3 Mobility Drills for “Remember Your Thoracic September”
Written by Michele Vieux & Kim McLaughlin

Posture plays an important role in your overall health. Good posture can prevent back, knee, neck and hip pain; it can also prevent muscle strains, headaches, and impingements. When you align your spine correctly, your diaphragm is able to expand fully, enabling you to breathe easier and deeper, allowing more oxygen to be inhaled. Individuals with great posture often look taller, slimmer and more confident.

But with all of these positives, how often do you pay attention to your posture?

Good posture vs Bad posture

Your spine has three curves: lumbar, thoracic, and cervical. All three of these curves should be present when you are sitting or standing in a resting position. Because people spend the majority of their days in office chairs or looking down at their phones, their natural curves may not be so natural anymore.

Some have been hanging out in poor posture positions for so long that there is tightness in areas that there shouldn’t be while other muscles have stretched and are weaker than they should be. This puts unnatural stress on areas of the spine that can manifest as neck, back, knee and hip pain.

Proper Posture Drill

In order to find proper posture, line your back against a wall. Place your feet a few inches out and ensure that your head, shoulder blades, and butt are touching. Your hand should be able to just barely slide behind the small of your back. Take a couple of seconds to get comfortable with how this position feels and take note where your shoulders are – not pulled excessively far back – and where your head is in relation to your spine.

Once you pull your body away from the wall you should be able to draw an imaginary line from your ears to your shoulders to your hips. Make sure your weight is evenly distributed across your entire foot and not just in your heels. Pull your belly button in toward your spine. This is a natural posture position.

For some of you, proper posture might feel a bit odd. Holding this position for any length of time can seem tiring instead of relaxing. You may be working muscles that aren’t used to working. This is a good thing!  Even though it might be slightly uncomfortable in the beginning, this position is actually where the least strain is placed on your muscles, ligaments, and joints in movement or weight-bearing activities.

Thoracic Mobility Month

Because of its important role in your posture and in honor of this month’s National Fitness Holiday – Remember Your Thoracic September – spend some extra time these last few days of the month on your thoracic spine.

There are many ways to remember your thoracic and show it the love it deserves. Besides just being aware of positioning and posture, you can add a few simple posture reinforcing drills into your daily routine to see amazingly fast benefits in just a few weeks time.

Sitting, watching TV, typing and other computer work, driving, riding a road bike, texting and playing video games – if you spend a lot of time in any or all of these activities, you likely have a tight thoracic region and therefore, less-than-ideal posture, trouble getting into an overhead position, neck and shoulder pain and/or low back pain.

Take five minutes of your day to add in the drills from the video above – or your other favorite – thoracic mobility drills into your routine and note any differences you feel in both your workouts and daily life at the end of the month.

Also Check Out…

4 Reasons You Struggle With Toes To Bar

Your Thoracic Spine Makes Pull-Ups Divine

5 Posture Realignment Drills – No Equipment Necessary

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The Right Way to Paloff
Video by Zak Roser

The Paloff press variations are a great way to build awareness of the torso relative to the pelvis. During compound lifts, dynamic drills, running and more, the pelvis plays a crucial role in supporting the body to be it’s most efficient. For example, the pelvis needs to be “tucked” in order to achieve proper glute and core activation.

This is precisely the reason I use the Paloff isometric hold in my class warm-ups at Invictus on squatting days. It allows the athlete to feel how easy it is to lose engagement when they drop their hips back or anteriorly rotate their pelvis. This concept can be applied to many other lifts and exercises but the squat is a great example.

Also, this exercise forces athletes to learn how to translate energy into stronger parts of the body. Since the tension is in front of the body, it requires the energy to move through the shoulders into the core and glutes. Making sure the main point of stress is not the arms or shoulders.

The Paloff movements are great ab accessory drills and anti-rotation drills to work into your routine as well. Give them a try and let us know what you think. Ready? Activate!

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The Complete Snatch Warm-Up
Video by Nick Hawkes

If you’ve ever snatched, you know that mobility restrictions can make all the difference in whether you can properly, and safely, set up for and receive a snatch. Try this warm-up before your next snatch session to address the mobility and activation of shoulders, thoracic, and hips through not only stretching, but a controlled rotation of each joint to increase rotation, range of motion and to get everything firing.

Also Check Out…
How to Become Snatchtastic
How To Overcome The Mental Aspect of Weightlifting

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Sit All Day? Try This Before Your Workout
Video by Nick Hawkes

Does your job require you to sit most of the day? If so, you are just like the vast majority of my clients, who are busy, don’t have a ton of time to mess around in the gym, but need to stay strong and healthy. The video above demonstrates a great and efficient way to activate your backside, and open up your hips that are chronically shortened from sitting. Give it 3-4 minutes before your workout and you’ll see good benefits.

Also Check Out…

Reverse Snow Angels – Purveyors of Posture

Identifying Upper Cross Syndrome For Dummies

T-Spine Mobility Tools

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How to Assess Your Mobility & Prepare for Overhead Movements
Video by TJ O’Brien

Going overhead today? Whether it’s shoulder press, push press, snatch, overhead squats or even gymnastics movements like handstands, there is a proper way to prepare for your training session. Even if you aren’t doing one of these exercises today, this 5-10 minute routine is something anyone with shoulder issues can do a few times a week to improve range of motion (ROM) and decrease pain.

In this video, Coach TJ takes you through a complete warm-up from how to assess your overhead position and then make improvements upon it so that you can lift and move safely and efficiently as well as diagnose any ‘problem areas’ you may have with your mobility and positioning.

Coach TJ will cover: assessing the shoulder’s mobility and movement patterns; shoulder CARs; passive stretching techniques; active stretching techniques; reinforcement of your newly found ROM; and reassessment of the shoulder’s mobility and movement patterns.

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More Shoulder Internal Rotation = Safer & Stronger Movements
Video by Nick Hawkes

Shoulder internal rotation (IR) is one of the movements of this ball and socket joint and it allows you to do things like reach behind your back. It also allows you to complete movements more efficiently and SAFELY, which is why we are focusing this next mobility series on gaining more.

One example that might be near and dear to your heart is the good ol’ muscle-up. If you lack internal rotation of the shoulder, not only will this movement be more difficult for you to achieve, it also means that if you are jamming yourself into position when you don’t have a safe and functional range of motion (ROM) in that place, you are setting yourself up for injury.

During internal rotation, the humeral head will glide posteriorly and roll anteriorly. This movement can be restricted with a tight posterior capsule or muscles around the joint. Unfortunately for many of our athletes, sitting at a desk all day with poor posture only contributes to their tightness and lack of internal rotation.

In this video, Coach Nick will show you how to test your current shoulder IR and then how to increase the range of motion of the joint. There’s no reason you can’t do this mobility drill on the daily and you should definitely do it before Olympic lifting (if you have hopes of keeping that bar close) and gymnastics movements like muscle-ups and dips.

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Pec Activation Prior to Pressing
Video by Kirsten Ahrendt

Pec stick (or medicine ball holds) are a great warm-up to use before pressing movements – both vertical and horizontal – to get the pec muscles turned on and engaged. A lot of times athletes end up using other surrounding muscles of the shoulder joint – like the deltoids – when pressing, instead of the pecs. Not only is this inefficient, but it can also cause injury to the shoulder.

Let’s make sure to get those powerful pecs involved! This simple drill can be done with a special tool created just for it – the pec stick! If you don’t happen to have one of those lying around, a medicine ball (or similarly sized object) will work just fine as well.

The goal is to not only get the pecs fired up and activated but also the entire internal torque chain which is what we should be using in pressing movements to generate the most power in that position.

If you notice you’re committing one of the common faults like flaring elbows or you feel the need to sneak your hands down to the ball to help you hold it, grab a lighter load. We aren’t trying to max out here, just activate!

Another thing to keep an eye on is your upper traps. Those guys really like to work! We want to detrain them though and doing this activation drill will help as long as you are aware of yours and making sure they aren’t all up in your ears.

One last thing – good posture! That includes not only minding those upper traps but making sure you are standing in a neutral spine position. It’s very tempting to overextend at the top but remember, we are training the internal torque chain with this so you should be in a standing hollow body position to achieve this.

In this video, Coach Kirsten will walk you through the activation drill, help you get in the right position, and tell you how to make sure your pecs are firing. This mind-body connection will surely help with not only your pressing but any movement you need to find that internal torque chain for.

Try a few of these holds – Coach Kirsten guarantees you’ll be sweating bullets and ready to PR your press by the end of your warm-up!

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Hip CARs Challenges & Variations
Video by TJ O’Brien

The hip CAR or “Controlled Articular Rotation” brings our hip joint through it’s largest possible range of motion (ROM) without compensating movement from any other neighboring joints (like the low back, for example). The variations in this video are NOT a starting point – check out Coach Nick’s CARS routine, minute 16, if you haven’t already.

Once you’ve covered the basics, we can add blocks for feedback like the ones covered in this video. You may notice that your range of motion is perceptibly smaller when you add these blocks – that’s ok! It means you are moving more honestly through the joint we are trying to move and compensating less through others. The goal here is improved control of individual joints in order to improve multi-joint movement (like your squat!).

Test them out and see where you are so you can start improving in your ROM and pain levels!

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How to Gain More Hip Internal Rotation While Just Lying Around
Video by Nick Hawkes

As we’ve been discussing in this series, having functional range hip internal rotation (IR) is so important for many things. You need it to perform your best with hinging movements like deadlifts and even non-hinging movements like squatting because it helps you get into position and use the proper mechanics. And it is especially important to ensure a pain-free life. If your IR is off, something else is on (that’s not supposed to be) like your lower back, for example.

Here’s a variation of hip controlled articular rotations (CARs) and PAILs & RAILs that you can do lying down. Coach Nick will take you through a CARs warm-up for the hip capsule and how to identify your joint’s true (functional) range of motion (ROM). For the PAILs & RAILs drill, you will need some yoga blocks or another way to elevate your foot – the higher the better! Meaning the higher you are able to stack the blocks, the better your hip internal rotation is. You’ll see what we mean once you watch the video.

This exercise will help you gain hip internal rotation and increase functional joint range of motion (ROM). We already discussed why hip internal rotation is so important. Let’s make sure we also focus on making sure the range we obtain is “functional”. What does that mean exactly? Think of it as the range of motion your joint has when your body is in control of it. Meaning, it has no assistance from a band, post, superfriend, etc. It’s the range of motion your joint can safely do its job in. Doing CARs will help you identify this range. You will use them as a warm-up in this video but they are also a great diagnostic tool and measure of progress.

In case you missed them, here are some other videos on hip internal rotation drills by Coach Nick. Test each of them out to find which one you feel gives you the greatest benefits.

Hip Internal Rotation – What it’s Good for & How to Obtain More
12-Minute Mobility for Hip Hinge Day
‘Sleeper’ Internal-External Hip Rotations
Hip Internal Rotation Drill for Trailing Leg

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Hip Internal Rotation Drill for Trail Leg
Video by Nick Hawkes

In this drill, Invictus Master Coach, Nick Hawkes, shows you another drill to help you get more internal hip rotation (IR). For this version, you will be seated in the 90/90 position and the focus will be trying to obtain more IR on the back – or trailing – leg through PAILs and RAILs contractions.

Before jumping right into this position, spend a minute or two warming up your hips so everything is moving, fired up, and ready to go. We like to do the seated, bent-leg rotations before the trail leg drill because they warm-up the 90/90 position well.

For the actual drill and getting into the 90/90 position, you might find that you need a Yoga block or something to brace on so you don’t torque your knee. Use the elevation of the block to make sure you are in a reasonably comfortable position. You should not feel any pain or discomfort in your knee!

Now it’s time to make some ROM-Gainz! Coach Nick shows you how to use PAILS and RAILs with your knee and foot to increase your hip IR. Watch and see how!

Try it out and let us know what you think!

Also Check Out…

12-Minute Mobility for Hip Hinge Day
Hip Internal Rotation – What its Good for & How to Obtain More
‘Sleeper’ Internal-External Hip Rotations

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