Adopting better position during any lift is only going to benefit you in many ways. Better and correct muscle recruitment, increase more strength, increase results and reducing the risk of injury.
Watch a quick 5min video below on the 3 MUST DO mobility exercises you need to do before lifting.
If you choose not to watch read the full transcript below.
“So the first one, we’re going to get Jai to come down, we’re going to go through some foam Rolling exercises. We can use a trigger ball for this as well, PVC pipe, anything that’s going to get into that muscle. Now, the idea of this is, we’re trying to get them roller underneath the armpit, and we’re going to try and hit the lat and the subscap. So two muscles that when tight, push your shoulder into internal rotation. So if we need to get into exercises that require external rotation of the shoulder, we want to try and hit these muscles early on and take them through range of motion.
So the two benefits from getting a roller in there is obviously blood flow and the second thing is if Jai kind of finds himself at a trigger point with a bit of pain, he’s going to sit on that thing. And then he’s going to try and release it by staying there until we have noticeable pain reduction. And then, as you can see here, Jai is taking his hand through internal and external rotation of the shoulder. So he’s going thumb up towards the roof and then thumb down so we can see that definite movement through his shoulder going on. So he finds that trigger point, takes it through range of motion. And then once he gets rid of that trigger point, Jai can now go through some range of motion. So he can go forward and then he can try and push himself into that overhead mobility position. So this is going to be great to get that shoulder practice with overhead work. And then I’ll stop speaking so you can hear Jai with his breathing.
So deep breath in, deep breath out. Now, you can do this for three to five minutes on each side, depends on obviously how tight you are and how much time you have. This is also an amazing exercise to do at home on your recovery day. So that’s the first Big Bang for your Buck drill to get those shoulders opened up.
Now, once Jai has done that on both sides, the second best exercise, and we do this here frequently at Perform 360, is a Dead hang. So we’re going to get Jai up here on the rig. Now there’s two really big key points that you want to do when you have your dead hang. So a lot of people go too wide or too close. Now what we want to have here is the hand or the wrist needs to be directly in front or over the top of that shoulder. So you want to have that completely neutral grip. So we’d get that shoulder to completely open up.
Now, the idea of this is to get our shoulders as far over our ears as possible. So he’s in that completely relaxed position. The only thing that should be under tension is that grip. All right? So his grip is the only thing that has tension through it. The rest of his body is completely dead so that he can start to stretch out those lats again. So we’ve already taken those lats through some type of mobility, now he’s going to get these things through some loaded mobility. So he can get start to get more mobility through that shoulder, amazing for shoulder health.
Now let’s just say Jai, his grip strength is really good. He can start to go through some rotation. He can even start to go through some swinging. So this is pretty good to go side to side. We can also go forward to backwards to start to even open up that thoracic. That is a great way to get that movement down pat. Now, once Jai drops down and goes onto the floor, he’ll notice he has this fresh round of blood into his shoulder, which is amazing for your tendons and your ligaments. So he’s getting two amazing benefits from that one.
So after he’s done that, our third “Big Bang for your Buck” mobility drill is a Banded shoulder stretch. So Jai is going to go in and the first thing we’re going to notice is the way he grips it. So he goes palm in and he grabs the band and he has that band on top of wrist, and it’s nice and tight and he grips it so it’s not going anywhere. Okay, it’s the first thing we want to do.
Now Jai is going to lunge out into this long split stance. So if the band is in his right hand, his left leg is the one that’s in front, he’s got a nice wide base so his feet is outside shoulder width. Then from here, two big key points, he wants to try and get his chest up towards the roof. And he wants to try and rotate towards me as much as he can, all right? So that’s the two big key things.
Now, when we look at the hand, we always like to start with palm up. All right, so that’s going to be more of our pec major part of our stretch. And then once he’s kind of found as much range as he can with some 30 seconds to one minute deep breathing positions, he’s then going to rotate his hand really slowly, internally. Okay, so his thumb starting to go down towards the floor and he’s going to try and still maintain that upright position and twisted position towards me or towards the opposite side of the room.
Now he’s going to start to feel that in that anterior part of his delt and potentially his bicep down here. Okay? So we can start to stretch all of that out. All right? This is going to help you massively in your bench press positions, and even in your back squat rack positions to get into. So deep breathing positions, chest up trying to rotate. And then we’ll do that on both sides, 30 seconds to one minute. If you’re doing this right before a bench press session, you probably don’t want to do it too long. All right, so we have this kind of 15-second rule where you want to hold that stretch to get your range of motion for the day. Don’t go to a position where you’ve overstretched it because you don’t want to overstretch and then load that thing up. We’re just trying to get whatever mobility you have on the day. But this is a great opener to get that one done.
So that’s three amazing shoulder mobility drills. Put them into your workout and let us know how you go, but we’ll see you in the next one”