Overhead position is the process of bring your hands over your head, arms straight with your elbows by your ears. This is relative to anyone who wants to maintain shoulder health and mobility whilst also increasing their movement efficiency. The more comfortable we are in an overhead position, the easier we will find any upper body training, whether that is pushing or pulling. It starts with our posture and our relationship with our shoulders.
If you work at an office, take a look around... Do you see your colleagues bent over double, shoulders forward, head forward to the screen, leaning to get even closer to the desk? This is what we call a desk ogre, this is something we don't want to be. These ogres have shoulders that slump forward, this in turn pulls our shoulder blade around the rib cage away from the spine. This can lead to poor musculature in the upper back which can result in bad posture which can cause a lot of problems. This is not how our body was intended to be! This is a poor position when considering going overhead with the arm. NRG have provided two mobility exercises you can complete at home to help improve our overhead position without the stress of pushing over head.
- Wall bound external rotation: this sounds more complicated than it is. Simply stand with your back and heels against a wall. Now with your arms, bring your elbow to a 90 degree angle from your shoulder, your hand should be pointing towards the wall opposite to you. Now whilst keeping your elbow against the wall, you are going to raise your arm, aiming for the back of your hand to hit the wall (see image 1). See how far you can get, measure it against the image. If you can get your hand to the wall then brilliant. If you cannot, then by using your resting hand, or get a partner, help drive the hand closer to the wall. Be careful when applying the pressure and keep the abs/stomach tight to avoid leaning with your lower back.
Timings: Do 3 sets of 15 reps, get as close to the wall as you can before bringing the arm back to neutral.
Image 1: (From left to right) - External Rotation, Neutral, Internal Rotation
- Child's pose with side flexion (CPSF): This is a twist on a classic yoga pose. Rather than focusing on stretching the lower back as a classic child's pose does, this stretch focuses on the lats. The lats are the big strip of muscle which connects the whole side of the body, you can feel them mainly under the arm pits. The lats are an important muscle to stretch as if they are stiff from not being worked (revert back to desk ogres), then your overhead position will be affected. The common sign of lat stiffness is going into the overhead position and not being able to straighten the elbows. Have a go, see if you fall under the category.
To perform our CPSF, start on your hands and knees, drop your bum to your heels and head to the floor whilst keeping your arms straight out in front of you. When comfortable, slowly crawl your hands as far to the left as you can, hold and feel the stretch (See image 2). If you can, try and push your rib-cage to the right to increase the intensity of the stretch.
Timings: Hold each position for 2 minutes, to elongate the muscle tissue of the lat and make sure to keep breathing regular. Repeat on the other side.
Image 2: From left to right - Child's pose neutral - Child's pose with side flexion
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