Video Transcription
Hi everybody, Dr. Ryan here. Today we are going to be covering your first set of upper body exercises. It’s going to be ball rolls, wall touchdowns, and doorway pec stretches.
Let’s get into it.
Ball Roll Exercise
In this first exercise, we are going to be working on the upper back. Now we’re going to need a ball for this – a tennis ball or racketball is great. I have here a trigger point ball. We’re going to be targeting the area between the spine and the shoulder blade. In this case, we’ll have to put our arm on this shoulder to get it out of the way, and then we’ll put the ball on the upper back in order to work the muscles. So, arm on other shoulder, ball on the back, and we are going to be rolling up and down, really working those muscles between the shoulder blade and the spine.
And that is your first ball roll exercise.
Wall Touchdown Exercise
In this second exercise, we’re going to need to use a wall, and we are going to be doing a touchdown motion. So we’ll get started here. The first step: feet a little bit away from the wall. Next, butt back, head, shoulders, elbows, and wrists, all against the wall. From this motion here, we want to go straight up and straight down with the hands, keeping them parallel to each other. It’ll be up and down, up and down. We want a slow and controlled motion, nothing too fast. Now, if something starts to come off the wall, that is when you stop the exercise. But as long as everything stays against the wall, we want the full range of motion.
And that is how you do a wall touchdown exercise.
Doorway Pec Stretch
In this last exercise, we are going to do a doorway pec stretch. Go to any doorway. Elbow is going to go approximately shoulder height. We are going to rotate the feet away, rotate the upper body away, and look away. We’re going to get a good stretch through the pec here, sometimes even into the arm a bit. And come off that. Repeat on the other side.
