I’ve been noticing something in sessions lately: clients who can hit a beautiful thoracic rotation lying on the floor and then struggle the second I add any load or ask them to move fast. They have the range. They just don’t have control over it.

Then there is the other pattern. A client who doesn’t necessarily feel a restriction at all but is a belly-only breather. The moment we load a press, there’s compensation: ribs flaring up instead of staying stacked over the pelvis. This restriction in the thoracic spine is then showing up as a bracing issue in a lot of her lifts.

And it clicked for me why this keeps happening. Mobility gets presented to us as foam roll, reach, hold, dynamic stretching and move slowly through reps. What’s missing is the next step, nobody teaches you what to actually do with that range once you have it.

Why the Thoracic Spine Matters More Than You’d Think

Here’s the thing about your thoracic spine and why it’s so important: it’s tied directly to your ribcage and your ribcage is what expands and depresses every time you breathe.

A locked-down upper back paired with shallow breathing makes it genuinely harder to brace and manage pressure through your whole system.

This shows up constantly with my postpartum clients specifically. Pregnancy changes how your ribs sit and how you breathe, and that doesn’t just undo itself postpartum. Rib position, breath mechanics, pressure management — all of it needs to be actively rebuilt.

Why Loading Range of Motion Matters So Much

oading range of motion matters so much. Range you find lying on the floor is only ever a starting point. Your nervous system hasn’t yet learned to trust or use it under any real demand. Loading that same range teaches your body to keep it, to rotate and expand through the ribcage while everything else stays stable.

Without that step, you end up exactly where a lot of my clients start; mobile on the ground, compensating the second a rep gets heavy.

So here’s how that looks in practice. We find the range, connect it to breath and then begin to load:

Side Lying Thoracic Rotation with Pulldown

Side-lying, rotate your top arm open toward the floor behind you, exhaling all the way as you go. This is great to help people to actually feel the connection between breath and rotation. You’re loading the movement in a small way, but still very supported too. Ground-based positions like this have their place as a genuine starting point, not just a warm-up throwaway.

Banded Cat Cow

Rotation is the headline, but we also want the spine to move through flexion and extension. A light band gives your ribcage something to push against, so instead of a passive stretch, your nervous system gets real feedback on where it’s moving in space.

Quadruped Med Ball Rotation

On all fours holding a light med ball, rotate through your thoracic spine while keeping your hips still. Holding the med ball helps isolate rotation to the upper back vs cheating with your hips or using too much arm to make it look like you can reach that range.

½ Kneeling Row with Thoracic Rotation

Rowing the cable while rotating through the upper back is an exercise that is easy to introduce early in the postpartum recovery. Now the rotation has to hold up while you’re pulling and maintaining hip stability and core control.

This is where it can be easier to see compensation happening; hips opening to assist with rotation, for example. This can also be done with resistance bands if working out from home.

½ Kneeling Cross Press

½ kneeling base, pressing the landmine bar across your body from shoulder to opposite hip. This is a challenging exercise and one for further into your recovery or mobility training but an exercise that really doesn’t allow much room for ‘cheating’.

You’re pressing diagonally across your body while maintaining hip and core stability. If you lack the mobility here, you’ll struggle to maintain the landmine arc.

Final Thoughts

Thoracic mobility needs two things: range you can access and range you can control under load. Which is why I always include thoracic work in both unloaded and loaded positions.

If your mobility disappears the second you’re doing something more demanding, whether that’s in the gym or in daily life; lifting your kid, carrying groceries, pressing overhead, it was never really usable range.

Most moms are already struggling to find time for themselves, so you shouldn’t need to separate a mobility day bolted onto your training. Which is why this loaded-and-unloaded approach to thoracic work is baked into my postpartum program, Return to Strength, right alongside the strength and core recovery pieces.