Category: Breathing

All About the Spine

How to maximize your spinal movement Movement Debrief Episode 118 is in the books. Below is a copy of the video for your viewing pleasure, and audio if you can’t stand looking at me. Here is the setlist: What happens to the thoracic spine and scapulae during inhalation? What compensatory strategy is present with a Dowager’s Hump? What treatments should one with a Dowager’s Hump focus on? What sitting posture is best? Should restoring sagittal plane motion allow for rotation to occur, or must you focus on rotation? When can the spine present with excessive lumbar flexion? What is the action of the lower trapezius on the spine? When could recruiting the lower trapezius be useful? Is the cat-cow exercise useful? How does a spinal fusion impact respiration?

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All About the Ribcage

Learn how reaching and improve upper body mobility Movement Debrief Episode 117 is in the books. Below is a copy of the video for your viewing pleasure, and audio if you can’t stand looking at me. Here is the setlist: What order should I prioritize improving ribcage expansion? What is the manubriosternal joint? What happens when I have mixed compensations at the sternum? How can I encourage ribcage dynamics without increasing secondary compensations? What visual cues can I look at to see if someone can “stack?” What is different about infrasternal angle presentations between 90-110 degrees? How do I go about improving these particular infrasternal angle presentations? How can thoracic sidebending be useful with improving ribcage dynamics?

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Introduction to Orofacial Myofunctional Therapy Course Review

How improving tongue mobility can impact sleep and nasal breathing I hit a plateau. I was getting good results with many clients. I was making infrasternal angles dynamic, restoring hip flexion and extension, and getting ribcage mobility on fleek. Yet there were still some folks who I couldn’t get the symptom change they needed. Either they had really stiff necks, craniofacial issues, or difficulty sleeping. I knew I was missing something. Then I found myofunctional therapy. My buddy Joe Cicinelli, my myofunctional therapist, gave me some tongue exercises surrounding my tongue-tie release surgery, and I noticed some interesting changes with myself. My neck felt looser, I was sleeping better, and just overall feeling better. I decided to experiment and try a few activities here and there on some clients. With having only a rudimentary understanding, I started seeing some of those troubling cases improve. Necks were less tight. Sleep was improving, jaw pain was vanishing. I needed to learn more. That’s when I came across the Academy of Orofacial Myofunctional Therapy (AOMT) and saw they offered an introductory course. I was in. Four days later, a gap was filled. Having applied these techniques to several patients, many of those troubled cases were not so troubling. Although I was addressing airway with most of my treatments, I neglected the uppermost portions of it. The folks at AOMT give you that and then some. With this course, we deep-dived into anatomy, evidence, assessment, treatment, and business. You really get a total package

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Reaching: Theory and Practice

Learn how reaching and improve upper body mobility Movement Debrief Episode 116 is in the books. Below is a copy of the video for your viewing pleasure, and audio if you can’t stand looking at me. Here is the setlist: How does airflow change at various reaching angles? How does airflow change with trunk rotation? What is the scapular orientation during shoulder extension? How does one with a posterior thorax tilt present? How do different carry variations impact airflow?  How does forearm supination and pronation impact reaching? How can we sequence carries in a manner that allows for maximal airflow expansion? How can you tell if someone is using a compensatory strategy when they are lifting weights?

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Infrasternal Angle Compensations and Treatments

A deep dive into the infrasternal angle Movement Debrief Episode 115 is in the books. Below is a copy of the video for your viewing pleasure, and audio if you can’t stand looking at me. Here is the setlist: What are the primary compensatory strategies with a wide and narrow infrasternal angle? What would be secondary compensations seen with these infrasternal angles? What test results would each infrasternal angle have? What exercises should be programmed for inhalation and exhalation strategies? What is the upper thorax presentation for each infrasternal angle? What exhalation strategies should each infrasternal angle use? Are there times it’s okay to deviate from these strategies?

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Squatting, Breathing, and Sleeping

What does squatting, breathing, and sleeping all have in common? The answer is airway management. In order to squat well, you have to manipulate your spine in a manner that maximizes vertical pelvic displacement. In order to manipulate spinal position, airflow into the upper back is one factor that can change the way you squat. Breathing is also of utmost importance for sleep. Consider the negative effects of sleep apnea. What if there were activities that could improve both of these areas? In my eyes, these activities center around maximizing breathing mechanics and are the centerpiece discussion in an episode of the Portal PT podcast I was featured in. Check out the setlist below. 1:30 Zac’s Story 6:00 Zac’s Experience with Bill Hartman 12:30 When / Why Did Zac Jump Down The Breathing Biomechanic Rabbit Hole 18:00 Stacking, Diaphragms, Biomechanics, Movement Variability 22:30 Where’s The Breathing Research? Clinical Practice Guidelines 31:00 Squat vs. Hinge 36:30 Pain, Manual Therapy, Blood Flow, and Movement Variability 44:00 Myofunctional Therapy, Upper Airway Resistance, and Sleep 47:00 Zac’s Patient and Their Changes 49:00 Oxygen Advantage & Mouth Taping While Sleeping, Exercise Endurance, Resting Heart Rate 54:00 Dreaming, Sleep Studies, and Quality of Sleep 57:00 Improving Nasal Breathing and Changes in Facial Structure and Musculature 59:00 Proactive Care in Children 1:00:00 What is The Worst Fitness Advice Zac Has Ever Received 1:05:00 What Was Zac’s First Exercise Experience and Was it Good or Bad? 1:07:00 What’s Zac’s Number One Source For Research and Education Info If

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Breathing Made Easy

The starting point for learning about breathing This breathing stuff is confusing, isn’t it? You hear all of this foreign terminology, see crazy exercises, and are trying to visualize where the viscera and air is going when you are doing an exercise ahhhhhhhhh!??!! Yet you see the positive results that others get. Heck. you may even get great results just messing around with this line of thinking. You know there’s something there, but where in the hell do you even start? Maybe you’ve lost hope and don’t think you are smart enough to get it. I want to tell you that you are wrong my dear friend. Dead wrong! The problem with continuing education As educators, it’s our fault. We don’t do a great job of preparing you to learn and accept the material. We don’t help you succeed. We expect you to figure it out. That ends today. What’s missing with all of this breathing stuff is a way to grasp the fundamentals. What are the key tenets you need to learn to better learn and apply the material taught on my site and others? That’s why I’ve beefed up the Human Matrix Foundations course. In this free course, you’ll get all the fundamental anatomy, biomechanics, and more that you need to better grasp all the breathing stuff you want to learn; allowing you to get those results you so desire for your client. With this class, you’ll get the following: Become automatic with common breathing terminology and lingo

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Movement Principles and Breathing

There are a lot of exercises to choose from, tons of methodologies to practice, and lots of areas to focus on when it comes to training and rehab. How do you determine which stuff is most important for your clients? In a time where noise is at an all-time high, having sound principles that you operate from can help you stay focused on what matters most with helping your clients reach their goals. Principles, breathing, and so much more were on the setlist for the Flat White Podcast I had recently done. Topics discussed include: How to get the most out of attending seminars What are the top priorities one must focus on when working with a new client How programming differences in rehab and training scenarios to help the client reach their goals How to navigate when clients hit plateaus Which movement tests are my key decision-makers for designing programs Why anthropometrics matter with movement limitations The difference between movement variability and movement options and why everyone needs both The importance of developing movement fundamentals How all body systems influence each other How knowing the fundamentals of movement makes you better at assimilating information from seminars What are some basic activities that improve infrasternal angle dynamics The differences between a squat and a hinge, and how to improve each Click here or the links below to check it out. Flat White 36 – Movement Principles & Breathing With Zac Cupples on Apple Podcasts Image by Ichigo121212 from Pixabay

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All About the Scapula – Movement Debrief Episode 109

Movement Debrief Episode 109 is in the books. Below is a copy of the video for your viewing pleasure, and audio if you can’t stand looking at me. Here is the setlist: What are normal scapular movements during respiration? Are these scapular respiration movements paired together as we move? Is passive exhalation a thing? What are the primary compensatory scapular positions for a wide and narrow ISA? What happens if further compensatory activity occurs? What type of compensatory strategy is a swayback posture utilizing? What are the best ways to gain proximal hamstrings to elicit a posterior pelvic tilt? How would you test whether a client needs inferior or superior posterior thorax expansion?

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The Learning Process, The Axial Skeleton, and Squats – Rebel Performance Podcast

Are you struggling at structuring your learning? Or perhaps this whole inhalation and exhalation mechanics in regards to movement is confusing AF. Or maybe you are caught up in social media squat debates and don’t know what to believe anymore, or what is safe. If this sounds like you, then you’ll definitely want to check out this podcast I did on Rebel Performance. In it, we deep dive into all of these topics, and why it’s important for both your programming and that of your clients. I also make a surprise announcement on it 🙂

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Pulling, Reaching, and Stacking During Big Lifts – Movement Debrief Episode 107

Movement Debrief Episode 107 is in the books. Below is a copy of the video for your viewing pleasure, and audio if you can’t stand looking at me. Here is the setlist: Should one be hesitant to work on pulling exercises if the goal is to improve movement options? When would the following exercises be useful: lat pulldowns, face pulls, one-arm dumbbell rows? And when should they be avoided? Are band pull apart, Ts, Ys, and Is no-gos? What is reaching at the 0-60 degrees of shoulder flexion useful for? How about 60-120 and 120-180? Does encouraging a posterior pelvic tilt during a squat or a deadlift go against the lifting mechanics or support them?

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Pregnancy, Pectus, and Bruxism – Movement Debrief Episode 106

Movement Debrief Episode 106 is in the books. Below is a copy of the video for your viewing pleasure, and audio if you can’t stand looking at me. Here is the setlist: How can pregnancy affect one’s ability to move? Can pregnancy change one’s infrasternal angle? What type of adjustments and considerations should we make for those who are pregnant? What is pectus excavatum? How can this structural change impact movement options? What type of exercises can we use to improve movement when someone has a pectus? What is bruxism? What is bruxism’s relationship to upper airway? What are other potential related factors to bruxism? What are some treatment considerations for someone who has bruxism?

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