Thoracic Mobility Drill Gone Bad (OOPS!)

Fix your posture and build a ripped athletic body in 90 days

What’s up, guys? Jeff Cavaliere, ATHLEANX. com. If you’re going to do any overhead pressing movement, or have any exercise done with your arms full overhead you’re going to need shoulder mobility, yes, but it’s not going to be enough alone. You need to have thoracic mobility.

You need, more specifically, the ability to extend through your thoracic spine. As a matter of fact, even a healthy shoulder is only going to give you 165 degrees of flexion here, in front of your body. In order to get all the way up to 180 you’re going to need to have 15 degrees of thoracic extension. It doesn’t sound like a lot, but a lot of have lost it because we have this rounded, forward posture. Shoulders forward posture from all the things we do during the day.

all the time spent at the computer, driving, whatever we do that’s exactly opposite of the motion we need. We need to go backward. So we can do that with a foam roller here, but you’ve got to make sure you’re avoiding some of the big mistakes that I see people make all the time when they’re trying to do this. They think they’re mobilizing their thoracic spine, but they’re not. First mistake is, people do it like this.

They lay over the top of the foam roller, they put their arms here, behind their to support their neck – which is not a bad thing, especially if you have a weak neck – but what you’ve done by doing this is pretty much locked off exposure and access to your thoracic spine. When I do this, I’ve retracted my shoulder blades. So now my shoulder blades are actually sitting a little bit lower than my thoracic spine, and I’m not even getting to it. I’m not even getting to the point where I can mobilize the spine. So, what we want to do is actually the opposite.

You want to be able to get your arms out in front of you, retract your shoulder blades, get them away – out and away – so the lowest point is now the thoracic spine. So, I can actually get at it, and work at it. Some people can even cross their arms. I’ve even had success sometimes with people who can’t get this, by hanging two bands from a pullup bar, and having them grab the bands. So, I know it’s pulling their arms up, and into extension.

So now that we’ve gotten at the thoracic spine, the next mistake you want to avoid is just rolling back and forth over it like this. What this tends to do is, first of all, create contraction from your abs. As soon as I’m contracting here from my abs I’ve stabilized my spine, and I’m not allowing it to actually bend over, into extension. So, what you want to do is drop your hips down, get the abs out of it, just try to work on that area of the spine that’s tight. So, once I’ve defined it, I’ve got my arms up in front of me, and I get myself right on that tight spot, and just allow myself to sink back.

Right on that spot. I can work it with a little bit of a roll, back and forth, right on that tight spot. I should be able to feel it. What you can do is, once you’ve found that tight spot, and you’ve got your arms up, over here, now once you’ve mobilized it for about a minute or so. You can then start to allow your arms to go back, back, back, back, into the position they’ll be, into overhead extension.

So, we’ve got our arms up, overhead into that 180, and if I had a bar over my head I’d feel pretty damn good at this point. So that’s the position you want to work yourself in. There’s another thing we can do here to mobilize the thoracic spine. We don’t even need a foam roller. What we can do is come over to a bench, and I like this one because it actually gives us two benefits.

It gives us a chance to mobilize the thoracic spine, but also stretch out your lats. One of the biggest problems we have is tight lats. Tight lats will prevent our arms from going up, and over our head. So, you put your arms up on the bench like this, bend your elbows, then sink back into your hips this way, and try to drop your head, and your thoracic spine – really, your chest – down, toward the ground. So, my chest headed down toward the ground, I’m going to get this action.

So, I’ll get that extension in the middle of my back. So here, and I go straight down. Then if I want to get reestablished I come up, I round up. So, I can feel “Okay, I’m going to go in the opposite direction of this one. If I want to go in the opposite direction of this, go into this position first.

Now I know “Okay, opposite, and straight down. ” And I drive my chest toward the ground. I can really feel this. And up, through here, get that excursion, and go straight back, the opposite direction. I can feel it in my lats, I can feel it here, in my thoracic spine.

So, you’ve got two options there. Again, whether you have a foam roller – if you do, just make sure you do it right because there are a couple of things you’re probably doing now that’s preventing you from even getting any real benefit from it in the first place. Secondly, if you don’t have one, do it on a bench. Do it on a piece of furniture, but just work, and be aware of the area you’re trying to work. It’s that small area, and you’re trying to get just that 15 degrees, but it’s going to make all the difference in helping you to get your arm fully up, overhead.

So, you can protect your shoulders and make sure you’re doing those exercises correctly. Guys, as a physical therapist this stuff matters to me because the guys that come into me all screwed up usually have this stuff screwed up. I can help you get more out of everything you do by helping you train a little bit smarter, by putting the science back in strength. I do that in our ATHLEANX training system. You can get it over at ATHLEANX.

com. If you’ve found this video helpful, make sure you leave your comments and thumbs up below. Let me know what else you want me to cover here, especially in this PT related videos, and I’ll do my best to do that in the days ahead. All right, I’ll be back here again real soon.