In this post:
Author: Nick Ortego is the owner of N 2 Action, a wellness studio in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, offering personal training, health coaching, yoga, and assisted stretching..
Also find more on the Nick Ortego Fitness YouTube Channel
In this post:
In this post:
In this post:
Author: Nick Ortego is the owner of N 2 Action, a wellness studio in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, offering personal training, health coaching, yoga, and assisted stretching.
Also find more on the Nick Ortego Fitness YouTube Channel
In this post:
Transcript:
Hey it’s Nick Ortego here. I’m going
to show you how to do air squats with
enhanced glute activation, without any
extra equipment. The way that we do it:
get a little bit wider than shoulder
width stance. Feet could be parallel or
angled out a little bit from there I
want you to ground into both the heels
and the forefoot and then push your legs
out as if you’re trying to spread the
ground apart. As if there’s a crack in
the ground right between your
legs and you’re trying to spread the
ground apart. So you apply force that way
push the knees out let the hips sink
while you’re continuing to push the feet
and the knees out. It looks like this and
I’m pushing out as I push it up and from
the side it looks like this. The heels
stay grounded. I’m using a push of
the heels, pushing the heels down as I
push the legs out to come up. Trying to
keep the torso as upright as I can.
Trying to sink as deep as I can into the
squat. When you’re doing the air squat
you don’t have to worry so much about
keeping your spine upright because
there’s no compressive load going
through the spine like you would with
weight across your shoulders, If you were
squating with weight across your
shoulders. Give that a try.
You got any benefit from this, leave a
comment below. You like to get more
content not available on the blog or the
regular YouTube channel, then click the
link that’s connected to this video,
you’ll have a chance to sign up for the
Run Better Now VIP club.
Author: Nick Ortego is the owner of N 2 Action, a wellness studio in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, offering personal training, health coaching, yoga, and assisted stretching.
Also find more on the Nick Ortego Fitness YouTube Channel
In this post:
Author: Nick Ortego is the owner of N 2 Action, a wellness studio in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, offering personal training, health coaching, yoga, and assisted stretching.
Also find more on the Nick Ortego Fitness YouTube Channel
In this post:
Transcript:
Hey it’s Nick Ortego here. I’m gonna
show you how to do an exercise. I call it
bent over Cuban press. It’s really good
for activating the spinal extensors in a
stabilizing way,really good for creating
balanced strength around the shoulder
girdle. The way we’re gonna do it is
without weight. I’ll do light dumbbells. It’s
one of those things you probably most
people will get a good bit of a workout
from it without any weight at all. And
then you’d want to start with very light
dumbbells like even those little pink
one pounders you see in the group-ex
classes at the gym. So you start with the
hips hinged and I’m gonna link to a
video about hip hinging at the end of
this one on the end screen. But hinge the
hips,
that means the spine is straight and now
rounded, knees are slightly bent. From
there I let my arms hang down even with
the shoulders.
I bring the elbows back to about
shoulder height or a little bit higher.
They’re not down by my side they’re out
to the side like this and then,
externally rotate the shoulders, and then
push my arms up similar to a pressing
motion, except the gravity’s not pushing
me this way. The gravity is pushing me
this way. I activate all these
muscles in my upper back, stabilizers of
the shoulder girdle, to do the exercise.
So it looks like this: elbows up, hands up,
hands forward, elbows back down, hands
down. boom boom boom boom with the
dumbbells. It looks like this.
Try a few sets of 12 with no weight once
you feel comfortable with that using a
mirror. Making sure that you’re keeping
the arms up in line with the rest of
your torso, and if you got any benefit
from this video leave a comment below. If
you’d like to get more content not
available on the blog or on the regular
YouTube channel, then click the link
that’s connected to this video you’ll
have a chance to sign up for the Run
Better Now VIP club.
Author: Nick Ortego is the owner of N 2 Action, a wellness studio in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, offering personal training, health coaching, yoga, and assisted stretching.
Also find more on the Nick Ortego Fitness YouTube Channel
In this post:
Transcript:
Hey it’s Nick Ortego here and I’m
going to show you how to activate the
serratus anterior muscles. They’re muscles on the ribcage.
They wrap around and attach to the inside. They wrap around
the ribcage attach the inside edge of
the shoulder blade. They’re key
stabilizers of the shoulder girdle and
then they anchor the shoulder girdle to
the rib cage. If they’re under active, the
muscles that attach the shoulder blade
to the spine and especially the neck
are gonna have to pick up their slack.
Which creates too much neck tension. If
you’re doing upper body movements and
you always feel like you’ve got too much
neck tension going on in these upper
body movements, that’s a good sign that
your serratus anterior is probably
under active not pulling its weight so
to speak. So a good way to activate the
serratus anterior is lie down on
your back, straight arm and have my
thumb pointing up this way. I’m gonna
feel where my serratus anterior is with
my other hand. so from here what I’m
doing is feeling where those muscles are.
I’m just holding my arm here I may not
feel any activity in those muscles. Then
what I’m gonna do is pull the shoulder
down away from the ear and then
straighten the arm and we’re gonna try
to keep the shoulder down away from the
ear as I reach my arm up by the ear. And
what I want to be doing is what you see
is because I’m not letting the shoulder
rise up and making the shoulders stay
down. The shoulder blades gonna have to
to give me that range. The shoulder blade
is gonna have to tilt backwards. The top
side of the shoulder blade is gonna go
toward the floor. The bottom side of the
shoulder blade is going to come away
from the floor as I’m keeping the
shoulder down, keeping the lower back
from coming up. So I don’t want to, I
don’t want to start using spinal
extension to get that range. Lower back’s
down, feeling the muscles that I’m trying
to activate.
And if I start to go higher and higher
keeping the shoulder down away from the
year I’m gonna feel those muscles kick
in. I’m feeling it right now.
You can kind of see the shoulder blade.
It’s tilting this way, posterior tilt to
the shoulder blade. I work on getting my
thumb to the floor
with the shoulder down away from the ear.
Once I’m able to do that, I have a fist I
work on getting the fist to the floor,
then I work on getting my whole arm to
the floor or my wrist to the floor. Give
that a try, a few sets of 10 on each side.
Got any benefit from this video, leave a
comment below. Like to get more content
not available on the blog or the regular
youtube channel? Then click the link
that’s connected to this video you’ll
have a chance to sign up for the
Run Better Now VIP club. Thank you.
Author: Nick Ortego is the owner of N 2 Action, a wellness studio in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, offering personal training, health coaching, yoga, and assisted stretching.
Also find more on the Nick Ortego Fitness YouTube Channel
In this post:
Author: Nick Ortego is the owner of N 2 Action, a wellness studio in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, offering personal training, health coaching, yoga, and assisted stretching.
Also find more on the Nick Ortego Fitness YouTube Channel
In this post:
Author: Nick Ortego is the owner of N 2 Action, a wellness studio in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, offering personal training, health coaching, yoga, and assisted stretching.
Also find more on the Nick Ortego Fitness YouTube Channel
In this post:
Video Transcript:
Hey it’s Nick Ortego here. I’m
going to show you this exercise that you
can use before a workout especially like
a squat workout or a deadlift workout.
It let’s you activate your glutes but also
work on hip mobility at the same time.
It’s kind of inspired by yoga and it’s
called the active pigeon. So the pigeon
pose in yoga looks kind of like this.
Bring one knee up toward the wrists of
the same side and your foot over toward
the opposite side. And then extend the
leg back. You get to where you feel a
stretch in your hip. For me this is the
right hip we have on the front side,
front leg. Feel any stretch there and I’m
gonna have me hips parallel with the
floor. The pelvis is squared up toward
the front. So I don’t want to be over
here like this. Then from here I kind of
sit into that stretch and that push my
leg into the floor like this. And then
relax, and relax. I
call that the active pigeon. Five reps on
each side is a good start. Try that
before a heavy leg workout especially if
you have trouble getting depth in the
squat and if you get any benefit from
this video leave a comment below. If
you’d like to get more content not
available on the blog or on the regular
YouTube channel, then click the link that
is connected to this video you’ll have a
chance to sign up for the Run Better Now
VIP club.
Author: Nick Ortego is the owner of N 2 Action, a wellness studio in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, offering personal training, health coaching, yoga, and assisted stretching.
Also find more on the Nick Ortego Fitness YouTube Channel