What part of the back would you guess is supposed to be the most mobile? If you guessed lumbar, you’d be wrong. It’s actually the least with about 30° of mobility. The correct answer would be the thoracic, which has up to a whopping 70° range of motion. The problem is our sedentary, often desk-bound jobs. (Seems to be a recurring theme doesn’t it?) Too much time sitting at a desk craning your neck to look at a monitor will leave you looking like a senior citizen far before your time. Observe below the comparison of a healthy spine with one suffering from kyphosis (the abnormal curvature of the thoracic spine):

Notice the slumping shoulders and forward-protruding neck, as these are common signs of kyphosis. The question then is how does this affect your lifts? With a lack of mobility in such a highly flexible part of the spine, you force other less mobile areas — the cervical or lumbar spine — to take up the slack, which opens you up to injury. In addition, if you don’t have a flexible thoracic spine, it makes it even tougher to hold difficult positions such as the overhead squat or the front rack (for cleans and front squats). This is why if you have some stiffness in the upper back you should begin incorporating some thoracic mobility drills to your daily warmup. The site Stronglifts.com has a great article with several Youtube videos of drills you can do.

Further reading: Think of It As Potential Potential by Kelly Starrett of San Francisco CrossFit


WOD 4.15.10

Make Up Day

4 Responses to “Get a Better Rack (Without Surgery!)”

Scott
April 15, 2010 at 11:25 AM

Any ladies interested in a fun little run? :)

I’m on a team of 12 people who are doing a 36-hour relay race from Ventura to Dana Point called the Southern California Ragnar Relay. It’s 200 miles total and each person completes 3 legs of the relay for an average of 5-6 miles each leg. We currently have 6 guys and 5 girls (because a girl dropped out on us), so we need one more girl. The group is very chill and just looking to have fun competing. Our runners average anything from 7 min miles to 10+ min miles. The event is next weekend, Friday Apr 23 – Saturday Apr 24.

If you have any interest, shoot me an email…[email protected].

Thanks!
Scott

Nick R.
April 15, 2010 at 2:41 PM

WOD tuesday: 3 hr surf up north and a run
WOD weds: 3 mile beach run + AMRAP 20 of 5pullups, 10squats, 15situps (lost count of rounds)
Wod Thurs: 4 hr surf at Trestles and AMRAP 7 innings dodger dogs and beer

I’ll be back in the gym tomorrow :)

Michael H
April 16, 2010 at 12:23 AM

Something to train for next year :)

http://toughmudder.com/events/southern-california-los-angeles-san-diego/

[...] recent post on kyphosiseluded to the harsh reality that many of us are confined to a sitting position much of our time, and [...]