Just got to watch Sue Falsone‘s awesome DVD on the Cervical-Thoracic Junction.
For non-fitness professional peeps reading this, your thoracic spine is your upper back. Your cervical spine is your neck. When things don’t move well at the cervical-thoracic-junction, you get poor shoulder mobility. That means you suck at overhead pressing and handstands and anything where your arms need to go overhead.
Most people spend waaaaaaay too much time stretching their shoulders, and not nearly enough time mobilizing their upper back.
For Trainers:
If you have any clients that are tight through the upper back or have trouble with posture — this DVD has some brilliant, and actually really simple correctives for posture and mobility.
Especially loved the breathing work for mobility or stability, and different body positions for emphasizing different things and/or different levels.
I had seen rainbow breathing before, but I hadn’t seen how to regress it for clients who don’t have the mobility yet to even start. Likewise, I loved how to use breathing in flexion, extension, or side-bending, to emphasize mobility in different places.
Also loved wall biofeedback stuff for posture (that was done in a really smart, new way, that I hadn’t seen before).
If you’ve kicked around PT or corrective exercise world in the last couple years, you’ll have seen a couple of these things before. Mostly it was just done in a way that was simpler (read: smarter and clearer) to teach and for the client to do correctly. Combined with the new stuff, and the way it all stacked together in layers made a really cool system. Also loved the final level of putting it all together in a couple yoga postures.
As trainers and kettlebell instructors, smarter ways to get better quality movement out of the c-t junction is *always* a thing. Totally loved how smart, simple, and systematic this DVD is.
For Clients:
I’m going to go out on a limb and say that the way this is presented is going to be a hard watch for someone who doesn’t have a solid background in corrective exercise or physical therapy.
I’m going to recommend this as a trainer-level resource. I think even some new trainers might have trouble keeping up.
This is Every Day Stuff
As a trainer, this is a DVD full of drills that I’m going to be using with clients every day. This isn’t fringe or exotic mobility stuff. This is the legit, every day correctives you are probably going to want to have all of your clients using.
Just the breathing stuff alone is worth the price of admission. Highly recommended.
—By Josh Hillis
FULL DISCLOSURE: I got this DVD for free to review. That being said, I get sent TONS of stuff to review, and most of it I wouldn’t put my reputation on. This DVD I feel like is the kind of thing that would really make a difference for trainers who have clients with cervical-thoracic mobility or posture issues.
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