism will remain one dimensional.

It’s a sad fact that one of the biggest things holding people back from hitting their training goals are injuries. Yet, with smart training these can largely be avoided. And if you do suffer from pain currently, there are always things you can do to work to improve your situation.

Whether you are rehabbing or pre-habbing (doing work that aims to prevent injuries), these exercises generally are the same.

So, what makes one of these exercises different than a regular exercise?

The focus on building flexibility and/or mobility along with a strength component.

The more mobile you are (up to a point), the more likely you can fully exert the strength of that joint and the surrounding tissue.

The more flexible you are (once again up to a point), the more likely you can fully exert the strength of that joint and the surrounding tissue.

When you recognize that strength must be used in combination with mobility and flexibility, then you see why you need to do more than just “straight line” and conventional exercises. The effects of this type of training help you to build an indestructible body.

Before we begin it is important that you move into these exercises slowly. While they will help strengthen your weak points, remember that you are still working on weak points! The difference between something that is good for you and something that is not, can be separated by very little intensity or volume, so you must ease in slowly. Be smart!

Cross Leg Squats

The knee is a simple hinge joint. As such, so many personal trainers and coaches become deathly afraid if it ever does anything outside of that ability. “If the knees go past the toes in a squat you’re going to wreck yourself!” they say.

But here’s the truth: If your body can move in a way, that ability can be strengthened. And if it is strengthened then you’ll have less of a chance for injury. Not only do cross leg squats work the knees, they stressing them in a plane of movement they don’t normally go—and the ankles get worked too.

Begin by sitting with your legs crossed, then rock your weight forwards and press on the sides of your feet, extending your legs until you come to a standing position. Make sure to try it with your legs crossed both ways.

For assistance you can grab onto a doorknob or other solid object to help. You don’t need to do a lot of reps, but instead work to make this an easy way you can get up from the ground at any time.

Logan Christopher Demonstrates the Cross Leg Squat

Sit to Cossack Squat

Was that last one too easy for you? I’m guessing that’s the case for many people reading here. So try this challenge.

Do a Cossack squat to one side while keeping the heel flat on the floor. Once at the bottom, sit back until your butt is sitting on the floor. Now rock back up to Cossack squat, switch sides and repeat.

If you need assistance use your hands to get back up, but the challenge is to do it without them, while trying to use as little momentum as possible. This takes some deep flexibility, and you may notice that your knees don’t necessarily track your toes.

This video shows it in action as well as the secret I found to performing it after much frustration and failure to do it.

One Arm Twisting Bridge

Let’s move onto the upper body. This is a fairly advanced move that I covered before here on the PCC Blog: One Arm Bridge, Twists, and the Valdez.

It’s so useful I’m bringing it up again. The twist in particular builds shoulder stability and strength in an extended range of motion. It even works the wrists in a flexible manner.

At the same time the spine is in full flexion and then twists. A big “no-no” that I say yes to!

If you can do this, there’s a good chance you don’t have issues with any of the joints mentioned above. If you can’t do it right now, but take the time to build up to it, your body will be that much more indestructible from your work.

Back of the Wrist Pushups

An important thing to realize when doing these “outside the box” exercises is that you can still follow the same rules of progress as you would in all your other training.

Back of the wrist push-ups are a great complement to doing lots of push-ups and handstands. In regular push-ups and handstands, your wrist is extended back. But here, you flex your wrist fully and put the weight on the back of the hand. This builds strength and toughness in the wrists, but also works the elbow joints in a big way.

Start slowly with these, as in kneeling push-ups. You can hold for time or rep them out. Progress to regular push-ups when you’re able to. Remember to go slow.

I decided to see just how far I could progress with this and worked my way up to a back of wrist handstand push-ups.

Adding Indestructible Exercises to Your Program

Here’s the great part about these exercises and the hundred, if not thousands, of other moves like them. You don’t need a whole lot to get the benefits.

Doing a few of these exercises, like a few reps in a single set, will be enough to get better at them, and reap the benefits.

Any of the following will work:

Add them to your warm-up.
Add them to your cool down.
Add them to your stretching program.
Add them to your mobility work.
Do a few on your off days.
Do them as part of a morning wake up routine.

You can work through your entire body or just focus on one area at a time.

If you enjoyed this article let me know in the comments section below. I’d love to share more exercises with you in the future!

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About Logan Christopher: Logan Christopher has been called a physical culture renaissance man as he is accomplished in a wide range of strength skills from kettlebell juggling, performing strongman stunts, and bodyweight exercises. He is the author of numerous books including Secrets of the Handstand and The Master Keys to Strength & Fitness. In addition, he’s spent the last several years going deep into mental training to find out what it takes to really excel and tactics that can help people instantly improve their exercises. You can find out more about all this at http://www.legendarystrength.com/.

Shoulder Opening: Stretches for Tight Shoulders

April 1, 2014 By Benji Williford 13 Comments

Continued progression toward getting stronger and improving performance requires a body that is “open” to the challenge. One of the biggest complaints that I consistently get from clients is about tight shoulders. It’s simple, you can’t move well if you can’t move. Some clients can’t hang from a bar without pain as they can’t even get their arms over their heads to get into position to do a pull-up; whereas other clients have a hard time in a plank to start push-ups without feeling neck pain (and everything in-between).

Opening up the shoulders and consequently the upper body will improve performance and help prevent injury. The shoulder joint is a ball and socket joint that really could be considered more of a ball and plate joint as it relies on the muscularity of the joint to keep it from dislocating. It is formed by the articulation of the head of the humerus with the scapula and is the most freely movable joint in the body. The main movements of the shoulder:

Flexion-Lifting the arm forward in front of the body. The primary movers to this position are the anterior and medial deltoid, biceps brachii, coracobrachialis, and the upper pectoralis major.
Extension-Pulling the arms back down and toward the back of the body. The primary movers are the latissimus dorsi and the teres major.
Adduction-Holding the arms out and pulling them toward the midline of the body. The primary movers are the pectoralis major and the anterior deltoid.
Adduction-Opening the arms away from the midline of the body. The prime mover is the posterior deltoid.
External rotation-Holding the arms by the side, rotate the shoulders outward so that the palms are facing up and the thumbs are pointing to the back using the posterior deltoid, infraspinatus, and teres minor.
Internal rotation- Holding the arms by the side, rotate shoulders inward so that the thumbs turn in toward the body using pectorailis major, latissimus dorsi, anterior deltoid, and the teres major.

Although shoulder movements can be placed in specific categories, exercises often times use combinations of those movements to complete a rep. For example in order to perform a muscle-up, the shoulders extend and external rotate to hold on to the bar. The shoulders will then go into flexion to pull the body to the bar and push the bar to the waist. Internal rotation also happens along the way. When looking at a get up, the shoulder will start in flexion with slight external rotation and will go through farther extension, abduction, internal rotation, external rotation, and extension again just to go from the floor to standing (1/2 the rep).

When stretching the shoulders, all of these movements should be taken into account in order to ensure that imbalances are fixed. The following video will demo a series of stretches that can be incorporated in a yoga practice, used for static stretches after a workout or any time after warming up the shoulders with some mobility work.

The additional benefits are that they will also open the chest, back, neck, and thoracic spine.

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Benji Williford, PCC, RYT, CF-L1 is a Personal Fitness Trainer located out of Eau Claire, WI. Benji believes that, “A successful fitness program is based on positive dialogue between the mind and body.” He can be reached through his website: http://www.benjiwilliford.com/, or by email: Benji@ChainReaction-Fitness.com.

My Journey to the Back Lever

August 13, 2013 By Angelo Gala 10 Comments

It frequently catches me off guard when budding fitness enthusiasts ask me to teach them flashy drills such as kettlebell juggling, physio-ball air squats and kipping butterfly pull-ups. Sure these exercises may look impressive, however each complex movement pattern requires a level of physical competency and advanced coordination that isn’t just given away. All too often, these requests come from the same people who struggle with executing ten standard push-ups. Very rarely do people care about the benefits provided, they’re simply romanced by the “fun factor.” Demonstrate to the same person a back lever and you may see a pair of glazed eyes appreciating the skill, but not quite aware of the work required to get there.

If you are unfamiliar with the back lever, picture hanging from a pull-up bar, pulling your feet all the way to the bar, then sliding them in between your hands and rotating backwards until your chest is parallel to the floor below. The back lever finishes with a hip and knee extension that suspends your body into a plank formation while hanging from your hands. Sound fun? I thought so! But it can also do wonders for your strength, mobility and proprioception.

Working through the progressions will open up your shoulders, stretch your chest and strengthen the supporting musculature of your scapulae like no other. Once you are mobile enough to rotate your chest to parallel, the real core training begins. The back lever will simultaneously develop unbelievable amounts of strength and stability on both sides of your body. You can say goodbye to those weighted back extensions since this version of the lever will hit both your lower back and upper back musculature all while developing the awareness to align your spine in vertical, inverted and horizontal positions.

I was lucky enough to have some decent shoulder mobility and a very supportive baseline of strength when I began training this calisthenic. Here is the progression that worked for me:

Static Hang:
Starting from absolute scratch, you should develop the hand strength to hang from a pull-up bar for 30-60 seconds. If you can’t hang for that long, trying to support yourself as you flip upside down isn’t a great idea. You can practice hanging from both hands and eventually one hand at a time to develop your grip strength evenly on both sides.

Hanging Leg Raise (HLR):
To execute this requisite core exercise, pull down on the pull-up bar with both hands while simultaneously lifting your legs as straight as possible up toward the bar. Shoot for at least ten reps before you move on from here.

Skin the Cat / German Hang:
After developing strength from the HLR, it’s time to wiggle your feet in-between your hands and rotate backwards until you can look straight ahead. The finish position, known as the German hang, should look similar to your hanging start position with your legs dropping towards the ground, except your arms will be stretched behind your body. Initially you may find that you do not have the shoulder mobility to come around full circle or the fear factor may be just too great – that’s ok! Try performing a few rotations at a time, gradually increasing the amount of rotation on each attempt. Static holds in your deepest expression of the exercise as well as dynamic repetitions of the move will help loosen up tight muscles. Be sure to keep your shoulders active (squeeze the shoulder blades together and down towards your bum) as it will keep your arms attached to your body. Trust me, this is a good thing.

Here we see a German hang and a standard bar hang side by side.

Tuck Back Lever:
Using the skin the cat technique, roll through your arms attempting to align your chest to parallel with the ground. After you pull through, tuck your knees tightly to your chest and lift your upper back to spot the ground ahead of your body. Your target here is to work up to a 20-30 second hold before you move on. Progressing your tuck lever is as simple as pushing your upper thighs away from your chest in an attempt to align your knees under your hips. Understand that this will increase the difficulty of the move exponentially. If aligning your knees under your hips feels sketchy and unmanageable, then slowly pull your knees only a few inches from the tuck position at a time. Be patient and work up to thirty second holds a few inches at a time.

Congratulations! You are well on your way to getting the move under your belt and by now I’m sure that many people have stopped to stare at the insanity of your acrobatics!

Single Leg Tuck Back Lever:
Once you can hold a tuck position with your knees stacked directly under your hips, you can alternate extending one leg at a time. In the beginning, it’s perfectly alright to send one leg back with the knee significantly bent. Soon enough you will be able to lock out your leg in its entirety. Keep in mind that your legs hold a significant chunk of your body weight so move slow or you might find yourself unexpectedly falling into a German hang. Don’t forget to work both sides evenly as preventing imbalance should be a goal in any fitness program. Thirty seconds per leg should be your target range of proficiency here as well.

Full Back Lever:
We made it! It’s time to work on the full expression! Using leverage to your advantage will be the key to your success when practicing the full back lever. To execute, skin your cat until you can align your torso to about 45 degrees with your head angled towards the ground. From here, keep your knees tucked and begin to extend your hips. Once you feel stable, slowly straighten your knees until your body is fully extended into one long line angled roughly forty-five degrees from the ground. Keep your entire body as tight as possible. If you can hang here without too much issue, lift your chest to help drop your hips, moving your body position closer to parallel to the floor. The more parallel you become, the more you will feel gravity’s pull and the harder you will have to work.

All in all, I learned the progressions to this move and bagged it after almost exactly one month of work. I can’t promise the same rate of success as everyone’s starting strength and mobility will be different. As for programming, I practiced my back lever progressions three or four days a week. At least two workouts were specifically geared towards building volume in the different tuck positions with a target of three to seven attempts per workout. I worked up to owning each position for thirty seconds but started many of the holds with barely the ability to tolerate ten seconds. Other days I would skin the cat as a dynamic warm-up or finish my workouts with several sets in the German hang position so I consistently worked on improving requisite shoulder mobility and got comfortable going upside down. Keep practicing and be patient. Continued exposure to the demands of the back lever will get you there as soon as your body is ready for it

Give this a go, good luck and keep me posted on your progress!

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About Angelo Gala, RKC / PCC Team Leader: Angelo Gala has been a fitness professional in the Boston area for greater than 11 years. He is a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist through the NCSA, and has studied the Pranavayu system of yoga under David Magone. He is a Dharma friend at the Sakya Center of Buddhist Studies in Cambridge, MA where he completed a 1 year intensive study of Mangalam Yantra Yoga under the guidance of Lama Migmar Tseten. Go to http://www.dragondoor.com/angelo-gala/ for more info.

Thoughts on Mobility and Flexibility Training

May 14, 2013 By Steven Low 5 Comments

One of the questions people looking to get into gymnastics or bodyweight strength training ask me is, “How much mobility or flexibility do I need in [insert body part here].”

To which I invariably reply, “It depends.”

The reason it depends is because each individual has his or her own goals that they are working towards.

First, let me define how I differentiate between mobility and flexibility:

Mobility generally refers to active movement within your given range of motion.

Flexibility generally refers to the passive movement of the joints towards the end range of motion with the goal to increase the total range.

The demands of a recreational gymnast are different from the professional athlete which are different from the serious strength trainee. And even these depend on one’s goals and level of commitment.

For example, in most athletics where you need speed, such as sprinting, football, basketball, or other sports, increasing hamstring mobility and flexibility beyond a certain point starts to decrease performance. In particular, the hamstrings need to be tight enough that the stretch-shorten cycle can activate, which helps to conserve muscular energy and provide the rubber band rebound effect that increases overall speed. If you give a sprinter the mobility and flexibility to easily move into splits like a gymnast, it will manifest as a decrease in performance.

On the other hand, if you are a martial arts practitioner you definitely need a large amount of flexibility, perhaps even full splits if vertical kicks are an important part of the specific martial arts. The mobility and flexibility demands of the particular sport and the techniques they employ matter a lot for how much mobility and flexibility training you need.

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Photo from: threetwoonego.files.wordpress.com

For your average recreational athlete looking to “get healthy” and perhaps develop some cool bodyweight strength movements, they may not need anymore hamstring flexibility than what is required to do a good bodyweight squat or pistol.

Alternatively, a specific gymnastics/bodyweight technique like the straight arm press to handstand may require significant hamstring flexibility to where you can do a full straddle or pike stretch where your chest can go to the floor.

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photo from: drillsandskills.com

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photo from: http://woman.thenest.com/

These different scenarios illustrate some of the conflicting nature of how much mobility and flexibility are needed to work towards certain goals.

If you are a sprinter or need great top-end speed for athletics but also want to work towards the splits or the straddle stretch for the straight arm press handstand, you need to be aware that these goals are at odds with each other. There will be trade-offs in your ability to sprint fast if you develop your flexibility beyond a certain point. If this is fine with you, then by all means do it. But the trade-offs are there whether you’re aware of them or not.

The shoulder in particular has the greatest range of motion of any joint in the body. A move like a German hang or skin the cat is good for increasing shoulder flexibility and getting the muscles and joints comfortable in an awkward position. It is also great for stretching and preparing for the back lever, which is one of the primary bodyweight isometric positions.

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Photo from gymnasticswod.com

If your goal isn’t to work towards manna, then it’s unlikely that you’ll ever need this type of mobility and flexibility in the shoulders.

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Photo from tumblr.com

However, the benefit of being able to move freely through a larger range of motion cannot be lost on the upper body. Unlike the lower body, where the muscles need to be tight enough to sprint effectively because of the stretch-shorten cycle, it’s very unlikely to do similar plyometric type movements with the upper body. So increasing the flexibility of the shoulders tends not to be a trade-off between various goals.

The main reason I train movements through a full range of motion over isometric or static positions is that it is better at developing strength. One of the key points within that is to become comfortable with your overall total mobility.

For example, if I was a random recreational athlete who wanted to be able to develop the back lever and many of the other gymnastics isometric positions, then becoming comfortable in a skin the cat / German hang is going to be useful. It helps you figure out how to apply force in and out of that position as well as become aware of what muscles are working when and where.

The same would be true of a squat. How can you become totally proficient with squatting if you never spend time at the bottom of the squat but only in moving through it?

This type of movement is delving into the realms between mobility and flexibility training. Maybe I don’t want to increase my shoulder hyper-extension anymore than I already have. Therefore, with the German hang, I use it as a general mobility exercise in the warm up. I can go from inverted hang down into the German hang and then pull back out. This allows me to develop the coordination, body awareness, and specific muscle activation that I need much like with moving into and out of the bottom position of the squat.

Once you have the flexibility you need, you just need to maintain it. You don’t have to spend additional time at the bottom of the position in order to stretch it out further.

So to answer the question “how much mobility or flexibility do you need?” you will have to specifically look at all of your goals and determine it from there.

If your ultimate goal is a manna then you will want to start developing the shoulder flexibility for it right away. You need the passive flexibility before you can start to apply active strength into the position. This is the two step process that should guide you through what you want to work towards.

If your goal is to be able to vertical kick for martial arts then first you have to be able to have the flexibility to do the splits. Thus, you develop your splits so as to improve your ability to actively use your legs to kick higher.

A sprinter may have all of the flexibility he needs to squat well already, while a desk job worker may need more flexibility in the calves, hamstrings, and hips in order to get down into the hole.

You need to specifically look at your body and your end goal and have a plan to bridge that gap.

Look at your goals and your current abilities

See the trade-offs, if any, and make adjustments

Train the flexibility, if needed

Then maintain with mobility work and apply active strength work

If you don’t really need more flexibility in certain joints, then you have no reason to train for it.

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About Steven Low: Steven Low, author of Overcoming Gravity: A Systematic Approach to Gymnastics and Bodyweight Strength, is a former competitive gymnast who, in recent years, has been heavily involved in the gymnastics performance troupe, Gymkana. With his degree from the University of Maryland College Park in Biochemistry, Steven has spent thousands of hours independently researching the scientific foundations of health, fitness and nutrition. Currently Steven is pursuing a doctorate of Physical Therapy from the University of Maryland Baltimore which provides him with insights into practical care for common injuries. His training is varied and intense with a focus on gymnastics, parkour, rock climbing, and sprinting. He currently resides in his home state of Maryland. His website is http://eatmoveimprove.com.