FEEL: You should feel a huge stretch under your arm pits and even into your shoulders and sometimes your triceps region.
COMPENSATION: The key is to arch your back with this stretch. Do not just simply drive your chest to the floor.
FEEL: You should feel the muscles in the back of your shoulder blades working.
COMPENSATION: Don’t shrug with your shoulders to lift your hands up. Your neck muscles will be active, but you shouldn’t feel like you are primarily relying on them to lift your hands up.
FEEL: Your hamstrings, glutes, and upper back muscles work together during this exercise.
COMPENSATION: Keep your arms straight as you bridge up.
FEEL: This will feel like a full body workout depending on how much tension you have on the band. At the bottom of the deadlift in this video, there was slack on the band, thus it felt more like an upper body workout as the high pull was harder with tension on the band.
COMPENSATION: All of the same rules apply with your traditional deadlift and high pull, perform the exercise by hip hinging as much as you can while keeping your chest up and sinking your hips down into the bottom position. With the high pull, drive your elbows straight out to the sides and have your forearms parallel to the ground in the finished position. Drive the pull through your lower body as well.
FEEL: This should feel like a shoulder workout, specifically your anterior deltoids. Your biceps and forearms will be working as well.
COMPENSATION: Do not excessively bend your elbows, try to keep the rest of your body straight. Do not use momentum to lift and lower the band, stay strong and packed with your shoulder blades up and back. Stay strong through your wrists and keep them aligned with your forearms.
FEEL: You should feel your shoulder muscles working.
COMPENSATION: Keep that 90 degree “L” shape in your elbow at all times.
FEEL: You should feel the back of the shoulders working with this exercise.
COMPENSATION: Avoid arching the back and shrugging the shoulders as you perform this exercise.
FEEL: The Shoulder muscles working.
COMPENSATION: Avoid moving at the elbows as you perform this exercise. Make sure the motion is coming from your shoulder blade.
HOW: Anchor a band at about waist height. Walk out to a tension that works for you. Slightly bend your knees and extend your arms out keeping your core engaged. From here, move the band around doing the alphabet for the prescribed amount of reps.
FEEL: You should feel your core and shoulder muscles working.
COMPENSATION: Keep your arms extended with the tension from the side at all times.