A Joint by Joint Approach to Training Part 4

Lets run through some exercises we can do for each joint to provide it with mobility or stability.

For ankle mobility we can do wall ankle mobilisations making sure to keep your patella in line with your second big toe and keep your heel flat on the ground. Start with your toes against the wall and draw back as far as you can while keeping the heel down. Push down, and forwards, into the wall.

For knee stability we want the aforementioned wall ankle mobilisations as well as some a knee to knee stretch for hip internal rotation and some hip rockbacks for hip external rotation. For the rockbacks make sure to assume a neutral spine position and only push back as far as you can maintain it. Turn your feet out away from you and do these for a bit more extra stretch. knee to knee

For hip mobility as well as the aforementioned knee to knee stretch and hip rockbacks, some hip circles will also help out too. Just make sure that your range of motion is coming from the hips and not your lumbar spine.

For lumbar stability you can simply do anything from my video from the 21st Century Core Training blog series.

For thoracic mobility we'll opt for some thoracic extensions over a tennis ball or a foam roller and also some thoracic extension-rotation stuff with the aim being to get your top side shoulder to the floor without your hips rotating even an inch.



For scapula stability we need to address some different muscles. First we'll address the serratus anterior muscle which when active, clings the scapula to the ribcage where it belongs so for this we'll try some scapula prone hold push ups but hold each rep x 3secs. We'll also activate the lower traps with a prone trap raise where you'll want to make sure that you depressing (pulling down) the scapula the whole time so as not to "shrug" your shoulders up as you do the movement.

For glenohumeral mobility, in most cases addressing thoracic mobility and scapula stability will clear most restrictions up but feel free to pop some of these in but if you don't have thoracic mobility and scapula stability, don't do these until you can.

Here is a video of each exercise. Just note that the hip rockbacks are called roll backs in the video, Adam couldn't read my writing.