Chris: Today we're going to be talking about oblique sitting positions, more specifically low oblique and high oblique positions. A lot of people use these as developmental spots to sort of as entry points for people to come into different exercises as a way to progress or regress from a higher posture or a lower posture. But it's so much more than that. ⁓

Bill: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Chris: It kind of shows us if the things that we had worked on on the ground leading up to this point actually did anything. So we're gonna get into that and a lot more on this week's episode of. So if you're new here, we do these episodes every two weeks. Well, if you're new here, Bill and I laugh after the cold open every single time. But if you've been watching these and you're interested in this stuff, then like and subscribe and you can find out whenever. You'll be notified any time that we post a new one every two weeks. But we've been talking about, we've had a whole series of episodes on potentially using certain positions incorrectly. and it's kind of click baits, like you're doing this wrong. But now that you're here and you've been click baited, we're going to try to offer you some value and show you, give you some insight into using this UHPC model to help understand these positions and what they're actually for. So let's get right into oblique position. So imagine you're sort of half sitting on one of your, on one of your butts. You've got an elbow on the ground. You've got your hand on the ground.

Bill: There you go.

Chris: Your feet maybe, your legs might be in different positions, crossed over each other, legs out straight. Let's kind of get into what this position and this type of sitting position actually represents first.

Bill: Mm-hmm. Well, you can look at it two ways. So think of it as transitional, right? So if I was supine, roll to my right side, and I want to start to move away from the ground, my first contact would be the upper extremity. So I continue to roll. So if I was rolling to the right, we're going to set up in a right low oblique. I'm rolling into that side. The low oblique then represents me continuing to slow down the right side so that the left side would be able to continue forward. If I was upright and I came down to say half kneel and then I'm going to get down onto the ground, I am slowing down the right side. Right? So this is a trans low oblique specifically would be this transitional posture where I'm still trying to slow down. the right side. So this is to allow an accumulation of internal rotation on that side on a position of external rotation. Dead sideline would be a very strong representation of internal rotation. So I would need a lot of internal rotation just to lay on my right side. This ⁓ position increases the amount of ER that's represented, but still the superimposition of IR. So that's why you would use it, because you're intentionally slowing down the grounded side.

Chris: Right. So it's like these transitions we have, we talked about hook lying and now we're kind of propping ourselves up. We're continuing this sort of propulsive sequence of rolling on the ground. So if we did a sideline, we did a three-quarter sideline, we did a hook lying, now we're on the other side, maybe going up on an elbow. And this is more upright and it's actually sort of teaching or progressively loading.

Bill: Right. Right. Correct. Correct.

Chris: someone in a rotational way versus gravity. So I'm increasing gravity. I'm in him. Yeah.

Bill: Right, correct. I'm increasing gravity in this circumstance. So this becomes more challenging because you've always got two IRs. You've got the IR that you're supporting yourself with, and then you've got the IR that's gonna be associated with pressure going downward, which is provided by gravity and the unsupported side.

Chris: right. And then we have less of a hard constraint from the ground, which actually opens kind of like opens the ER field for the person.

Bill: Right. Correct. Yes, and we're reducing the size of the ground contact. You think if you're laying on your side, there's a lot of surface area here. Now we're actually starting to take away some of that assistance of the ground as a constraint. now internally, I have to start providing the constraint with my own contacts and my own musculature.

Chris: And then have less of a grounded contact through the pelvis. You have less of a grounded contact through the rib cage. So you're starting to see what happens when I'm putting this person closer towards what their daily activities are gonna look like as well, where they're more upright, they're more seated, ⁓ less broad ground contact.

Bill: Mm-hmm. Right. Right. Yes.

Chris: that doesn't provide them as much safety or ⁓ I guess support.

Bill: Right. Right, right. Like I said, the sport becomes more internal. This is a great, this is what all we're doing is increasing the challenge because we're starting to increase the influence of gravity as we become more upright. And so that, again, this, is the importance of this accumulation of internal rotation from the ground up, because that's what resists the top 10.

Chris: Yeah. Okay. So we've, we've built this, we've created some AP dimension, perhaps in sideline. We've started working on maybe ground contacts through the pelvis and the feet and the knees and the feet femur shape and the tibia shape and all that stuff by the, positions we've been in so far. We get someone into, so if we're, if we're saying the target was to try to start using the high oblique position for somebody.

Bill: Uh-huh. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Chris: how would I audit that? How would I know that, okay, maybe I got to take a step back to low oblique or maybe I need to get back to my hook line position.

Bill: Sure. So think of the hi-o-blake as the next upright position, right? So if I'm grounded on my elbow and my hand and my hip, then I'm projecting myself upward, higher against gravity. So now this is a straight arm. I'm reducing the contact space. So again, I had an elbow and a hand, which is basically the distal extremity support. going to a single. I'm reducing, I shouldn't say single because it could be multiple, but I'm reducing the contact space, which is again going to lift me up against gravity. If I would see a magnification of an internal rotation behavior. So think about like an anterior orientation of the scapula in the long supported position of the high oblique. That would be indicative of the fact that, OK, I have to create a substitution for the internal rotation that I was hoping to accumulate in the lower oblique position. And so that would be indicative of the fact that, I'm using IR as the projection strategy to come up, which is actually still a compressive strategy, which means that I would most likely need to reduce the influence of gravity. So again, now I'm dropping back down into the low oblique position. because I did not accumulate the internal rotation. I could also see the same strategy in the low oblique, which would be indicative of the fact that, okay, I need to reduce the strategy further, so this is taking them back down to sidelining or back to supine.

Chris: Right, because the potential interference there might be a thorax and rib cage that can provide the proper shape for the scapula to work on. could be, yeah.

Bill: Very much so. Very much so. So yeah, so like if I take a rib cage, I compress it A to P, it expands sideways, right? So that's going to be the compression creating the expansion into ER. That would actually, that ER would be an expansion that's below the ground contact, which would be indicative of the fact that I cannot accumulate the pressure from the ground up. at this point and then there's your IR substitution. So you're to see like the cervical spine projecting forward. You're going to see the scapula anteriorly orienting in that circumstance.

Chris: Right. So it's the, that is another one of the things that's so great about these more upright positions is that they become sort of diagnostic in a sense, because you're requiring that bottom to top pressure. And if they can't do it, if they can give you something that looks right in sideline and on the ground, it might be because of the support that they're getting and the pressurization they're getting from the surface. Yeah.

Bill: Very much so. Right. Exactly right. Exactly right. And so again, we take the surface away and then we're testing the system as to whether they can create the constraints themselves. So can I reduce the IR compensatory strategy that I would see in the rib cage? So that's turning down an inward. There's your IR, right? So you think about like, let's take the extreme example, ⁓ like a side plank is the low oblique position with even fewer contacts. which would require me to produce a tremendous amount of internal rotation. So that's internal rotation shape at the pelvis, internal rotation shape at the rib cage, and then supporting myself through the forearm. Well, if that's too hard, so you see the ER compensatory strategy showing up in that, it's like, well, I'll just drop it down. I'll drop the hip down to the ground and see if they can create the axial shape that I would use to project myself up into that full side plank position.

Chris: Also, think things that you're going to see as compensations are going to be, you mentioned the rounding of the shoulder and the cervical.

Bill: It's a big one. It's a big one because that's an increase in the application of downforce without the bottom-up gradient. That's exactly what you're seeing. So that's a system that's still projecting itself forward. But instead of projecting itself with the ER that we would prefer, they're using an IR midline strategy. Like they're shoving their neck forward. They're anteriorly orienting the scapula.

Chris: Yeah. And then the other ones that come to mind for me would be position of the knee on the ground. If it can actually, you can start to see the influence of the differential on the extremities and the hand specifically. The foot's a little harder to see in some cases, cause there's no contact there.

Bill: Mm-hmm. Correct, Right. Correct. Well, don't, see this is, this is one of the advantages of this position, especially when we've got, when we've got the big differentials in the lower extremity or the foot, we can't really capture the IR from the foot. We can actually use the hip and the knee contact, the elbow and the hand contact to allow us to superimpose that internal rotation. So that's one of the advantages of this position. It's like, I don't need that. I don't need that foot contact.

Chris: Yeah. and your extremity influence in the, so as you go up to the hand, you obviously need the interaction of the hand with the ground. If you're on, they're riding the outside of the hand, if their elbow has to externally sort of rotate or they IR their whole arm in order to hold themselves up, you'll probably see that proximally in that way you talked about, but I'm talking about the more distal things you could look at as well.

Bill: Correct. Correct. Right. Very much so. Yeah. Yeah, have a, but see, this also allows you to identify the influence of the extremities proximally, right? Because if I have an extremity that can't acquire sufficient IR, then I'm going to have to produce it elsewhere. And so again, this is where you'll see the scapula and cervical spine as the compensatory strategy.

Chris: and And then the only other things, cause we've talked about using breath as an audit. So being able to nail breaths, like a circumferential breath in these positions and, where are more importantly, what happens when they breathe through their shoulders shrug, does the air only go to one spot? Is there like a complete lack of expansion in a certain area? ⁓ that's helpful.

Bill: Uh-huh. Yes, yes. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Right. The air is going to follow the path of least resistance. So remember we were talking about supine and the axial shape. When you take an effective breath, we get this cylindrical kind of shape where we get the anterior-posterior expansion. And then instead of having the lateral expansion, that actually moves closer to midline to allow this AP to occur. We want to see a similar behavior in this reduced support position.

Chris: Yeah.

Bill: So if I bring you up onto your elbow or I bring you up onto your hand and I start to see this external rotation below the contact, which said the blow of the contact would be hand through the extremity to the shoulder. I see this expansion below, then I know I can't acquire the same magnitude of IR. And again, that just tells you to reduce the influence of gravity and use ⁓ a more supported position, which would be sideline or three quarters or something like that.

Chris: Okay. So let's, let's play an imagination game of, so obviously this is not, what I'm saying is not going to be like a checklist and procedure that is true across the board for everyone. But say like, we, we have certain measures that lead us to doing a hook line or sideline position. What, what measures are going to come back that then suggests to me that I'm ready for say a low oblique position and then. What are the measures once I get to that low oblique that would say that I'm ready for high oblique, et cetera.

Bill: Okay, so typically we're using the low obliques of representation of early propulsion, which is a superimposition of internal rotation on the external rotation. So these are your early shoulder measures because that's going to be our support strategy through the upper extremity. And so I would want to have access to sufficient early ER for the space and sufficient early IR to create the bottom up gradient. So the bottom up gradient is coming from the ground in this circumstance. So I would have to have access to those measures. prior to assuming the position.

Chris: Okay. And that would be true between low oblique and high oblique as well.

Bill: Well, so as we go to the high oblique, and this is dependent on what type of strategy, but if we compare the low oblique as an early propulsive representation and the high oblique as a late propulsive representation, then we can see that if we use your favorite reference, which is into and out of the cut, so to speak.

Chris: Mm-hmm.

Bill: Right? So if we looked at the upper extremity as the lower extremity going into the cut, that's going to be our low oblique position. If we look at coming out of the cut, that's going to be our high oblique position in comparison. And so that would be the capacity to then project the thorax away from the upper extremity without the compensatory strategy. if I am capable of using the late external rotation as the projection strategy, which would be ideal in that circumstance, I would see the ribcage with the capacity to turn away from the upper extremity. If I see a thorax that turns toward, and that's not my intention, then this would be indicative of somebody that doesn't have that late ER capability to move the thorax away from the extremity. ⁓ Or I would see. Like a magnification in high oblique, would see a magnification of the anti-orientation of the pelvis, which is the lumbar spine projecting away from the upper extremity using internal rotation instead of external rotation, or I don't have an effective ground contact through the lower extremity, which I would need. So, ideally, if we had late propulsive capabilities in both lowers and uppers, I would see the pelvis turning away from the ground, from the leg contact, I would see the thorax turning away from the ground. through the hand contact, any deviation from there would be a compensatory strategy of most likely, like said, if we're using a projection without ER, that's gonna be IR, that's you driving the spine. So we're actually creating anti-orientations. We would see that in the shoulder, we would see that in the hip.

Chris: Okay, so, want everyone to sort of imagine through this with me. Just kind of put yourself in your, in your mind gym here. So you're laying on the ground, you roll from right to left, up to your left elbow. You want to be, you, you want to be rotating towards that elbow as an early representation. And then as I go up to my hand, I need the thorax and pelvis to be rotating away from, which would be the later representation. And not.

Bill: Mm-hmm. Uh-huh. Correct. Correct. It's a series of turns.

Chris: and not seeing that series of turns into and out of this cut. it's understanding this from the perspective and the paradigm of like a Turkish getup, I think will be very helpful for people to see. Just because a lot of people have been trained in what that is and the steps that are involved. And honestly, when it comes down to it, once you understand this propulsive sequencing stuff and these positions, you can have someone just get up off the ground for you and you can tell all of this.

Bill: Yes. Sure. Sure. Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris: from what their strategy is. So you'll see if someone's constantly turned away from the ground contact, you know they're stuck in late. If their head and their thorax and their rib cage move together to do everything, you know that there's a specific, ⁓ there's a deficiency there as well.

Bill: whether you're most likely going to see ⁓ like an anterior ⁓ compression that would not allow you to access the internal rotation. It's going to be a substitution because there's too much pressure. That would be too much pressure in the thorax. So like you're putting load through the extremity. You have to be able to resist that. If you were incapable of doing so, you would see the compression through the upper thorax. You would see the expansion towards the ground, which is going to, instead of seeing this nice cylindrical shape, you're going to see sort of like the

Chris: Yeah. Yeah.

Bill: the concavity on the superior side, the convexity on the inferior side, because they can't project themselves away from the ground.

Chris: and then you turn, you're turning like Batman 1989.

Bill: Here you go.

Chris: Yeah. that's, you know, the, that, that point in particular, I want to stay on a little bit. It's when people go through their interventions and their early exercises too quickly, and they start doing a lot of upright activities or loaded activities with the upper body. That's, that's a sort of reversion back to compensation land that a lot of people run into, I think, because you load, you load a system that can't manage the pressure from the bottom up, and then it just will immediately.

Bill: ⁓ Yeah.

Chris: follow the path of these resistance, everything will compress again, either AP or anteriorly like you're explaining. And then things start to just move together. They get tied together through orientation versus relative motion.

Bill: Uh-huh. Right. Right. Right. Yeah. And I would caution people against this concept of ⁓ like a middle propulsive strategy is a very high pressure IR bias and as a specific shape. But it also represents a reduction in relative motions. Right. So if I magnify this compressive strategy, ⁓ where I don't get this bottom-up capability to resist the top-down. This is where you're going to see a lot of the, again, the thorax orientation, but then the pelvis, thing about putting pressure down on the pelvis, it has to spread out sideways. And so they are stable. We have to be very, very careful about how people use the word stability. They're very stable, but they're immobile.

Chris: Yeah.

Bill: Like they literally can't move. And we want to avoid seeking these positions too soon because if we do that, we're going to drive people into situations where we're compromising the relative motions. We're going to get a bunch of magnifications of like, you'll see like a crazy increase in internal rotation with the reduction in external rotation in that circumstance. Right? So you have to be careful when you, sorry.

Chris: Yeah, and oftentimes people are, yeah.

Bill: We have to be careful when you measure because people are always seeking these gains in internal rotation. And if they only measure the internal rotations, they go, wow, look, this is great. And then they don't recognize the reduction of the external rotation.

Chris: Yeah. That's all I was gonna say is that people chase IR so often. And I see so many posts on social media about increasing your IR through this activity and you're barking up the wrong tree, my friend. Like if your goal is you're just trying to bring IR back, let me crank on your shoulder with a sleeper stretch. I'll get you your IR back if that's what you want. At what cost? Yeah.

Bill: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, but at what trade-off? Yeah, there's the trade-off. It's like, you can access IR. Where's the IR coming from? That's what we want to recognize. And that's the relationships between your measures. And that's why that's so important. We spend so much time on the assessment course with that. So you can recognize it's like, I got IR, but why? Why does that IR exist? And what did I sacrifice to do it?

Chris: Yeah. So I'm going to take, I'll take this opportunity to kind of talk about what we've got going on on the network and with the courses and stuff. So if you've made it 20 minutes into this conversation, you care a great deal about this stuff. Otherwise it would probably seem boring or weird and you would leave. So if that's the case, there's lots of ways to learn this. Some of them are, a lot of them are free. You just by becoming a member of the UHP network. So it's just UHP.network. There are free courses to learn the intro aspects of this model and the

Bill: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Chris: the decision-making components that go into thinking better as a practitioner. And we will be coming out with an assessment, a free assessment, one-on-one course as well very soon. And if you want to work beyond that further, there's a formal education through like certification curriculum that we have. That's at education.uhp.network. There's the PNC course and the assessment course, Principles and Concepts in Assessment. And that will give you a much better understanding of what we're talking about. And we'll prepare you for the level of conversation that we're having kind of lives in the programming and interventions realm, which is an upcoming live course that we will be doing at the end of this year. learning more about that and being kept up to date on all that stuff will require you to be a member on UHP.network, which is free. So head over there if you haven't yet and moving on. So the, talked about the transition. Let's talk a little bit about. maybe archetype specific considerations and then some examples of how to use this in treatment and maybe in exercise. And then we'll call it for the day.

Bill: Mm-hmm. Yeah. So if we think about the ability to contain the center of gravity, the movement of the center of gravity, and we look at archetype-specific behaviors, ⁓ we can use the same activity regardless of archetype, but for different purposes. Where ⁓ on the, say, a wide ISA, let's use a right OBJ. right low oblique ⁓ as a representation. If we have a white ISA that has projected themselves forward on this right side, the low oblique position allows us to slow that right side down and move the center of gravity away from that anterior right aspect of the base of support. So we're actually slowing it down. This allows them to capture the internal rotation that they have sacrificed by projecting forward. ⁓ In the circumstance of, say, a narrow ISA, they're really good at projecting themselves from left to right, ⁓ which is a very, very strong ER projection from left to right. If we need to slow ⁓ that projection down, now we can use the low oblique position in that circumstance to capture that right-sided. containment of center of gravity so it doesn't project outside of the base of support. And so in both cases, we're slowing them down, but the behaviors are going to be different where ⁓ capture of the low oblique position on the right for the narrow gives us an opportunity to move the center of gravity from right to left. And whereas with the wide, we're actually moving it more posteriorly. So if you were standing, ⁓ the way that this would feel is like, okay, I captured this. these early measures on the right side that allows me to slow this left to right projection in the narrow. And then in the wide ISA, I would be able to slow them down and move them back towards the heel where they came from.

Chris: Okay. So is that, is this sort of not giving a general recommendation, but someone that's towards the end of the base of support that's either a narrow or wide ISA. You've just given an example of why a right low oblique position would be a good starting point for both. And then why that there's a difference. Are you cue it? Yeah.

Bill: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Absolutely. But understand that there's a behavioral difference because of their physical structure.

Chris: Are you cueing that differently between a wide and a narrow to get in that position? What are the things you're looking for specifically?

Bill: It's not like your ground contacts are going to be the same. What we need to understand is what direction that they're actually going to be moving their center of gravity. Because the next step is going to be the determination of once we capture them inside the base of support, it's like how are we going to move them from there? Whereas where we would be ⁓ slowing the

Chris: Okay.

Bill: the left side down relative to the right versus projecting the right side forward in the wide ISA.

Chris: Okay. Yeah. So the, ⁓ I think also it's important to know that you're talking about the behavioral differences without really saying what they look like. So if, if you have expectations for a narrow, who's not going to be as good as superimposing IR down into the ground.

Bill: Mm-hmm.

Chris: you might have a presentation that looks a little more towards the outside of their hand, a little more towards the outside of their elbow versus a wide who might look like they can really capture the IR position in the extremity. I think that paralyzes a lot of practitioners because they don't see that full orthogonal IR shape that the narrow might not be able to give them. And then maybe they don't use their measures to help determine that they're moving on the right path.

Bill: Mm-hmm. Crap. Yeah. Right. Right.

Chris: and they just end up staying at low oblique forever, which is what we don't want to create.

Bill: Yeah, yeah. Well, that's why that, but that's why those ground contacts become so important because they provide the energetic direction. Whether I'm moving, to make it simple, like whether I'm moving them back towards the heel or trying to give them space to actually move from right to left.

Chris: Yeah. Okay. And then what you were saying about the next steps. So instead of just thinking that, okay, I'm going to go right low oblique, right high oblique, left low oblique, left high oblique. What are the considerations to make that would say that maybe that's not the best option for both archetypes?

Bill: Well, it's going to depend on the magnitude of the accumulation of the IR on the right side. So if I ⁓ can accumulate sufficient IR, that provides me space in either direction for the architect that we're talking about. So the greater the magnitude of IR on the right side moves me further towards the

Chris: Okay.

Bill: the right heel capture in the wide, the greater the magnitude of IR on the right actually starts slowing down the projection on the left side gives me the space to actually move in that direction.

Chris: So is there, I guess going back to what I initially said, is there potential that both, progression that I'm talking about might make sense for both wide and narrow?

Bill: As far as the Q.

Chris: So if we're basically talking about a low oblique being an early representation, the right oblique being a late representation, and we're trying to get someone to be able to ultimately get out of the cut on the right side into the cut on the left, that's going to require a sequence that would acquire IR on the right, project from right to left, acquire the IR on the left, and then not overly project back to the right so that you can't come back from it.

Bill: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yes. Correct. Well, we need to slow the system down in both circumstances. It's just a matter of direction where we would say it's going to be more posterior on the right for the white ISA. It's going to be more right to left in the NARA.

Chris: I know if that's the best way to put it. Yeah. So you could use that sequence then, low oblique on the right, high oblique on the right, low oblique on the left, high oblique on the left.

Bill: You could, you could, but chances are, chances are, okay. If we, again, so, so going from the oblique activities on the right to the oblique activities on the left require the fact that I can, they can capture IR in the middle to get to the, the left side. So think about this from a sequencing standpoint. So, so we're going to, I'm just going to, we're just going to go from a role from essentially what is a role from right to left.

Chris: Yep.

Bill: high oblique on the right, low oblique on the right, midline. So this could be a supine activity in the middle, roll to the left side, come up on the left side on the ⁓ low oblique, and then project upward on the left. So you've got a rolling sequence, essentially. You're moving closer to the ground, you're rolling across the ground, and then you're projecting upward again.

Chris: Gotcha. Yeah. What I was suggesting is missing the transition through metal.

Bill: Yeah. And so the big question mark is how much IR did you accumulate? Because when you talk about, when we go back to our hook line discussion, it's like that's a very midline activity that has more IR represented. So you just think about where the extremities are oriented in a hook line versus an oblique. So oblique is a more open activity, for lack of a better explanation, which has a lot more IR. So I'm in these IR positions.

Chris: Mm-hmm.

Bill: the right oblique positions, I'm open into IR. As I go towards supine, I'm capturing more IR, and then I'm going to use it again on the left side to slow the left side down relative to the right, because there's my right-sided projection that I'm going to need, and I need to be able to slow down the left side.

Chris: Yeah. So you meant ER to IR to ER. I think you said IR first. I'm not sure. But ER. Yeah.

Bill: The obliques have more ER, supine would have more IR, and then you're going back to ER, which is now projecting the right side.

Chris: So for everyone listening at home, Bill is doing the YMCA dance on the screen. He's one of the village people now. Okay. Yeah. think we covered a lot of ground and offered some value for people to look at the oblique positions a little bit better. But try some of this stuff out in your own practice or on yourself and then post something in the comments about your successes or failures with it and we can take it there.

Bill: Ha ha ha ha! Yeah.

Chris: Talk about it on the network if you want, if you're in the UHP plus group. And we'll see you next time where we talk more about, I think we're getting into upright stuff because we talked about kneeling already, didn't we?

Bill: I know we talked about quadruped.

Chris: Yeah, I think we did have kneeling. Anyways, see you later.