 This week, in the podcast episode, it is like when two worlds collide, we're going to be talking about some specifics around the shoulder, but then some specifics around breathing and how those two things interact, those of you that have been paying any attention to what me and Tim have been up to a little bit individually, will have noticed we have been dipping our toes into and taking some deep dives into a couple of different areas, but actually we're looking at how those two elements of breathing and your shoulder performance collide or combine together. And there's going to be some interesting takeaways for people, particularly if you haven't come across any of this stuff yet. Sometimes in the intro, as I feel like we tell you too much about what's going to come, so I'm going to be disciplined myself today. I'm not going to tell you anymore because we are going to get into the detail of it, but I'm going to segue this quite skillfully into thanking our podcast sponsors, Spartan Race, because one thing you're going to need on the Spartan Jaco is a good pair of shoulders and a good pair of lungs. So I think that this will be a good episode for people who are going to come and join us on the Spartan Race. Jaco and I are going to be doing, and actually the School of Calisthenics team is going to be at the middle of the Spartan Race on the 16th of July. Now, I can't do the Sunday, which is the five and 10 K option, which means by default we are tackling the beast, 21 kilometers of obstacle racing, gloriousness, we're going to be there and you can also join us and it's going to cost you absolutely nothing. Yeah, there is the opportunity for a free space. There are only 50 of them, the free spaces. And I think the beast one is like 90 quid or something. If you are having to pay, you don't have to pay, put your wallet away. This one's a free, but this one's on us. Well, it's on the podcast sponsors. So big thank you to Spartan. Just saying that you can join any of the races. So there's like, like Tim said, there's a five. There's a 10, but also there's a whole host of races going on all over the country throughout the year. So you can use the code on any of those races, but we'd love it if you came and actually joined in with us. The things you have to do, the few little loops that you have to jump through or hoops that you have to jump through is a little bit of Instagram engagement you need to prove that you are actually going to turn up and you're doing some training in order to take part in the Spartan. So we want to see a photo or a video or something of you in your training for your Spartan race and the things you need to tag. You need to tag Spartan. You need to use hashtag at Spartan. You need to tag hashtag Spartan race and then tag us school of calisthenics and then send that post picture, video, whatever it is in a DM to us so we can see it, validate it and then we will send you your free code, which works on the Spartan race website. Like I say, for any race, but we'd love it if you joined us on the 16th of July. And that can be a feed post or a story, Jack, or anything, can't it? Just some set, record it, send it to us. We'll see it and you get the access. So come and join us. And if you can't, if you, if like me, you are somewhat concerned about the beast and what's involved, I don't know. I literally know nothing that's involved, really. The website doesn't say exactly what you're going to be doing for 21 kilometers. But if you don't want to come on this Saturday, I'm sure there'll be some lots of other people who might be looking to get together on Sunday for a five or 10 K, all of this, as Jack has said, lots of events around the country. So don't be put off if you think 21 kilometers is a long way. I am put off and I think it's a long way, but I'm still going to do it anyway. And it's not going to be that pacey. So if you want to come with us and just get a little chat around all the reasons. There's been, I've been answering a number of questions this morning around. I'm not very fast. Is it OK? I'm going to be at the back of the stone. Don't worry, we slow and steady wins the race on these types of things. There's no medals. Well, there probably is a medal, but you know what I mean? Like you get like a really cheap medal at the end of these things, but I'm not doing it. If it's different, I get a medal. That's what I'm doing it for. All right, sit back and enjoy this week's podcast. We're going to talk about breathing in shoulders and how they play quite an important role of working together that you may or may not have come across before. So here we go on this week's podcast. Roll that jingle. Listen, players. You're listening to the movement, strength and play podcast by the School of Calisthenics. Here are your hosts, Tim and Jaco. Right, we're going to get a little bit technical. So we're going to zoom out to zoom in and then we're going to look at all the parts in between. So the integration between that's we're going to sort of specifically about the shoulder, but I'm going to wind it back a little bit before we do that. And I'm going to let Jaco pick up on his area of expertise, which is going to be around ribcage mechanics and diaphragmatic breathing, particularly, and he's probably going to take us down a few rabbit holes along the journey there as well. Let's just kind of contextualize this as to why you're thinking, what the hell does the shoulder got to do with the diaphragm and breathing? Actually, it's quite a significant relationship. If we go a big picture, think about your spine and the shape of your spine is going to determine the position of your ribcage. And now your ribcage is then going to play an important role in articulating with the scapula. So the bone sitting on your shoulder blade sitting on the back of your scapula. Think about that as a train and the ribcage is the tracks. Now, we need the scapula to sit on the ribcage so that the scapula basically has a guide of how it's going to move upward downward rotation, elevation, depression, all the things that scapula can do. So if the scapula is moving well and it sits on the ribcage, it gets the opportunity to then go through really good controlled range of motion because it has the tracks to move on. And the scapula is there to support the humerus, the bone in your upper arm. That creates what we commonly talk about as our shoulder joint. And it is the shoulders job to position the hand. So anything that we want to do from a technical perspective or a functional perspective in life is going to be involving where we want to put our hands. The shoulders job is to position the hand. So if we feed all of that back and go, if we've got a problem with our ribcage position or ribcage function, that can have a significant impact on scapula and therefore shoulder function. And that's when we are now training, moving, all those things start to play into the mix and we can potentially find that there could be some problems which could be causing some issues around performance outcomes. Jaco, did I do a good job of teeing up a conversation today? You certainly didn't know. I'm anyone watching on the YouTube will see that I'm bobbing along because because because there's a song in my head. And for anyone that doesn't like things being too technical, we can summarize all of that by following along with the children's song. The ribcage is connected to the backbone. The backbone is connected to it. And but this is this is I joke about this sometimes when I'm like presenting on it because we forget or just don't really think about like the ribcage, the ribs as we know they're like bones, but we don't think of like joints and usually talking about the scapula like articulate on the ribcage, but we don't because then we have this like I always think of this image of you go into it. You don't do these days because you don't go into a doctor's office, do you? But back in the day, what are they? Well, it's a phone console. It's like, you've got this team, I've got my trousers down. So you can look at it. I've got this thing that you need to see. I don't want to do it on my phone. Not the same. Mate, is this is this normal? Have you got one of these at the end of your. Sorry, I was on Instagram. I was live then, sorry. Anyway, this wasn't the rabbit hole I thought we were going down. But I was going to say that when you were allowed to go to an end to a doctor's office, there would be like a skeleton, not like a real person, as in like a plastic. And when you look at like a skeleton and when you look at the ribcage part of it, you don't look at that and think, oh, but that moves. Whereas, you know, we know our arms and things move. And how your ribs move influences the position of the ribcage, like you were saying, and the movement of your ribs will influence the function of the diaphragm, which we'll go in and talk about, like, how that's then going to affect everything else. But very, like from just that top level of it, as you described, the scapula is moving on the ribcage. And so the position of the ribcage will affect that. And we don't have to be an expert in anything to go, oh, I bet how I breathe will influence my ribcage. Or just even without the, however you're sat down now, listening to this or whatever you're doing to listen to this, like you can just move your spine and put your hands on your ribs and you can feel that like when I move my spine, like my ribs move, those things are connected in together. What's interesting around some of the rotational patterns as well is that like in order for us to like move that spine, which will, you know, spinal position affecting like shoulder function, for me to be able to move my spine and rotate and flex and things around my spine, like the ribs themselves have to move. And this for me, when I'm looking at like how breathing influences like movement from a performance perspective, it's one bit that for me has just been like, oh, wow, like it's so sort of simple and obvious when it's sort of pointed out. And then you can actually make some really nice changes when you start to like, just position the ribs a little bit better or get them moving a little bit better on your inhalations and your exhalations. And we can talk about a few of those little bits, but just as a, as a baseline, you can almost finish the podcast there for a certain degree of just going like an understanding or just an appreciation of like, okay, where I put my ribs, which is influenced by how I hold my posture as well as how I actually breathe is going to influence my shoulder. And when we're talking about doing some cool stuff in calisthenics, particularly the overhead positions, your ability to get your scapula in a nice position on the ribcage is massively going to affect your shoulder function and your handstand and your flags and whatever other things that you're just reaching up to grab that cup of coffee. And how effectively in those, like let's take the handstand position as a great example. Like if you've got the, let's give you an applied example, Jack or Casey, for us to talk through. But if we're getting into that upward rotation position, so remember when the hand goes overhead, the scapula has to rotate around the ribcage upwardly and protract slightly. If the scapula is sitting well in a good position against the ribcage, we have stability. And therefore the structure integrity of the joint is greater and that means we're probably going to be able to produce more force. So if we're trying to balance in a handstand position or if we are trying to create a significant amount of pushing force in handstand push-up movements, and we often see this in people that have got a really good example, I'm going to try and segue this in, without being too technical, Jacko, is sometimes you'll find people who struggle to get overhead range of motion are really stuck down in the thoracic spine. So they're T-spine, they're mid-back, they just can't get that extension. And another example, and you can pick whichever one of these you want to go through, Jacko, because I'm thinking where they could explain to people around that sort of that 360 breathing, because to kind of, if you picture this, that if your ribcage is flared, so you're kind of like your, the front of your ribcage is lifted up, so imagine that your abdominals are sort of lengthened slightly, then think about what could potentially be happening to where the scapula sits. So the ribcage is now sitting away from the scapula because it's lifted up forwards. So there's something which we often, in our breathing mechanics and how we breathe, will then change or will influence that ribcage position. And it could be that we're not breathing enough at the back of the ribcage, Jacko, because we're not actually sort of expanding posteriorly through the ribcage, which is going to, in part, help to keep the connection or the integration between the scapula and the ribcage, am I correct? Yeah, so that you'll get it a lot in, if someone's got a lot of like extensor tone, so we've seen it a lot in the rugby players that we work with where we're doing a lot of posterior chain work, and then we have that like, more sort of like anterior to the pelvis and that shortening of the space at the back. And then you see on the front side, we see the ribs flared out and those ribs flaring out, slightly more technical than my children's song, but if someone locates their two lowest ribs, like dig down with your fingers and find your two lowest ribs, they create an angle and reach your sternum, your breastplate, that angle's called the infrasternal angle and that widening of them is part of like the inhalation, we want that infrasternal angle to widen for those ribs to extend and externally rotate effectively. And when we do that, that's what's supposed to happen with that rib articulation on an inhale that they're moving outward, laterally and in like three-dimension in all dimensions, but with this lateral movement that we're gonna sort of focus on. And then people that get stuck in too much extension is that they're almost like, or the easiest way to think about it is that they can't do the opposite of that and quite simply the opposite of inhaling is exhaling. So the ribs are flat, the position they're in in that extension from all that tone at the back is keeping the ribs up and out and they don't actually then be able to get them down and in, which will be like internal rotation and flexion. So those ribs coming back and down together is key in allowing the diaphragm to go back to a resting shape. So the diaphragm is attached to the spine at the back and attaches onto the front of those lower ribs. And if those ribs are pulled out, it's literally like pulling the diaphragm apart almost, if you think of it like that, is in keeping tension in there. And the diaphragm doesn't get to relax until those ribs actually come back and down together. It's very difficult to get your ribs back and down together if you're in an extended position. And so there's a little bit of like, sort of chicken and egg, what came first, but just addressing some of that, some of the function around the breathing because that's happening just all the time in the background rather than the one exercise you might do in the gym can often help relieve some of those, some of that sort of like position people holding in their posture and then some of that sort of excessive tone that they're getting in those extensors. So what's important around all of that from the diaphragm perspective is that if you're not able to get those ribs down effectively in an exhale, your diaphragm's just forever being like pulled and stretched and having sort of, I just think of it as like, or explain it as having residual tension in there that then it's going to influence how it functions itself. We just think of any muscles like this. If your bicep was always slightly tense, like your elbow is probably going to be mingos or it's going to affect your shoulder. So if the diaphragm is always under a little bit of tension, then that's going to affect the joints that are around, say the rib cage around it. And then it's also going to affect anything that else it's attached or influencing. So it's attached to the spine. And then we've got some attachments of things like QL. So it's major that come up and facially connect to the same part of the spine that the diaphragm does. And so we've got this interplay of like, okay, facially all these tissues are coming together. And if we've got one that's constantly like, just a little bit, but it's just doing, if you think of them as a breath as a rep, we're doing maybe 20, 25,000 of those a day. So it's not like, oh, every time I breathe, it just feels absolutely horrendous. No, but if you're just keeping some residual tension just constantly, constantly, constantly, the sheer number of repetitions that you do mean that if you make those a little bit better and a little bit less tension, like the cumulative effect starts to build up and a lot of the time people will get some release around the hips and stuff as well because of that influence that it's having onto those hip flexors. So spin. Yeah, we often think that we can kind of ice it down to individual muscles, but remember that everything is wrapped in fascia and fascia is like working in, we talk about movement slings, but basically like working in chains and connections to bring everything together, decreasing that tension around the abdominal or the diaphragm, particularly the rib cage is then going to allow more slack elsewhere in the system effectively because it's less wound up, it's creating less kind of pull across the chain, is that correct? Yeah, and then the other element that can be is that people just hold too much tension across their sort of abdominals. And if you think of, if I was to do a strong exhale now, like a forceful exhale, and like put your hands on your stomach, it's like, okay, actually, forceful exhalation, that's my ribs coming down an end, I can feel my core muscle, my dominant recab is working, once even to flex the spine, I've got the obliques working, you can feel those muscles working. Now, what a lot of us have done is too many sit-ups as a kid in our bedroom, trying to be like Arnold Schwarzenegger, aka me. I was aka you, yeah. And then, but also, we may be under the impression, like to hold myself in good posture, or I may be like sucking my belly in a little bit, or we're just keeping tension in, and keeping tension in that midsection is then stopping those ribs from actually being able to move out and articulate well enough to allow the diaphragm to function well enough. So sometimes we've got these sort of, you know, you get a little bit of everything, but there's some people would notice, if you lie down on the floor and you've got a massive arch under your back, and you see your ribs sticking out of your T-shirt when you're lying down, that's you in that like flared extended position we talked about before. If you're holding too much tension around the abdominal region, restricting your breath or restricting the movement of your ribs on an inhale to be able to come out, that's gonna affect your diaphragm's ability to move down and flatten and occupy that space in the abdominal cavity. That doesn't mean you're gonna die, it just, the brain will just allow us to like increase the volume inside the thorax another way. So we'll just do a little bit of lifting the rib cage from like the pecs and all the traps. And it's like, okay, you've got some tightness around here that will affect then your shoulder function as well, because you've got some poor like mechanics of how you're breathing, which, you know, again, what's causing that could be a whole host of things, but just an appreciation of, okay, I don't wanna be holding tension on the, when I'm trying to inhale. The diaphragm, the confusion comes like, when you tense your like abdominal muscles, like you can feel it and it's on the outside and your diaphragm's like in the same sort of area, but it's deeper inside and it's not work. When you're tensing and doing like, if you're doing an exhale and you're getting some of that tension from your reccab, from transversal, from obliques pulling down, that's exhaling. The diaphragm's not doing anything during that. The diaphragm's going back to its resting position and it's the opposite, it's the inhaling when actually, when we're inhaling, when the ribs to be able to move out, so when the abdominals relax, the diaphragm's moving down and flattening out, which is causing the increase in volume inside the thorax to allow air to come in. But that gets, that relationship or understanding is just sort of, or there's just some misconceptions a lot of the time for people. And if you were to go, right, let's try and tense our diaphragm, we'll just like, tense our abs because it's in the same sort of area and we have poor proprioception of the trunk area typically for everyone. So there's a nice learning process to try and just like feel what is it like to use that diaphragm, noticing the difference between it and just noticing what some of your typical breathing patterns and postures are like, noticing how when I try to improve those a little bit, do I start to see some changes in some residual tension like you said elsewhere in the body that might be around the pecs, chest, the shoulder, like does the shoulder start to function a little bit better? Does it fit, do I feel like this scapula is moving a little bit better on the rib cage? And there's a big one to, when you talk about that upward rotation and you'll talk a lot about like the importance of serratus. Well, and then again, serratus is involved in inspiration but how often is serratus not well activated or is it inhibited or, but just the role of that is important in breathing but also massively with the shoulder, right? Yeah, there's some interesting stuff in there around just, I remember, I'll give you a quote from Dana Santas that's stuck to me as we had her in the podcast while I got the mobility maker, and she was like, breathing is not always a solution but it's always a place to start. And I think that's like a really good way to think about this, is there something, because we can go and do some specific work around the shoulder and we can get into some rotator cuff work and, but it's often something that I check in with clients before we go and go and just tell me a little bit about your breathing. I work quite remotely now with clients so it's a bit of a difficult one to sort of do the assessment phases but it's something which we are just becoming more and more sort of mindful with and you can see it often when people are doing assessments you can see how they're breathing, you can see how they're moving, you can see where the rib cage is sitting from a static posture assessment. So sometimes we're sort of talking about, let's just check in on breathing mechanics, like are you aware of how you breathe? Because if we've got a dysfunctional or less than optimal breathing habits, let's kind of put it that way, then we haven't necessarily got the foundations for the shoulder to move well. So anything that I do around the shoulder could potentially be hindered by the fact that we are like secondary breathing. So as Jack had mentioned, like you've got the musculature of the upper thorax, like let's take Pekmino as a great example, sitting on the core core process, like a little beak that sits on top of your scapula and runs down and connects on ribs three to five. Now if you're not diaphragmatically breathing, what's gonna happen is that Pekmino and a group of other muscles around the shoulders and the neck are gonna start to try and take over and they're gonna try and pull the rib cage up to try and get that diaphragm to work, right? So then we find we get this overdominance of Pekmino, which can potentially then start to cause real significant issues around serratus because they actually have quite an intricate relationship where serratus wants to get up and around the rib cage, bring the scapula up and around. Pekmino is a downward rotator and depressor. So when we're trying to get up and around into overhead positions, if Pekmino is working too hard, it's pulling the scapula back down in the opposite direction, which is not particularly conducive for good overhead positioning, stability and strength in those shapes. And that all could be driven from secondary breathing or accessory breathing where, because we're not using the right breathing techniques. So I don't know if you segue into that, Jack. I've got one other point, but I'm gonna go down a rabbit hole if I go down there around serratus and fascial connections because it is interesting, but it's maybe like level two shoulder breathing mechanics. Where do people start with this one? In terms of, is there something like a simple thing of people going, you know, I have my shoulders feel a bit like junky and stuff, like I have a few issues. I wonder if I don't like, what's the kind of a checklist that people could go through as to go in? How could I decide or determine if I've got a problem around my breathing mechanics which could be impacting my shoulder? And if I can do these things, can I do like a test retest and see if it helps? Yeah. Well, certainly we can test, retest like anything, any sort of movement you're trying to get a little bit better of like, is that like your shoulder rotation or shoulder flexion extension, something around your shoulder for sure. Just like to see how does it feel? What's the range like? Is it comfortable? Is it clunky? Is there any pain or discomfort? And what's the actual range like? And then we already mentioned like just, I always start with people with just like awareness, getting a bit better awareness of like, how you're breathing, but also like the position that you're currently in and you use the great word habits. Like what sort of habits have we got? It's not like that you're gonna, you have to breathe to stay alive. So it's not that if you're doing something a little bit poorly that you just die, it's just that you might be in less efficient at it or if you're being less efficient at it, both from a mechanical, which then also affects like the oxygen exchange or the biochemistry we're gonna go down that rabbit hole, but they affect the efficiency of how well you're breathing, how all options being delivered. And then that efficiency effectively or the simplest way to think about it is if you've been really inefficient, you're gonna have to do more of it. So if I'm having to do more of it, the body's doing more work. And then if it's doing it, having to do more work in a dysfunctional pattern, then it's just going to like exasperate the sort of situation. So awareness as a starting point is key. And we can get some awareness through just some very, we already mentioned like, if you lie on your back with your knees bent and like what's the position of your, like be aware of what's the position of your spine? What's the position of your ribcage? Can you feel your ribs cage or see your ribcage sticking out of your T-shirt at the front? When we're lying on our back, it actually a lot of the research shows that like that's the sort of the ideal position for people to learn or to feel the diaphragm moving a little bit more. One of the nice things about lying on your back is that you can feel the lower, your lower back onto the floor. So when you breathe in, can you feel like your lower ribs moving out? And can you actually feel some sensation of, you're not just sticking the belly, pushing the belly up or your chest moving up, it's actually coming from lateral movement of the ribs. And because you're lying on the floor, you're gonna get some sensory feedback from the floor on your lower back as well. As a starting point, but life doesn't happen lying on your back. So you need to be able to do that whether you're standing, whether you're sitting down or whatever. Some of the simplest things that we can do is literally use our hands to stimulate some of the skin around those areas that we're trying to get the ribcage actually moving. So rubbing those lower ribs on the outside around the back and then just being aware of that area by heightening that awareness through that sensory touch. And then just being aware that when I breathe in, I'm trying to feel that area expand out three-dimensionally. When I breathe out, I'm trying to feel that coming back together. There's other simple things like, putting your hands one hand high, one hand low to be able to notice like literally, am I driving from my breath from the upper chest or am I driving it from lower down? Anything that's gonna get you an idea of like, what does it feel like to actually get some movement coming from lower down there? And one of the things that you'll notice as well is that if you start to be a little bit more efficient with your breathing and allow the body, I believe the body's like designed to breathe beautifully and that if we create the conditions and the environment and set it up for success, it will breathe well. We've just need a little bit of guidance for that sometimes to let that happen. When that does, you start to mechanically breathe better or help with the efficiency and then it's like, not only might your shoulder function when you retest feel a little bit better, a little bit easier, like you might feel a little bit calmer in yourself, your nervous system might feel a little bit calmer and you can just feel a little bit better sort of mentally as well. So yeah. Is there anything that you could do so if you're at the beginning of a session? So like, I think one of the things that I hold my hands up and I think a lot of strength and conditioning personal training is in the same space is like breathing drills prior to a workout. So if you're going to go into overhead position, like is there something like what's like the biggest bang for your book that you could do to kind of optimize and it could be lower body as well, right? It's going to be, it would work for both. But is there something just like a diaphragmatic warmup exercise that sits really well at the beginning of the session which is going to give you like, let's say 80% of a good kick in the right direction to try and optimize shoulder function based on this conversation? There definitely be, there's some stuff around like just get heightening that awareness. So, you know, sensory input to like stimulate that area start to be thinking about my diaphragmatic breathing now. Just like if somebody's really struggling to like breathe into that back end, they're in a lot of that extension. Like we can do some, you could get into like Charles pose and we can start to breathe into the back a little bit, but then we've got the other side of it, if someone's a little bit more in that sort of like rib flare position, then actually we want to work on some exhalations and forcing those ribs to be able to come down. It's other than trying to breathe diaphragmatically, trying to do something too specific that ultimately is going to depend on where that person sort of, where that person sort of at and where they're sort of restrictions or where they could be improved by. Well done, it depends. Good, that's what we've not had and it depends answer for a while. That's good. Yeah, but yeah, it just I think it's interesting one about just, yeah, yeah, no, for sure. And I think it's, I was just as you were talking I was like, there's definitely in fitness, particularly the current fitness landscape, I would question people that listens is if they are involved in a kind of a conditioning type program, whether that be functional fitness or CrossFit or whatever it might be. Even if you're going out for a run, like you said you're also, you're by Jaco, but I think there is a massive thing there about being aware of your breathing under greater intensities and what happens because you can actually spend quite a lot of the time during the week when the intensity ramps up not necessarily, or just trying to get through a workout so you are not necessarily breathing optimally and could that potentially therefore within that session be having a negative effect on performance? I know these are a lot of things to think about but I think just if you are probably this is the first time you've ever come across something like this, then you've got some stuff to take away from there. If you kind of are a little bit more familiar with some of the conversations that we've had around breathing before and some of the stuff that Jaco is doing, you can then start to kind of go, well, how do I now start to optimize some of this stuff? And a real simple thing that I've used within like a more of a CrossFit conditioning type environment is just in between sets or if you're ever breaking it in a workout, like just take three or four kind of like long, deep exhales in between sets, just to kind of like bring the system down just kind of give yourself that time to get control of the breath again and then go back into it. Like it's not feasible really to think that all the time that we're going to always be able to have perfect control of the diaphragm because we're starting to go on red line like we're gonna have to just go into that state of like we just need to get this work done or whatever it is we're trying to do. But I think I've found Jaco and you can probably come back and tell me if I'm doing this right or not or just having those checkpoints within a workout as to just reconnecting with that breath is actually being really useful. Actually, from a performance perspective whether it is a parasympathetic tone response or it's just a more of a mechanical response it definitely helps in that next set just having that moment of composure. Yeah, there'll be probably, there'll be some neurological like you say from the extending exhales is gonna help with that sort of parasympathetic activity just to try and de-stress the system a little bit which is getting stressed through the session. There'll be a bit of a psychological element to it as well where we're managing sort of airflow. See a two plays a role on the psychological element too. And then psychologically mentally it's giving you something to like focus on that's like present moment and that's not the session but you're like internally able to just go a little bit inward which I think is beneficial psychologically when you're sort of like redlining like you say. And then mechanically, you're doing a lot of work on getting those exhales down and when we're talking about recovery with from a sort of sports performance type of thing our ability to be able to control our exhalations is in a way a sign of like control of the breath and that you've actually like getting to a point of recovery and not having lost our breath. You know, everyone knows that when you see someone that's just like panting like that they've lost their breath and when you've lost your breath you know that until you stop you're not going to actually recover. I think that there's a whole keeping this episode about like how it can affect shoulder function there's a whole another avenue to explore around like how can we use it to optimize like you said performance as well as recovery strategies which probably is a whole another episode but it'd be definitely interesting to just explore some of those things for anyone that's doing any sort of like high intensity metabolic work or anything like that but just to pull out one thing for people to that you said for people to think about is that your day to day breathing might not the demand of your day to day breathing like the metabolic demand just sitting there at your computer isn't going to show up any of the dysfunctions that you might potentially have in your breathing yet exercise is a great opportunity to connect with your breath and go okay my this the high intensity this is now starting to expose what are those habits like and what will I go to and how efficient is that and how good is that at delivering oxygen for me and so think of using exercise for all the reasons you currently do exercise but paying a little bit of attention awareness to like how does it increase in exercise increase in metabolic demand what influence does that then start to have on my breathing as a thing because you mentioned like when we start breathing from the upper chest like is that stopping us using the diaphragm like we have the ability to breathe into those areas and it's good to be able to like any like motion it's good to be able to exercise through and take things through a full range of motion so there's nothing wrong with using those upper chest areas like we want to expand in there when we need to a lot of people are so tight and restricted that they actually can't get into there effectively and then the thing that we don't do well when we are like gasping for air is that we only feel there rather than if we teach ourselves to start from lower down with the diaphragm and then feel all the way up we actually have the ability to breathe a much larger breath which obviously is going to help you with your performance and recovery yeah, yeah but it's changing habits but let's say that's a different episode to how it's going to affect the shoulder good I think my kind of desire for the takeaway from this conversation was just going to be at that top level of going just understand that yes we can talk all we like about exercises for specific muscles and this and the other but I think if you are just check in if you've got a shoulder issue particularly a range of motion issues where we often see this because these things often come together if you are and just check in on doing that exercise that Jack has said around your breathe are you conscious around your breathing and potentially play around a little bit and then just do a simple test retest of range of motion movement for the shoulder sometimes it can change it and the system is quite adaptable like that in a sense of it will feel a little bit like woo-woo and it's kind of like I don't really know what I've not done anything but you might get some more range of motion as a result of doing some work on your breathe mechanics so that's the starting point the technicalities of it and once you've kind of got that nail down for me just to wrap it up for my size of shoulder perspective if you've got people that are breathing well and they've got control they've got awareness of their breath it may not be perfect but that gives us the license then on the opportunity to then just go and focus on maybe some more mechanical things what is that exercise prescription because you kind of got confidence in the underlying one of the underlying rocks if you like what is potentially could be a root cause to some issues has been ticked off and that doesn't necessarily need to be at that point like a really arduous I've got to do all of this sort of stuff it's like let's just kind of build this in be aware of it think about how we're moving and then I'll take that into a level where we are let's take the serratus and my last point on here so we might be if we're getting into some like rotation positions you mentioned that before Jaco so it's really useful from a high performing shoulder to be able to have a rotational component so we need to get that the shoulders moving in like a pep agrounder across the pelvis so because of where the fascial lines are we'll have serratus actually going down through across into the obliques on the opposite side so full contraction of the fascial sling if you like of that serratus that rhomboid serratus and then down it goes wraps around I think rhomboids from shoulder blade around the rib cage through your serratus anterior which is like your little box of muscle those fingertips then across the midline into the opposite side hip we can cue all of that in and bring the road and bring an exhalation in at that point to really kind of get that full range of motion and maximize that the integration of that sling so there's like a level of awareness and then there's a level of like optimisation if you like through exercise and movement but you've got to know how to breathe first before you can then go and start to implement it into some of those more technical things and this kind of like levels the game have I done a good job of explaining that, Jaco? No, no, I like that because the one sort of final point I wanted to make just on how it then influences or allows you to what you're going to do with the shoulder is the stuff that you're talking about going like ultimately you're going to need to upgrade some strength there's going to be some strength deficits and issues that's come as well you might, whether it's serratus whether it's rotator cuff there's a combination of these things in working in synergy together but you're going to want to do some strengthening work but you want, as we'd always say in anything training wise, you want to build that strength on strong foundations and the foundations to literally your shoulder your scapula is like what it's sat on so the ribs so it's like a case of get yourself in a position like you said to have awareness be noticing how your breathing affects your posture and how your posture relief your positioning of your ribcage affecting that shoulder function to get yourself in a position where you've got some better range of motion things are moving and gliding nicely so that you can actually then go and upgrade some strength in that system and that's what's going to make you have some sort of like robustness and some big wins in like being able to do cool stuff with your actual shoulders Yeah, as a couple of cases I've had of people that have one in particular where it was actually a shoulder issue and sort of pain and rotation side bending was a ribcage issue and it was actually by fixing the ribs and the hips which they've freed up the shoulder but it's a complicated one Yeah, my career Right, that's 40 minutes, Jaco we've done today Lovely Probably go down a couple of holes on that so if you've got any questions on the back of that just drop them through on email you can get tim at schoolofcalisthenx.com or david at schoolofcalisthenx.com any of your calisthenx questions we're keen to do some more Q&A so if you've got some questions if he listens to this and thinking I've got a specific thing that I would like you guys to wax lyrical about and send that through on email for us as well and if you are interested in either of those two things of how our worlds now collide within calisthenx training, breathing, shoulders specific kind of training and then just send it through and we will funnel your questions to the right person to help you Is that right? Yeah, that's good As I was saying, if anyone were Tim if they want to find out a bit more specifically around shoulder they're literally going okay, actually I've got a bit of shoulder pain I need to sum myself out what's the best place to just direct them to for that? So we have dynamicshoulders.com or you can find us on Instagram at dynamicshoulders Cool, pretty straightforward and Jaco, where might someone find you if they were interested in? Yeah, on the breathing on some of those things that sort of whet your appetite over there's a new app out that's called ProBreathWorks so you can go to probreathwork.com it's on Google or on Apple and there's a free foundations of breathing courses like eight modules that you can work through for free that's just gonna get those basics in place and for most people they don't need anything more than that so get yourself jumped on that and just get the basics nailed down and you're probably not for a lot of people they don't need any more than that obviously if there is extra stuff in there if people want some additional stuff but generally speaking the basics, as ever, is what gets people in a place that they're happy to move on, pain-free You made it free from Jaco as well what a guy helping the world breathe better Well, I feel, the thing is so I think it is, it's like breathing is one of, it's breathing sort of like is free, it's like it but do you know what I mean? It's like one of those like essential things of life or the essential thing Yeah Well, I feel like that should just like the basics of that for just like being able to do it Well, it's the type of thing that we should be like why do we not get taught this at school or whatever and so, yeah that's where it comes from Yeah Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah Right, thank you for listening this week I hope that's been useful we'll be back next week but until then keep exploring your physical potential with movement, strength and play Class dismissed