Bridging for Mobility

Hello everyone!

I want to add Bridging into my WUs. After various shoulder mobility exercises, but right before the FSPs and Handstand stuff. My Bridge is far from perfect. I can lock out my arms and legs, but my shoulders are not over my hands. So...

1)If I want to do Bridging during the WU, especially to open the shoulders for the HS work, should I do it in terms of holds (just like any other FSP), or should I do reps/sets? If people found the latter one more useful, what scheme should I look for? 5x5, or perhaps higher reps (5x10??)?

2) When working with Bridges, should I lock my arms, and then with time, try to get my shoulders as close to over-my-hands, OR, should I bend the elbows as much as needed to get my shoulders over the hands, and then slowly, with practice, straighten out the arms?

3) I do HS work twice a week, so I was thinking of doing Bridging twice a week as well for the WUs. Is that enough, or should I incorporate Bridging into EVERY WU if I want to speed up my results (say, Bridging 4 times a week)?

Thanks for the help! Just looking for some advice from people who have more experience with Bridging than I do

2) I think that you should work on keeping elbows locked, and work on opening those shoulders over time. Also, try using a box or a step or something to elevate your feet. You might find this helps to allow you to work on pushing your shoulders out over your hands without placing more stress on your lower back.

Don't bend your arms.

Gymnasts generally do bridging every day you are in the gym. I think you could try to do it every workout, but it would be alright to start it off as just as necessary if your shoulders start feeling too achy, etc.

You can start approach the bridge possibly in the 1m SSC protocol. Just an idea. Maybe start off with just 30s if you find 60s too much. I would elevate your feet to focus on open shoulders.

I prefer 10-15s holds for bridges, perhaps only 5-10s for little kids but maybe acceptable for beginners.

I always found bridges to respond well to reps with short holds. Every rep the ROM seems to open up a bit for me at least. Once i get to my max ROM i might hold a bit longer.

Mr Brady said:

I always found bridges to respond well to reps with short holds

Blairbob said:

I prefer 10-15s holds for bridges

Darn. I do want to focus on opening my shoulders, and I like the idea of putting my feet on top of a higher surface for this. If I use this, holds are probably a far better option than reps though.

So I think I'll just do holds (4x10 secs seems like a good starting place), and once I get proficient at keeping my shoulders over my hands, then I'll switch to reps.

Thank you very much for your opinions! Great help!

For warmup, I used to have them do 5 or 10 bridge wall walks and 3 bridges for 10s and about 5 or 10 bridge kickovers. Sometimes they will do bridge rocks or pushups to warmup their bridge holds.