Health and Performance Made Ridiculously Simple
An underappreciated kettlebell exercise The kettlebell armbar is a vastly underrated move for improving your range of motion, strength, and stability in your upper body. The reason why it’s underrated and underutilized is because it’s quite unclear when to program this activity and how to execute it most effectively. We will change that with today’s post.
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If you have carpal tunnel syndrome, you may have to look beyond your wrist! With an increase in computer and remote work, we may see the incidence of carpal tunnel syndrome increase. The problem, however, is that most people only look at the wrist and the neural components in the arm. This approach may be missing some critical pieces that can influence the health of the median nerve, the nerve which is affected by carpal tunnel syndrome. What are those pieces? Don’t worry, fam, I’ll tell you in Movement Debrief 164!
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Ever get pain going down the outside of your arm when you are weight-bearing? Numbness, tingling, the whole shebang? If you notice issues that resemble this, you are likely dealing with radial nerve sensitivity. In order to make the radial nerve less sensitive, you need to increase movement, space, and bloodflow to the nerve. How do you do that? Watch this video below! Reducing strain on the radial nerve Nerves need three pieces to be healthy: Movement Space Bloodflow In order to maximize radial nerve excursion, we have to look at the maximally lengthened position of the nerve, which is as follows: Wrist flexion and ulnar deviation Forearm pronation Elbow extension Humeral internal rotation Humeral abduction Scapular depression Contralateral cervical sidebending You can check the test for this below in this video: When you take a look at these motions, do you notice a common theme of where you need to drive motion? If I want to create space around the nerve (or day I say….EXPANSION), you need to drive what? Internal Rotation And if you need internal rotation, you gotta put air where? Anterior Chest Wall So the first line of defense to maximize nerve excursion, you have to maximize anterior thorax expansion and internal rotation. If you do that, you’ll maximize space around the nerve, which can reduce sensitivity. But fam, that may not be enough! You may also have to restore the mobility of the nerve. The neurodynamics. Basically, you can start with moving the nerve along
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You have someone who is limited with several different shoulder mobility measures, which should you tackle first? Find out in this post.
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Can’t get overhead? Let’s figure out how! If you can raise your arm fully overhead WITHOUT compensating, don’t read any further! But if you are like most of us, reaching overhead probably draws its fair share of LOLZZZ. Yet raising your arm overhead is HELLA important for things like lifting weights, moving your neck freely, and even rotation through the ribcage. So if ya ain’t got it, you might want to work on it! That’s why I put out this debrief for you that dives into mechanics, what directions to reach and clarifies any confusion that may surround arm elevation biomechanics. Let’s channel our inner Josh Groban and raise you up (your arm that is).
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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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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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