Jen Dieter

To stretch and release the so as, use a lacrosse ball in the middle of your belly button and hip bone. Roll back onto it, sink in and start to feel a stretch. Then take one leg up to the side, bend the leg up, do a side-to-side motion, and pull yourself forward to let your pelvis drop into the floor.
 
Transcript: "Okay, the question is, what's the best way to release and stretch the psoas? I'm going to show you my favorite way to get at it with a lacrosse ball. Lacrosse ball, split the difference between your belly button and your hip bone. Your psoas is right in the middle. So you're going to put the lacrosse ball right in the middle, roll back onto it, sink in until you start to feel a stretch. You can take your other leg up to the side to kind of lean into it more on the right. You can also bend your leg up and do a little bit of a side to side motion to further increase the stretch. You can also pull yourself forward to let your pelvis drop into the floor a little bit more."

To help with mobile stiff ankles, try doing ankle circles while keeping the knee still and the big toe and ball of the foot on the ground. Sweep a frog as far as you can and then up over and back down. Make sure there is no space in between the circles.
 
Transcript: "Hey Jacob, thanks for the question. What are some things I can do to help with immobile stiff ankles? Um, well I want to try to show you something that is going to help you work on not just the flexibility of the ankle, but a little bit of foot control as well. So I'm going to pop in this video here for you to see, but basically we're going to try to do a little bit of both. Keep the knee nice and still. Keep the big toe and the ball of the toe on the ground as you sweep across as far as you can and then up, over, and back down. As you're sweeping, you want to make sure that you don't let your foot do this. There should be no space there. You need to come all the way across, keeping this part down, knee still, then up, out, down, across, up, out, down. Nice big sweeping circles. Okay, now you know how to do ankle CARs. Give it a try and let me know what you think."

To get rid of tightness or tendonitis in the crook of your elbow, try some nerve gliding/flossing. Start by pushing your shoulder down with your elbow and fingers straight and up towards the ceiling. Then move your shoulder up and down 5 times. Keep the shoulder down and neutral while moving your elbow up and down 5 times with your fingers as straight as you can. Finish by moving your hand up and down 5 times. You may also want to do some stretches afterwards.
 
Transcript: "Okay, so the question is, how does someone get rid of tightness or tendinitis inside the crook of my elbow? Again, there's a lot of reasons why someone may be experiencing pain in that area. There's some classic stretches that you may already know, so I'm going to go with a slightly different answer here and go for some nerve gliding or some nerve flossing, which often can be a culprit for why someone may have tightness in that area. So check this out. Median nerve glides. The median nerve runs from your spine all the way down your arm. So we're going to break it up into some segments to go ahead and mobilize, floss, or glide this nerve. We're going to start off, good posture. You're going to push your shoulder down, keeping your elbows straight and your fingers straight and up toward the ceiling. And then you're going to go up and down five times with your shoulder. And then after you do that, we're going to keep the shoulder down in a pretty neutral position and then you're going to go up with the elbow and then back down, keeping your fingers as straight as you can for five reps. And then after that, you're going to do just the hand up and down for five reps. Then after you run through that, you can go ahead and put the neck on a little bit of a stretch if you want more. And then you can do the same thing first at the shoulder, then at the elbow, and then at the hand."

My first coach and mentor was Doris Brows, an Olympic gymnast from Germany. She taught me a lot about physical and mental toughness which has had a significant impact on my life.
 
Transcript: "So this question is, who was a mentor of yours and who had significant impact on your life and why? And I'm going to go with, actually, my very first coach was my gymnastics coach and she was from Germany. She was in the Olympics four times and she was kind of a hard ass to be honest. And I think that she taught me a lot about mental toughness, physical toughness, and I've thought about her a lot over the years. Her name is Doris Brous and she was fantastic."

Joint mobilization is an important factor for proper range of motion and function. It is needed to ensure that the joint is moving properly, which in turn allows for normal osteokinematic movement and function. Without proper joint mobility, there can be friction and pain due to the bones not moving correctly.
 
Transcript: "Why is joint mobilization important for proper range of motion and function? So joint mobilization is what's going on between the bones. Range of motion is what's going on as far as movement goes of a joint. And then function is what someone can or can't do with that. So basically if we're looking at the shoulder, it's a ball and socket joint like this. And joint mobilization is how much the ball, my humeral head, for example, is moving up and down, right? So that is joint movement. Then we have our range of motion. That's how much my shoulder is moving up or down or out to the side or externally rotating or any of these sort of things. That's range of motion. And my function is I can throw a ball. I can lift weights overhead. I can do any of those kinds of things. We need to have what's called arthrokinematic movement. That's movement at the joint or joint mobilization in order to have osteokinematic movement and function, which is what our actual bones are doing and movement in that way. So for example, this shoulder joint, again, the ball has to move down in the socket in order for the shoulder itself to move up. So if it doesn't move down in the socket like that and it rides up, then you're going to get grinding and scraping and pain. So normal joint movement, joint mobility is very important for normal range of motion."

To alleviate shoulder pain, one can do a sub scap and lat release with a massage ball. This is done by placing the massage ball underneath the scapula and then gently moving it around to find tight spots. Once tight spots are found, one should put their hand behind their head and look up toward the ceiling for a stretch. The ball can also be moved down further to find other tight spots and wiggle back and forth.
 
Transcript: "Okay, the question is, what are some ways to alleviate shoulder pain? There's a lot of factors that can contribute to shoulder pain. Sometimes it's a limitation in range of motion or flexibility. Sometimes it is a lack of stability at the scapula or the muscles that support the shoulder blade. A lot of times it's both. I'm going to start with a way that I like to kind of mobilize the tissue underneath the shoulder blade. The lat area can get very tight and a lot of times that can contribute to why we have pain. So I'm going to use a video to demonstrate that. We're going to do a subscap and lat release. So when you've got real tight lats, kind of like from 22.3, a bunch of pulling, this is a great thing to get in there and loosen it up. So you're going to take a lacrosse ball and put it right into the front side of the scapula. So kind of sink right into that meat right there. And then I'm going to lie on the ball. Then from there, I'm almost going to pull myself forward. The ball's moving backward that way, so I can get a little bit of wiggle in there. Then I also, once I find a good spot, meaning it hurts a little bit, then you're going to take your hand, put it behind your head. And then from there, you can look up toward the ceiling, which is going to just give you a little bit of external rotation stretch of the shoulder to further get into that stretch. You can move the ball down a little bit to find another spot, and you can even wiggle back and forth this way as well. Enjoy."