How to improve your range of motion with alternating isometrics- Episode 415

I use this a lot for people who just generally wake up stiff in the mornings or let’s say wake up with a cranky neck. And the idea here is we’re going to use what are called, alternating isometrics.
So let’s imagine that I have stiffness. when I tilt my head to the right. I do have a little bit. So what we’re going to do is we’re going to go into that range of motion. We don’t want to go fully into where we’re uncomfortable. So we’ll go to close to that range of motion. Pull out just a little bit. And now what we’re going to do is we’re going to first
do an isometric, which means no movement. We’re going to do a little bit of contraction. So I’m going to move my ear toward my right shoulder. I’m resisting with my right hand and then I’m going to switch. And I’m now going to do an isometric in the opposite direction. Hold for about six seconds, repeat. And we’re just going to do that three to five times. Gently come out of it, relax, and then retest your range of motion. This works fabulously well, for a lot of people. Basically, we’re trying to make the brain feel a little bit safer with contraction in both directions.You can also add rotation to it. There’s a lot of other ways to alter this particular approach, but just consider this idea of alternating isometrics. You can use it around any body part. So let’s say I have stiffness in my hip or stiffness in my shoulder and I have difficulty going into this range of motion. I could begin with an internal rotation isometric, external, internal, external, and then I typically will see a pretty significant increase in the range and the comfort.