Problem reaching your valves or isolator on your twins/ doubles?

Do the following exercises to improve your movements and fix it

The world’s population is aging and becoming healthier; therefore, we see more older adults doing outdoor activities. Diving is no exception; much of the technical diving community has a middle-aged demographic structure.

Other factors that contribute to the age range in the tech diving community are the cost and amount of equipment needed and the time required for training.

Not only does age affect muscles, bones, and tendons, but posture as well.

I’ll describe how I improved my range of motion and strength in my shoulders, core, and hips.

Mobility is about control, doing a movement with control within a certain range. I aim to improve my range of motion and strength so that I can safely manage the isolator and valves during dives.

I succeeded with a few exercises that I incorporated into my workout schedule.

I always start foam rolling because most neck and shoulder tension is due to bad positional behavior, and this rolling will help to release myofascial constraints. Muscles on your back are restraining your neck and shoulder mobility.

Another way to incorporate a foam rolling practice is by doing a one- or two-day session of foam rolling and flexibility routine, like so:

It is crucial to add strength by focusing on the small stabilizer muscles. These muscles play a critical role in releasing the restraints on larger muscles by ensuring stability. If these muscles are in bad shape, you may get injured.

In the following video, you will work with bands. Bands are effective for getting into the stabilizer muscles because they can provide constant tension in any direction and help establish a mind-muscle connection, which is important for specific tasks like managing valves and isolators.

The exercises covered in this video are:

The band pulls apart, face pulls, serratus punches, over-and-backs, tubing jackhammers, overhead side steps, resisted hip hinges, and oblique corkscrews.

These exercises work with the shoulder, scapula, rotator cuff, and stability on the hips.

Then, you should incorporate a chest and shoulder opener set with the above set of band exercises, which will help you gain flexibility and mobility. The above video teaches these techniques:

After getting confidence and practicing the above, you’ll be ready to add more challenging workouts, but I’ll leave it for another post.

Let me know what you do. What techniques did you use to improve your range of motion, flexibility, and strength?