Q & A for The 16% – Pump Handle Mechanics for Shoulder Internal Rotation and The Golf Swing

I’ve got my @neurocoffee, so here’s today’s Q & A.

From Sarah:

I’m have been putting forth a lot of effort to catch up and stay up with all of your content now that I have a little more time on my hands. I wanted to reach out with a couple questions/clarifications.

Strategies for working on decompressing the sternum would include keeping the arms between 60-90 deg, supination position, arms in  0 deg extension. From these strategies I can then create appropriate activities. Are there any other strategies?

From Andrew:

Lack of shoulder adduction and restricts the golf swing. Thorax issue? Scap issue?

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Video Transcript:

Happy Monday!

I have Neuro Coffee in hand, and it is perfect. Okay, a great weekend; starting off a great Monday. Sun’s coming up pretty excited about that workout planned it is birthday month time to get relean, so to speak, but but we’re going to take a little bit for the birthday as we usually do, but anyway let’s get to the Q&A.

I got two questions that came through different avenues that are kind of related. So Sarah came through askBillHartman@gmail.com, and then and Andrew came through on the Instagram story question from yesterday. They’re kind of related because they’’re both talking about pump handle mechanics. Sarah’s question was kind of general as to strategies to reduce the compression strategy on the sternum, and then Andrew’s is going to be related to that because he’s talking about an adduction problem, and it turns out that they’re both related. 

So we’ll get the general concepts and then we’ll take this into direct application for for Andrew so when we’re talking about reducing the compression strategy on the sternum, so what we’re going to find us a result and how do we identify the compressor strategies in the sternum is that we’re going to lose shoulder internal rotation, so your internal rotation measures are going to be reduced because of the compressive strategy. So what happens when you compress the sternum down you position the scapula such that you get concentric orientation on the posterior side of the shoulder and then you lose internal rotation so you can’t reach across your body you can’t reach behind your back and you don’t have normal internal rotation where people would measure it if they’re doing table test.  So what we need to do if we need to bring the pump handle up. So how do we do that? We need to push the pump handle up. If we’re going to take a dent out of a car fender we went bang on the outside and try to make it make it pop back out. We have to go from the inside out, then we have to pump bring the pump handle up and so we have to do is we have to push volume into that anterior chest wall to lift up the sternum. 

Now we have two of them. we’ve got left and a right, and so we can we can play with that scenario but for right now let’s just stick with with the whole concept of pushing air forward. So for me to push air forward, that means I need to create a compressive strategy on the posterior aspect that opposes the sternum. so in the dorsal rostral thorax, I need to create concentric orientation. Well, it just so happens that any position where the scapula is moving towards the traditional upward rotation would push the volume of air forward. That’s going to put us somewhere in the general range of a reach forward or quadruped or something under those circumstances which would be ideal. That’s going to be your primary to get this this pump handle up, so forward reaches and and anything that you would be in like a bear position or beer crawl. The second place that you can you can capture this position in the arm at your side because that is where internal rotation again begins. So some of your crab walking activities and good old-fashioned gym class kind of stuff works really really well here.

You can do some some propulsive activities with your arm at your side, so triceps activities if you go back to last week or week before when I was doing the the tricep kickback activity for the gym. That’s actually really good exercise help your recapture some internal rotation of the shoulder. Anything in those two ranges are going to be of the greatest benefit bring the pump handle up, so that’s a generalized response.

Now let’s talk about Andrew. Andrew is talking about a golf swing, so I’m going to make an assumption Andrew, you’re talking about a like a left arm situation for a right hand golfer where they have to take the arm across their body in the golf swing, and you’re going to see some sort of compensation for that when you do not have that cross-body adduction which requires that you internally rotate left shoulder, if we’re talking about a right-handed golfer. Same thing that we just talked about with Sarah, I have to get the left pump handle to come up otherwise I will not be able to reach across my body. Because you’re asking again Andrew, if it’s the scapula issue or a thorax issue, and I would say that if you’re looking at it from that perspective, you’re always going to be lost because you’re only going to get pieces. 

So think about this for a second, to get the left pump handle to come off that also means that I need right dorsal rostral expansion at the same time. Otherwise, what you’re going to see as a strategy for a right-handed golfer the club back into their backswing, this is where you going to see the people that roll out to the outside edge of of their right foot. Because they don’t have right posterior expansion, they can’t shift towards the right hip and so then they lose the relative motion in the hip and knee and the ankle. So the whole lower extremity moves as a single unit, and that forces them to roll to the outside edge. Now they get their hands in the right place, but they’re not using relative motions to get there and so this is this is why we need the pump mechanics on the left anterior side to get the left arm across the body so we can create expansion where we need expansion. We get the scapula position where we needed to be and then that allows us to eccentrically orient and capture the internal rotation that we need to get the arm across the body. Then we don’t need a compensatory strategy. 

But if I ignore the right side mechanics. If I ignore the right side capabilities, and I’m just thinking like I was just a left shoulder things just to left shoulder thing, you’re still going to that you’re still going to hit an impasse. You might make some progress, but you’re probably not going to recapture everything that you want to recapture. so we always have to think about how this interaction works on both sides of the body especially with turning athletes like tennis players, golfers, baseball players, and any kind of thrower that has to make a turn. They all use similar mechanics in the way that they produce the position, and so again, I can’t just look at one piece or one thing. You have cross-body adduction issue I would also say that you probably have a rotation issue on the other side that you have to address but it’s going to be right posterior where your left shoulder is going to be left anterior.

So I hope that gives you a couple of ideas. so use the same strategies that we talked about with Sarah, but I would also look at capturing them the right posterior mechanics because that is going to be externally rotated shoulder, when I’m trying to internally rotate as I go across the body. So hopefully, that give you a little bit of a guide in regard to what we’re talking about. I’ve got the picture in my head, and and you may not have the same picture. 

Please ask another question. I’d be happy to to clarify further, if we need to. Have a great Monday I will see you guys later. I’m going to finish my coffee, and then go hit the gym. So have a great day.