Author: David Weck

Proper Body Mechanics Technique: The Spiraling Tea Cup

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I'm going to teach you an exercise that's called the Spiraling Tea Cup. This is a fantastic way to warm up your body, integrate everything, open up the shoulders, and increase their mobility and their strength through the widest range of motion.

So here's what the drill looks like. You want to hold something; a phone really keeps it honest. You don't want to grab it; you just want to support it. Hold it so you're not grabbing it, because that will let you cheat. You want to hold it just like this, without grabbing on to it. So I'm going to go big motions at first and then I'm going to break it down. It's a giant figure 8 that I'm doing here. And you can see that that phone stays up the whole time.

So to learn this movement, we break it down to a paint by numbers approach. Get your object, the phone will keep it honest because you don't want to drop it. I'm going to start in the middle, I'm going to bring it out to this side (left side), outside of my knee. I want it to be at the knee or below the knee generally. I'm going to come to the other side (right side), outside of that knee, now i bring up outside of this shoulder (left shoulder), and bring it outside of that shoulder (right shoulder), and then loop it back to the middle.

From the side you'll see that there's and inward motion, inward motion, now outward motion, and then here. So it's a figure 8 that's 3 dimensional. And then what you'll do is that you'll work that, trying to make it tighter and tighter and tighter to the point where you can do right under the chin.

And when you are able to spiral it really tight, now you're really working the forearm muscle, the connective tissue. It will increase your grip strength, it will increase the health of your hands, and your arms and everything dialed into the shoulder when you can do it with that nice tight spiral, just like that.

And for warming up your body, you do it really big. Let your body move, get the whole thing. You can come here and reach it over the back, extend. So it's a thematic thing, you're learning how to teacup the hands and do that spiral. It's going to help you with your throwing, punching, hitting, everything athletic it helps with [mobility training].

Now last point on this. I was going towards the pinking in this direction. It's better to start towards the pinking in that direction as oppose to going to the thumb. Going to the thumb is more of an appending motion before you know the pattern. So when you go toward the pinky, see how the pinky is leading it right there like that, now that's tending to open the shoulder as opposed to close the shoulder when I go to the thumb. When I get good at it towards the pinky, I'll understand because I'll feel the strength and continuity of my shoulder joint through a full range of motion 360 degree all directions. And then when I go to the thumb, now I'll know how to keep the shoulder safe.

So what you'll do is you'll do that 8 repetitions each arm, maybe go through that twice so you'll have a total of 16 on each side. Put an object in your hand because if you don't put an object in your hand, here's what you'll do: You're going to come here, here, here, and when you get here you're going to turn your palm that way, And you won't even know that you're doing it because if you're not good at this and you don't have the body awareness, you need the object to keep it very honest. Don't hold the object. If you add weight to the object, a 5 lb medicine ball in there and now you really start strengthening.

That's our Spiraling Tea Cup. Fantastic way to warm up. You just have to do the reps. Make sure you do 16 on this side and 16 on this side before your next workout and then the next one. Keep on doing it until it feels easy. Great Job

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