Brent Getting His Yoke On

[edit 9:13pm 4.23.11] – I was asked to link the mobs that I like to do. Really the best thing to do if you are looking for shit to do is test/re-test, which Kstar generously has for each mob that he posts a day. If your shit sucks for a certain test, do the mob. I’ve provided my history and how I approached my particular problems. In all honesty, I’d probably see a lot more benefit if I could see a PT of Kelly Starrett’s breed and get guidance from there. I move better now, but there are still some gaping holes in how “healthy” I should be.

I started out with a shitty overhead position and 0 degrees internal rotation. Couldn’t get the bar behind my ears without hyperextending my lumbar spine. Couldn’t keep the bar close in the snatch because I had 0 internal rotation. Benching often hurt.

I’ve always leaned on a lacrosse ball to roll on sore spots on the anterior capsule of my shoulder joint, but the 3 mobs that I did early on that helped like, 30-40% were:

1.) Drive humerus towards back of socket, lateral distraction, external rotation. This is the least painful of what I did. I still do this for bench prep and sometimes front rack prep.

2.) Restoring rib/scap/external rotator movement, lacrosse ball between t-spine and scap, reach overhead, then freestyle to whatever hurt and roll on them until they hurt less. This caused spasming in places I wasn’t touching early on, was really tight apparently. See also this informed free-styling.

3.) Internal rotation stretching. Buddy stretch was super legit early on, these days I rely on band around shoulder with extension/adduction as a mainstay.

Some other things that helped me pretty significantly were:

– Double lacrosse ball to t-spine, this was one of the last pieces to legitimizing my overhead position.

– Rolling on the external rotators that wrapped around the humerus, i.e. lateral part of the shoulder and then towards the front. Had to get in creative positions, but I think this helped with some generic shoulder tightness that affected my benching and overhead position. See informed free-styling video regarding periscapular regional death above.

– Rolling on pec minor/pec insertion. Made going overhead easier. May have helped with internal rotation?

– Hip flexor/quad stretch. Couldn’t go completely upright until my 3rd or 4th exposure, but this definitely legitimized my hip extension in the snatch and clean.

– Anything involving external rotation of the femur with hip flexion. My deadlift feels a lot different now, in a good way, feels like I’m utilizing more musculature in the movement. Squat bottom position feels more legit. I used to feel tight before but weak coming out of the hole, now I feel looser but stronger driving out of the hole. Improving end range function means greater force production?

– Most recent addition has been banding the elbows together, get a wide-as-possible supinated grip on a pull up bar, then slowly load the movement with a neutral spine. Absolutely noticed a difference snatching today. Gonna try it before a heavy jerk/overhead press day and see how it feels.

Something that Kstar and other sources/people have mentioned is you can’t address mobility in isolation; i.e. if your shoulder function sucks, you can’t just do shoulder mobs and expect to get a lot better. Have to address movement as a whole, shoulders and hips are analogs to each other, I don’t fucking know, I just do every mob ok? My life fucking sucks and I am taking it one step at a time to try to make it better. Sometimes that means laying on a lacrosse ball every night. Other times it may mean wrapping a band around a limb or perhaps asphyxiating yourself while masturbating, while injecting nandralone.

Another guideline is, “you have to find where you are tight.” The mobs that helped me may not help you that much, but you may discover shit that really hurts to do that might be related. Do the shit that really hurts to do.

There’s probably shit that I don’t even know that I need to address. Basically I check the site and do the mwod and if it hurts or is difficult for me to do, I incorporate it on a regular basis.