Category Archives: Body stretching
A New Take on 5 Things
Every successful career has hiccups along the way. Making mistakes and learning from them are the bricks and mortar of a long and productive career.
I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve stolen points from the best of ‘em to advance my own training knowledge. In doing so, there were principles and exercises that I readily accepted as gospel and would defend from the tallest tree.
This is how it is. Disagree? Well, you’re just misinformed.
But times change. New research is performed, new information becomes available, and it only makes sense that methodologies would evolve. That is, unless you’d rather stay “right” than admit you were wrong.
1. My Revised Take on Cardio
My one-track mind nearly eliminated the possibility of using conventional “cardio” for fat loss. I sided with the many coaches who argued that slow-go cardio was a potential muscle-waster, not to mention woefully inefficient at burning calories.
Though there is some science to support this position, I realize now that there’s a big fat exception to this:whether to perform steady state cardio depends on the size and musculature of the individual.
Steady state cardio – especially the fasted version – can be a great tool for intermediate and advanced trainees that carry a significant amount of muscle mass.
People generally support interval training as it will have a greater affect on the metabolism, primarily because it promotes two things:
- Oxygen debt
- Utilization of fast-twitch muscle fibers
But if you’re carrying a lot of muscle, chances are you’ve lifted, pushed, and pulled a lot of heavy things to get there. That means your fast twitch fibers have been thoroughly exercised – since they’re the strongest fibers available – so it won’t be the end of the world if you add in a bit of steady state cardio during fat loss phases.
Bodybuilders are perfect examples. While some high-intensity cardio has made it’s way into their fat loss programs, isolation splits combined with a good, clean diet, and fasted and/or post workout cardio still dominate the scene. This improves thermogenesis – heat production within the body – that helps burn fat.
While anaerobic training is what makes athletes like sprinters and running backs get so lean and muscular, most of us are just regular exercise enthusiasts, not pro athletes, meaning we can’t expect to train – or look – like Adrian Peterson.
But we can lift weights and train our strength and anaerobic capacity. Once we’re big and strong, as long as we don’t go overboard, we can use steady state cardio to achieve some solid fat loss.
2. The GHR – A Little-Known Knee Killer?
Don’t worry, I’m not about to completely outlaw such a great exercise. But here’s what I’ve found.
I’ve had several clients complain of knee discomfort during or after a workout that involved a variation of the glute-ham raise (GHR), most often the eccentric GHR.
At first, I didn’t think that this exercise was the culprit, but a couple of sit-downs with a practitioner-buddy of mine had me thinking it might be something to use on a case-by-case basis.
Some say the GHR is a “closed chain” movement since the feet don’t move anywhere during the movement, but here’s the catch. Just like a seated leg extension, a GHR makes only one set of muscles act on the knee joint during the movement (hamstrings). There isn’t a co-contraction of muscles on both sides of the joint.
This can produce the same amount of shear from the opposing side, and therefore pull on the corresponding ligaments that attach to the tibia away from the femur.
With an actual GHR machine, it’s normally not that bad. But when we go into variations like the makeshift eccentric GHR, the shear is intensified since the entire weight of the body is resting on the tibia, inaddition to the hamstrings’ contraction pulling it even further. That means a lot of stress on your PCL.
Still, some are more resilient to shearing forces than others. We all know guys who’ve been doing leg extensions and other open-chain movements for years with zero joint problems, while others get shooting pains if they so much as look at a leg extension machine.
The moral of the story? If you’re using the eccentric GHR in your training, be cautious of its effects. Hopefully you don’t fall into the contraindicated group.
3. “Functional Training” Revisited
The more I looked into it, the more variety I found in trainers’ definition of the term “functional.”
Sure, we have the basic exercises that have carryover into typical day-to-day situations like squatting, deadlifting, and standing pressing. But do we avoid biceps curls, hamstring curls, or bench presses because they seemingly don’t carry over to our daily grind?
Fact is, functional training can take on whatever description we want it to. A hamstring curl action has very little “real life” application, but one of the functions of the hamstrings is to flex the knee, and hamstring curls recreate this movement.
I advocate the big bang movements as much as the next guy. If our muscles aren’t performing their prime actions the way they should, then the number one exercise choices should always be those that enhance those prime actions.
However, I’ll humbly add that most T Nation readers seek strength and hypertrophy. What if we want bigger arms, and we’ve already spent the last three months overhead pulling, farmers’ walking, and close-grip pressing our way to oblivion?
Do we continue to avoid biceps curls because they’re “isolation” movements despite the stimulation for the biceps they provide? Do we still steadfastly avoid skull crushers or pressdowns, even though our horseshoes better resemble shoelaces?
Focus on the must-do’s first, keeping your muscular and skeletal health in check, but sometimes building up your body means training like a bodybuilder. In certain cases, that means isolating right down to the muscle.
4. Stretching and Foam Rolling
For a long time I used this stuff as an “answer.” Today I use it as a “prescription.” In almost all cases, muscles become tight because of a deficient muscle somewhere else. Usually the tight muscle is taking on the role of a muscle that isn’t pulling its own weight. A perfect example would be a pair of tight hamstrings picking up the slack for a set of inactive glutes.
A good rule of thumb is that when a muscle appears deficient, the answer isn’t always to give that muscle more attention. Considering this, we should be able to look at our weak links to see which smaller muscles aren’t doing everything they should to contribute to a functional body.
Flexibility and ROM increases will come immediately through restoring your antagonistic balance. This can be as simple as activating dormant muscles that for a while have been compensated for by the big dogs.
The true “answer,” in my book, is mobility. One of my favorite books is Assess and Correct by Eric Cressey. It has hundreds of drills that make small muscles fire up to create or restore range of motion.
I’m not saying that stretching and foam rolling to respectively lengthen and improve tissue quality is a waste of time. I still use them, and you should, too.
My advice is to turn it into a tactical approach. Instead of prescribing stretching and rolling to any ailment under the sun, start thinking in three ways: improve tissue quality first, activate muscles second, reduce inhibitions third.
Use foam rolling for myofascial release, dynamic warm ups to add range of motion and activate dormant muscles, and then static stretching to muscles that are “blocking” proper movement patterns, such as tight hip flexors affecting pelvic position during a back squat or Romanian deadlift.
5. A Quiet Tweak to Training Volume
This might be stating the obvious, but not all programs are for everyone.
Training volume should be tailored to each athlete, and failing to recognize this is what keeps some athletes from seeing continued progress.
I first experienced this as a collegiate track and field athlete. We sprint athletes would have our workouts set by the coach, though we’d train alongside the athletes from other disciplines (the jump athletes, etc). This was done for simple time management reasons, as it was the easiest way to train a bunch of athletes at the same time.
But each athlete isn’t going to respond to the same training volume the same way – especially when our “base” workouts, usually Mondays, would often look something like this:
- Dynamic warm-ups/flexibility work
- Drills
- Plyometric/ballistic training – Static jumps, stairs, uphill jumps, med ball work
- Base training workout – 300m + (2)200m + (2)150m @ 85% of max effort
- Core training circuit or weight training circuit
Needless to say, that’s a tough workout and would leave me destroyed. I’d be so sore that it would sometimes affect the practice on Tuesday.
This example is intended to show that quality is everything where training for performance is concerned. Big, tough, and heavy workouts have their place, but if you want to get stronger, bigger, or both, you haveto know when your body is working at its physiological peak, and when it’s starting to go down hill.
Once that line is crossed, it’s a good idea to cut your workout short, or heavily modify its contents.
I’m sure my track coach had the best of intentions, but not everyone’s going to have the same threshold and work capacity. Some levels of DOMS don’t need to be reached, and certainly not repeatedly.
Since you’re not training with a team and can control your workout, don’t be afraid to modify your programming. It may not take longwinded workouts to make your muscles big and strong.
Don’t Worry, I Haven’t Turned Into a Pansy
The smarter I get as a trainer, the more I’m reminded that there are many methodologies, techniques, and strategies for doing things, and many ways to achieve a desired result.
However, true wisdom comes from recognizing that what might work supremely well for person A could be a disaster for person B. In reality, it’s not the exercises that are contraindicated, but the people who do them. Stay aware of that and play your game, not someone else’s.
With age comes perspective and more importantly, wisdom. A lot might change in the next five years, but I can’t see that principle going anywhere.
Surprising Reasons Why You’re Tight and Weak
Most lifters won’t admit how tight their muscles really are. Each week we make hundreds of loaded contractions; reps upon reps, sets upon sets. Then, when we’re at work or at home “relaxing,” we continue to make our muscles fire by holding all sorts of unnatural positions. Muscles, bones, tendons, fascia, and ligaments all play a role in your welfare in and out of the weight room. Throw off your skeleton, and you get a lack of structural balance. Throw off your structural balance, and you get muscles being overloaded. Overload muscles, and you’re grieved with joint stress and connective tissue issues. Take a pair of tight hamstrings, for example. Lifters often suffer from hamstrings that have the elasticity of ropes. Yet despite the time spent before and during exercise methodically stretching the snot out of them, they see no improvement in their flexibility or in the performance of their given lifts. Your posture is important for more than just looking impressive to the ladies. When you have a head tilt, the corresponding discs of the vertebrae are often being compressed. Not only can this lead to discomfort and chronic muscle imbalance, it can also lower your muscles’ involvement in many major upper body lifts. Often with muscles that directly oppose one another (like the trap-3 and pec minor, or calves and tibialis muscle), one side can tighten up due to no contributing balance from its antagonistic.
Your muscle fascia is often like a giant, connected chain. Releasing one link can unlock several others. It would do us well to first distinguish what we’re doing all this stretching stuff for. Stretching work for basic flexibility in everyday life serves a very different purpose than stretching between sets of a 365-pound squat. Sometimes we all need a tactful reminder – and a little help – to pinpoint the root cause of a given issue. If working the strength side of things hasn’t been panning out, put some effort into the flexibility side of the equation. You’ll be glad you did.
Tissue quality is paramount when it comes to building a strong, healthy body. For example, something as innocuous as weak scapular retractors or tight external rotators can stop a soaring bench press or shoulder press dead in its tracks.
The body seeks structural balance, and the quicker you accept this and adjust your programming, the more successful your lifting career will be. This means making time for some of the stuff we all hate, namely “sissy” pre-hab exercises and of course, stretching.
The Truth
To help offset this, therapists and trainers advocate flexibility and soft tissue work, but oddly, consider someone who spends 15 minutes a day working at it to be doing a good job. That’s not even two hours a week!
It’s important to recognize the vital relationship between a muscle’s quality and its potential to gain size. Rather than being strictly size-obsessed, as we bodybuilders naturally are, a more “outside-the-box” holistic standpoint is at times necessary.
The Good Stuff
Let’s start things with a simple rule of thumb:
Frustrating as this may be, it makes perfect sense – the hamstrings have all the flexibility they need, it’s thesurrounding muscles that are causing the not-so-pretty deadlifts and squats.
Here are some things that could infringe on muscles’ apparent flexibility or strength:
Reciprocal Inhibition
In the case of tight, inflexible hamstrings, what often hinders ROM are tight hip flexors.
Stand up and try to touch your toes with stiff legs and a flat back. Take note of how close you get. Now, take 30 seconds and static stretch your hips. Now try the toe-touch again.
Notice an improvement? The hip flexors were acting against the hamstrings the first time around. Because they were tight, they inhibited the range of motion the hamstrings could achieve on the opposite site. A simple attention shift like this could be a make-or-break factor whether your muscles function the way you want them to.
Get Your Head Straight!
Let’s say you tirelessly hit your biceps in pursuit of Thibaudeau-esque guns. Many lifters will crane their necks forward during heavy curls, or even look down at their purty biceps rather than focusing straight ahead while digging in for their set.
This impinges the nerve and lowers the electrical stimulation the nerves can send the biceps from their point of origin. Straighten up!
If it’s a true spinal postural issue and not just a bad gym habit, exercises such as neck bridges can strengthen the neck musculature, along with exercises like the trap-3 raise for the lower traps and thoracic extensions with a foam roller.
Antagonistic “Looseness”
Loose tibialis anterior muscles (the long muscle on the shin that allows you to raise your toes) are often responsible for extremely tight calves that inhibit proper technique. For lifters who suffer from this, it’s as hard for them to drop their heels during squats and lunges as it is for Dennis Rodman to choose an outfit on awards night.Think Fascia
Try this: Do a standing calf stretch off the edge of a box or step. Now squeeze the glute on the same leg you’re stretching. You’ll feel the calf stretch intensify.
The contraction of the glute tugs slightly on the entire fascial chain, so the stretch is felt right along the back of the leg.
Knowing this, we can apply it to crusty chronic pain spots. Try taking a golf ball or lacrosse ball to your plantar fascia if you suffer from things like foot cramps, Achilles aggravations, or calf tightness.
So We Shouldn’t Stretch?
Regarding programming, we shouldn’t be quick to focus on stretching as it isn’t always the cure-all “remedy” for everything. Rather, it should be one of many tools in your toolbox to attack a pesky weak point. This way, when we do decide to prescribe stretching, it’ll have the desired effect.
We all sit a lot. We also do tons of work using the muscles on the front of our body and minimal for the stuff we can’t see in the mirror. Flexibility training for health and comfort should be a staple! This brings me to my next point.
Smart coaches preach that we should strive to achieve adequate levels of structural balance. That means the same rule applies for stretching, right?
Wrong.
Stretching both sides of the body evenly is not the answer. Think about it. If one side is tighter than the other side, and you proceed to loosen both sides up, you’re simply maintaining the same imbalanced flexibility ratio, resulting in the same amount of strain and counter strain on the body.
Putting it All Together
Here’s a comprehensive breakdown of muscles to give less or more attention to when stretching.
The Home Stretch
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>T NATION | Bulletproof Your Body: Assessments for the Hardcore Lifter
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Bulletproof Your Body
Assessments for the Hardcore Lifter
Hardcore Health
You lift heavy things. You believe there’s no illness that heavy squats can’t cure. Heck, you’re so hardcore you consider creatine a garnish.
But let your health slip and it’s bye-bye big muscles and new PRs. To prevent the slip, you may need a few physical assessments.
When it comes to assessments, there are a few schools of thought. On one end of the spectrum you’ve got trainers who spend two days assessing someone, taking meticulous notes on everything from how much someone’s left big toe pronates to rectal temperature.
At the other end, you’ve trainers who don’t know their ass from their acetabulum, and so long as their client can stand on two legs they’re good to go, oftentimes leading to disastrous results.
As always, the best approach lies somewhere in the middle.
What follows are some of the common weaknesses and imbalances we often come across at Cressey Performance during the initial assessment process. These are things that, left unchecked, can either really mess up your lifting, create aesthetic “holes” in your physique, or leave you pain-stricken and lying in a hospital with a catheter and bed pan.
But being aware of your weaknesses is only half the equation. You’ll need to know the most practical, effective ways to start fixing those weaknesses to get on the fast track back to being a badass.
Lack of Ankle Dorsiflexion
Poor ankle mobility is a very common weakness. The main issue stems from our affinity to provide “false stability” to a joint that normally wants to be mobile, like taping ankles or wearing those cement blocks we like to call shoes.
Optimally, the ankle should have roughly 20 degrees of dorsiflexion – think pointing your toes towards your shin. If you don’t have it, it’s going to make performing a squat or lunge pattern pretty difficult.
When we lack ample dorsiflexion, a whole host of issues can arise, including anterior knee pain, hip pain, and lower back pain. So fixing it can go a long way in keeping people healthy in the long run.
While I can typically just watch someone squat and tell whether or not he or she has ample ankle mobility (those who lack it tend to be “ankle squatters” and push their knees forward excessively), one of the simplest ways to actually test for it would be the wall ankle test.
Wall Ankle Test
- Stand in front of a wall with the toes of one foot against it.
- Making sure to keep the heel on the ground, simply “tap” your knee to the wall.
- Move your foot back a half inch and tap the knee again.
- Keep moving the foot back little by little, tapping the knee to the wall, until you can no longer keep your heel down.
Ideally, you should be at least three or four inches from the wall. Anything under that and you may be asking for trouble.
To correct it, repeat the test, which is now a suitable drill. Just throw the wall ankle mobilization in as part of a warm-up and you’re golden.
Lack of Hip Internal Rotation
You have roughly 30 muscles that attach to the pelvis alone, so it stands to reason that the hips are a problematic area for just about everyone.
Hip internal rotation deficits are a key player in things such as lower back pain, knee pain, and even contralateral shoulder pain, but what’s surprising is the role that adequate hip IR plays in squatting. Basically, you need a certain amount of internal rotation to effectively go into deep hip flexion.
Hip IR should be tested in two postures, because different structures can limit range of motion depending on whether the hip is extended or flexed.
Seated Hip Internal Rotation
- Sit at the end of a table, with your knees bent over the side, and hold onto the table itself.
- Now internally rotate the hip, without abducting or side bending, which is a sign of compensating with the lower back.
Generally speaking, a minimum of 35 degrees is what we’re looking for in the general fitness population. Comparatively, with rotational sport athletes, we’re looking for a minimum of 40-45 degrees.
Prone Hip Internal Rotation
Additionally, we want to test hip internal rotation in the prone position because as physical therapist Bill Hartman has noted on several occasions, it helps to differentiate whether we’re dealing with a capsular issue or a muscular issue.
- Lie on your stomach and flex both knees to roughly 90 degrees, then internally rotate your hips. Keep both knees together.
If seated hip IR is limited, and prone hip IR limited, then Houston, we have a problem.
If seated hip IR is limited, and it improves with prone hip IR, that’s a little better as you know you’re probably dealing with more of a muscular issue and not capsular.
Here are my favorite drills to improve hip internal rotation:
Prone Windshield Wiper Stretch
Much like the prone hip IR test itself, the setup for this stretch is the same, except here you’ll lie prone on a table (or floor) and only flex one leg.
- Reach back, grab your heel, and pull towards your butt.
- Gently push your lower leg into external rotation, which in turn will stretch the hip into internal rotation.
- Hold for a 20-30 second count and repeat on the opposite side.
Seated Passive Internal Rotation Stretch
This is one I snaked from Dean Somerset, a strength coach up in Canada. It looks at passive hip internal rotation while in hip flexion. As Dean notes, though, the downside of this stretch is that if the posterior capsule or musculature is stiff or tight, this position will be limited.
For some, this may be a more advanced stretch. If that’s the case, stick with the aforementioned prone windshield wiper stretch.
- Sitting at the end of a treatment table, lift one leg back into hip internal rotation.
- From there, grab your ankle and gently lean into the stretch, progressively working your way closer to the table.
- Hold for a 30 second count and repeat on the opposite leg.
Half-Kneeling Hip IR/ER Mobilization with Band
- Wrap one end of a standard band around a power rack and the other around your knee.
- Now actively “pull” yourself into hip internal rotation, and then reverse the direction into external rotation.
- Perform 8-10 reps on one leg, then switch.
Hip Stability (or lack thereof)
Hip stability is seriously lacking in a vast majority of trainees. I’ve seen powerlifters who routinely throw 800+ pounds on their backs struggle to perform a basic bodyweight reverse lunge due to poor hip stability.
Poor hip stability can cause a multitude of issues ranging from lower back pain, knee pain, and even shin splints. It’ll affect performance in the weight room and seriously limit the amount of iron you can lift safely.
While there are several tests you can do to assess hip stability, bilateral or two-legged assessments don’t make much sense because our legs end up doing all the supporting. When the body is supported on one leg, as it is while walking, the body must be stabilized on the weight-bearing leg during each step.
In a single-leg stance, the body is forced to fire what’s been termed the lateral sub-system (adductors and abductors of the standing leg, and the quadratus lumborum of the opposite leg) to stabilize the pelvis. What you’ll see is the affected side going into hip adduction because the hip abductors are too weak to stabilize the pelvis on the femur.
A more functional drill we can use to test hip stability is the single-leg squat:
- Stand on one leg (preferably barefoot) and squat to roughly 60 degrees of knee flexion.
- If the midline of the knee stays in line with the midline of the foot, you’re a rockstar. If, however, the knee caves in or deviates medially, then you’re most likely dealing with a weak glute medius.
To fix it, there are two key drills I use. The first is the side-lying clam, which is a simple exercise but easily butchered by most trainees.
- Rotate your top hip towards the floor to help prevent compensation by the lumbar spine. If you watch the video carefully, you’ll notice that after I flex both my hips and knees, I sorta take my top hip and “close it off.”
- Don’t be too concerned with range of motion here. The important thing is that you do it right!
- If you happen to walk past an attractive female doing this exercise, please, for the love of God, act like you’ve been there before and refrain from making honking noises.
- Perform 2-3 sets of 8-10 repetitions on both sides.
Taken from strength coach Brijesh Patel, the second exercise is definitely one of my favorites because not only does it integrate and strengthen the feet, but also trains hip stability in multiple planes.
- Stand on one leg (barefoot) and perform 5-8 repetitions in each plane (saggital, frontal, and transverse).
- Try to keep your weight in the middle of your foot and not your toes.
- Be sure to keep the midline of the knee in line with the midline of the foot throughout.
- Ideally, you want to perform all reps without the other foot touching the ground, but I won’t think any less of you if this isn’t doable.
- When performing this drill in the transverse plane (rotating), be sure to move through the hip and not the lower back.
- If this is too easy, you can make it more challenging by adding a reach into the mix.
Poor T-Spine Mobility
Mike Boyle notes in Advances in Functional Training: “The important thing about t-spine mobility is almost no one has enough and it’s hard to get too much.”
It’s important to reiterate that adequate spinal mobility, particularly in the thoracic spine, is essential for normal shoulder function. Lack of t-spine mobility can have deleterious effects ranging from poor length-tension relationships (which can effect proper scapular positioning and stability), to preventing adequate extension (which will undoubtedly affect shoulder range of motion).
I’d go so far as to say that if you spent more time working on your crappy posture, you’d see vast improvements in things like your bench press, not to mention the likelihood that someone of the opposite sex will want to see you naked. With the lights on.
A kyphotic posture (rounded upper back) leads to anterior tilt of the scapulae and poor t-spine mobility. As a result, this places you in a very unstable position to push anything away from your chest, much less a bar with a lot of weight on it. Essentially, it’s like shooting a cannon from a canoe.
So, if we improve t-spine mobility, we can affect scapular positioning (a return from anterior tilt) which provides a bit more stability, and good things will happen.
A favorite test of ours is the lumbar locked rotation. Popularized by Greg Rose of the Titleist Performance Institute, the lumbar locked rotation test is a bit more advantageous because it doesn’t allow for any cheating.
Namely, by sitting back and “locking” the lumbar spine into position, we can’t use it to produce more range of motion. In a sense, we’re forced to move through our mid-back/thoracic spine, which is the purpose of the test in the first place.
- Start in the quadruped position and sit back onto your calves.
- Place your hands behind your back and rotate to one side.
For general population clients, we’re looking for anywhere from 50-70 degrees of rotation. Comparatively, for rotational sport athletes, we’d want to see 70-90 degrees – although 90 degrees is freaky.
If you find that your t-spine mobility needs work, (and trust me, it needs work), try implementing these drills throughout the day or before you train.
Side Lying Windmill
The video is pretty self-explanatory. The only caveat I’d make is that you want to make sure the top leg is at 90 degrees of hip flexion and resting on either a medicine ball or foam roller to prevent lumbar rotation. Also, when you bring your arm up and around your head, be sure to follow it with your eyes all the way around.
Wall T-Spine Dips
This is another great drill to help improve t-spine mobility, specifically extension:
- Stand in front of a wall and place the back of your upper arms against it.
- From there, take a deep breath and “dip” into the wall by pushing your arms up and away.
- Return back to the starting position and repeat.
Lack of Shoulder Flexion
There are numerous things that can affect shoulder health and function. Having the ability to raise your arms over your head is one of them.
Having ample t-spine extensibility plays a huge role here. I mean, round your back and try to raise your arms over your head. Kind of hard, right?
Another aspect that often gets overlooked are the lats. The latissimus dorsi arguably have the greatest affect on human locomotion of any other muscle in the body due to attachments points on the humerus, scapulae, ribcage (breathing patterns), thoraco-lumbar fascia, posterior iliac crest, and the lumbar spine.
The lats actually have a profound influence on our ability to push, pull, and squat big weight. Concurrently, with respect to shoulder flexion – namely, our ability to lift things over our head – having “tight” lats will force someone to compensate with their lower back and go into hyperextension.
This might help explain why many trainees tend to turn an overhead press into a glorified standing incline press. It would also explain why people with limited shoulder flexion oftentimes have chronic lower back pain.
Testing for tightness of the lats is easy:
- Lying on your back, start with your arms on your side, elbows extended, and knees bent (to flatten the lower back and provide more of posterior tilt).
- From there, raise both arms over your head and bring them down towards the table while maintaining a flat back.
- If you’re able to bring your arms down to table/floor level, keeping arms close to the head, you pass. However, if you’re unable to bring your arms to table/floor level, you suck at life and should just jump out of a window and land on a sharp object.
How to Fix It
First off, foam roll your lats:
- Lie on your side and place a foam roller right in your armpit.
- From there, roll down your lat (not your ribcage, you can’t foam-roll bone) and spend a good 30 seconds on each side. For those with tight lats, this won’t be pleasant.
Next is the wall lat mobilization with stabilization:
- Reach across your body and push against the wall.
- With your opposite hand, grab your shoulder blade and pull down to lock it in position.
- Next, all you’re going to do is sit back until you feel a nice stretch in your lat.
- Hold for a two-second count, return back to the starting position and repeat for a total of 6-8 reps on each side.
Assess and Address
If staying healthy and continuing to make progress is important to you, try some of these assessments and see if any “red flags” arise. You’ll be happy you did.
