Breathing – Thoracic Mobility – FMS – Neuro – Pendulum Theory – Warm-Up – Glutes
1) Bill Hartmen uses the downward dog to increase pre-load on the diaphragm, activate the serratus anterior, and unload the scalenes while facilitating deep neck flexors. All this can significantly help your breathing patterns. Check out this months post on breathing.
2) This is a great thoracic mobility technique using the NMT T-Bar. A good way to increase thoracic mobilization and
integrate with scapular movement.
3) Nice summary of FMS corrections (from Mike Reinold’s site).
4) Neuroplasticity, motor control, and neuromuscular effects all in an easy 2.5 minutes. Finger strengthening study: physical exercise group improved 30%, mental exercise only group improved 22%! If that doesn’t make you believe in the importance of the CNS I don’t know what will.
5) Just learned about Charlie Weingroff’s Core Pendulum Theory. Charlie does a great job of brining the FMS, SFMA, and DNS together for his assessment. He describes the FMS as a stability assessment and the SFMA as a mobility assessment. This might be an oversimplification, but it helps to classify your patients into each system. His pendulum theory provides a great visualization of the joint centration (or path of instantaneous center of rotation) concept.
6) Eric Cressey goes over 6 aspects proper warm-up. 1. Soft-Tissue Work (foam rolling) 2. Mobility Drills – Ground to Standing 3. Mobility Drills – Single to Multi-Joint 4. Focus on ankles, hips, t-spine 5. Takes into account natural joint laxity 6. Actually warms up body temperature. Great examples and easy to implement in your patients tomorrow. Might be better for your patient than that arm ergometer and moist heat pack.
7) Bret Contreras gives a nice example of a glut strengthening program. For a baseline movement pattern correction, Dan John goes over the hip hinge. If your patient can’t hip hinge then they’ll have bigger problems then glut strength.
