Auntie Barbara comes to town

We are going to take a look at control of the shoulder musculature today. The exercises that we are going to use to do this during the technique portion of the class are the wall angel and dumbell external rotation.

Wall Angel

The wall angel is properly executed up against a wall in a partial wall sit position. Your shoulders and back should be flat against the wall, including your lower back. Raise your arms from 90 degress at the side to full extension over you head, and then return to the start position all in a controlled motion. Initiate this movement by contracting the musculature around your shoulder blades to pull them back and together (active shoulders) and keep your upper trapezius muscles relaxed.

DB external rotation

DB Ext Rot @ 3010 tempo* x 8 reps/arm. More info on the tempo prescription below. Elbow should be at or just below shoulder height, elbow stays at 90 deg, do your weaker arm first. Gold star if you can do this with 10% of Close Grip Bench Press Max. If you don’t know your close grip bench press max, take 10% of your normal bench press 1RM and round down to the nearest 5 lbs.

Tuesday’s Line-up

Warmup: Coach’s choice

Tech: Try to cycle through 3 rounds of 8 wall angels and 3 rounds of 8 DB external rotations/arm

Workout: “Barbara”
5 rounds for time of:
20 pull-ups
30 push-ups
40 sit-ups (with or without abmat – but no lifting hips and no anchoring)
50 squats
3 min. rest

Post time excluding rest to the leaderboard.

Workout Scaling Recommendations:

Barbara is a potent workout and we want you to get the most out of it and be able to train tomorrow, so please follow the following recommendations for scaling the number of rounds while including any of your usual movement scaling (i.e. bands)

Cindy score below 12 – Complete 3 rounds of Barbara.
Cindy score below 16 – Complete 4 rounds of Barbara.
16 or above – Go for broke!

*when tempo is described as above in a four digit prescription:
The first number refers to the eccentric or lowering part of the exercise
The second number refers to the isometric pause in the stretched or bottom position
The third number refers to the concentric contraction or the way up
The fourth number refers to the isometric pause in the shortened or top position

So today’s 3010 tempo for the External Rotation means
3 seconds to lower the DB
0 second pause at the bottom
1 second contraction on the way up. As fast as good form allows.
0 second pause at the top

Dan and Andy