BETWEEN THE BEATS

Hello,

 

If you’ve been to an RB Original class, you’ll know that direction matters. We work through four directions of travel - UP, DOWN, FORWARDS and BACKWARDS - building strength, mobility and awareness. The further we get into a direction, the more complex the poses and transitions become. 

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And then comes neutralisation.It’s an important part of how we sequence a class. Rather than finishing the focus with a generic cool-down before you roll your mat back up and head off into the real world, we want the closing part of the practice to be as specific as the work that came before it.

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So, if we’ve spent a lot of an UP practice pushing, protracting and elevating the shoulder blades in planks, arm balances and inversions, we’ll want to do something different with them at the end (most specifically by retracting and depressing them). That might mean activating the back of the shoulders and upper back, which have spent most of the practice being lengthened and stretched, as well as passively releasing the front of the shoulders, which have been doing plenty of the work.

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Here are three of our favourite UP neutralisation poses at the moment…

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1 - Low cobra (with the hands floating off the floor) - a great way of introducing isolated scapula retraction and activating the traps and rhomboids, which have had a bit of a rest up until now. 

 

2 - Flat shalabasana C - lying flat, face down with the hands interlaced behind you pulling back. You’ve done a lot of elevation of the scapula if you’ve been working handstands and pinchas, time for some depression

 

3 - Supported fish - placing a brick under the thoracic spine and taking the arms to a cactus - a great passive release for the pec muscles which work really hard when you have to do all those double dip push ups 

 

The direction matters but equally important is the way out.

Imi & Alan