▶️YouTube
This Old School Stretch Transforms The Human Physique.
Strength Side·youtube.com·6 min read·6h ago
Select text to create a clip
Transcript — click timestamp to jump, select text to highlight
102 segmentsThere's one movement I've found insanely effective for fixing my crummy posture and giving me an athletic, balanced physique.
A hundred years ago, most people were on their feet all day long.
And when you look at old pictures, people are different.
Modern humans have become stiff from our time spent hunched at desks and tables.
But spend some time examining that table.
What if you became your own table?
With one simple movement, you can reverse years of slouching, restore your spine, shoulders, and hips,
and start to stand proud like Superman rather than the IT guy.
But where do we start?
Well, you're set up to lose.
Modern culture slumps us forward when we sit, when we drive, when we write,
leading to tight front of the shoulders and a kyphotic posture.
What we need is to elongate the spine, activate the back of the shoulder, and open up that chest.
The crab position does this easily.
Sit on the ground, place your hands right behind your hips, and simply lift your hips from the floor.
Feel the back of the shoulder become active.
Feel a slight stretch in the front of the chest and shoulders.
When you're ready, rock your hips forward.
Notice the arm is now pulled behind my body more.
This puts an even deeper stretch through all those muscles that become tight from sitting.
Most people can do this stretch no matter age or fitness level.
Your ability to reach your arms behind you is highly correlated with the health of your upper spine and shoulders.
But as we age, most people run into this issue.
Pain and discomfort.
And even buckling your seatbelt can become a pain.
But this is completely avoidable.
There are simple ways to keep your full shoulder mobility, reaching overhead and reaching behind you.
And while the beginner crab is the best place to start for most people, the full crab press or tabletop position will start to unlock elite levels of full body mobility.
This position will no doubt unlock your chest and shoulders, but also starts to strengthen the glutes and open up the hip flexors.
And this can result in a full body revamp of your posture and mobility.
But we got to make sure we're doing the crab correctly.
For both the beginner or crab press, we need to know how to open our chest or else this happens.
The body can't extend unless we set the shoulders correctly from the start.
I face my fingers away because it helps me externally rotate my shoulder.
To externally rotate, think about trying to show your armpit.
Roll the shoulder forward and then back.
Do it a few times before each crab.
Now that we've set our shoulder in the right position, we can lift our hips and either press forward or press up.
As the arm moves further behind you, you should feel some slight retraction in your shoulder blades.
Stay strong through your hips.
As you press upward, keep your core tight.
Try to stay away from forcing yourself into position without keeping tension.
As you see here, my belly's loose and my spine is overarching.
At first glance, the tabletop seems like primarily a shoulder stretch.
But here's how it can assist in fixing your whole body like it did for me.
When the shoulders and upper back become stiff, we start to use our lower back too much.
This results in tight hip flexors pulling the pelvis forward.
Because of this shift, our ankles start to become stiff as well.
And our head starts to pull forward to counterbalance our weight.
And this is a posture nightmare.
But as we crab ourselves back to life, the body starts to fix the whole chain.
The shoulders come back and the upper spine is able to extend.
This elongates your torso, straightening the hip out and turning on the glutes.
The forward head posture comes back in line with the spine.
And the ankle mobility and function is naturally restored.
Push-ups are the king of building the front side of your body.
You can build an insanely aesthetic physique with just doing reps and reps of push-ups.
But the muscles that often get neglected are the ones we don't see in the mirror.
These muscles are perhaps more important.
It's these that'll help you feel younger with proud posture and a symmetrical body.
The crab press is the push-up for your backside that we've all been missing out on.
As you start to implement these into your weekly routine, I'm sure you'll have the same thought as I did.
I wish I started these sooner.
But starting right now is the exact perfect time for you.
Yoga has used reverse tabletop to get flexible for thousands of years.
And the art form that's really mastered the crab position is capoeira.
This is used as an escape or a transition into your next move.
But if you look closely, most movement disciplines use a form of the crab.
That's because athletes understand that it builds resilient joints.
Natural, functional strength and bulletproof shoulders.
Moving from the crab can be even more potent.
This turns a stretch into strength.
A pose into a pattern and a position into a skill.
Using locomotion patterns unlocks our mobility while also developing real life strength.
As you move and crawl from this position, your body understands that it needs to keep this for something functional.
This resides in that lovely space between strength training and stretching.
The crab crawl teaches your body to coordinate opposite limbs together to move forward and back.
This goes beyond the physical and starts to train your brain as well.
Watch how much my core muscles turn on to control this movement.
This is body control.
This is what you won't get from machines or dumbbells.
The majority of children can crab crawl easily.
Yet, as we start to age, we lose this ability.
All you need to focus on is moving opposite limbs at the same time.
Your hips, shoulders, and core will have to balance in this support.
If every adult did this, we'd have far less wrists and shoulder injuries as well as hunched over spines.
The crawl switch is where we go from front side crawl to back side crab.
Now your shoulder has to work and become stronger in multiple planes of motion.
Shoulder blade stability is increased, while overall shoulder mobility skyrockets.
But the control in body awareness is unmatched.
If you're able to do crawl switches effortlessly, there will be no daily life movement that's too challenging.
And your chance of having shoulder, hip, and even back pain is very low.
I built extreme amounts of stiffness in my chest from years of bench pressing.
I've turned that around and unlocked an elite level of shoulder and spine mobility.
This all started with practicing the crab at least a few times weekly.
If you guys want a really good animal movement combo, I'd recommend doing 10 steps of your crab crawl and then bear walking back.
The shoulders get strengthened behind you and overhead, which is essential.
Your legs get stretched in each direction, and you're moving through patterns that humans thrive on.
But no matter what variation appeals to you most, make sure that you become your own table at least once a day.
We use daily crab in our master mobility program, and right now, it's on sale for the holiday.
We're also going to give one away free to the top comment below.
Here's a follow along that's great to start unlocking the crab.
Clips
No clips yet
Select text above to create your first clip
Loading connections...
Reflect
What would you ask the author if you could talk to them?
Press Cmd+Enter to submit