Happier Shoulders with Steve

Shoulder injuries can be a frustrating injury. They can take a long time to come right. Quite often a shoulder injury that hasn’t quite improved with conventional rehab is often coming from something else. When I say "driven from something else," the shoulder's very connected to your thorax or ribcage. The thorax has many degrees of rotation and translation, it is pretty much designed to help protect your spine and your organs. Because of this the shoulder tends to take a lot of the the hit with certain movements because the thorax is busy protecting something else.

Often when your shoulder hasn't gotten better it's because there's another driver. I want to run you through some easy exercises that you can try to train the thorax with your injured shoulder. This might be a shoulder that has been dislocated in the past, a rotator cuff tear or something similar. A good place to start is with the press. When we're doing a press on the back, you've got to think of two kinds of muscles; you have inside muscles and outside muscles. More common than not, people have overactive inside muscles and under active outside muscles. The outside of muscles I'm referring to are the posterior (back of shoulder) cuff muscles made up of your tricep and your rotator cuff.

EXERCISE 1

First, try to lift your arms without letting the internal rotators come into it. To start, lie on your back, spine nice and flat. Keep your shoulders loose and press up about halfway. When we get to halfway, visualise relaxing your armpit back under the bed. You don't want to be pushing with your armpit or your lats. Think of pulling your shoulder blades up and around and then back down.

It looks quite easy, but it's actually quite difficult. What I want you to think of is pulling your shoulders up so you're relaxed in your armpits. Aim for 3 x 6-8 with 1 minute rest between.

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EXERCISE 2

Now you've learned how to press the next thing we're going to do is activate a few muscles that probably haven't worked for awhile. They may not have worked for months, or even many years. Here we isolate your tricep. I'd suggest starting with one to two kilo weights. Sometimes more is better, but start pretty light. If you're having a hard time, you can start with a water bottle or something super light.

This exercise is an extension of what we did yesterday. So you're doing your press, shoulders soft, armpits soft. You don't want that the shoulder you're training to internally rotate or come down. That's means your lat is coming into it. If that happens, you're not going to get your tricep. Come up, loose shoulders, focusing on moving your shoulder up, not your scapula, loose armpit. When coming back down, keep your shoulders straight, press off, just focusing on using the tricep. A lot of people initially are going to internally dump the shoulder when trying to do the tricep. What that means is anytime you're doing push-up, a dip, or any exercise you're using to train your tricep, your lat, internal rotators are going to come in to assist. This means you're not really training the tricep on its own, which then can result in a longer recovery or ongoing problems and ultimately ending up in the clinic. So just try and think: press up, just move your shoulder, no internal rotating, loose armpit coming down to your forehead, loosely pressing off.

Not as easy as it looks. This exercise is a good place to start before you get into push-ups and other more advance stuff.

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EXERCISE 3

By now you've got a basic idea of what we're trying to do. We're trying to get the shoulder (glenohumeral) joint moving independently and training independently of the scapula. Now we're going to add some shoulder blade work. It's not too hard and will probably be somewhat familiar but we're going to be really mindful while we’re doing it.

Start in a four-point kneel. Almost everyone's seen child's pose. This child's pose is going to start a little bit different. You're going to widen your backside, push it way to the back. Weight should not really be in your hands. It's all in the torso.

So what we're trying to do is a little bit like what we did in exercise 2. Try to relax through your armpits, your lats, and those internal rotators. So if you feel like you're gripping down, you're probably doing this wrong. Think loose shoulders. Just try and float your shoulders around your rib cage.

A lot of people I see will come into a child's pose, they'll pull down their shoulders down like those Arnie or The Rock guys at the gym, they've got locked their trunk down in a super compressed way because their lats are overactive. They can't actually get the scapula around their body. So we're going to come here, relax the shoulders, get that full range. So just practice coming down.

So these are 3 great drills at getting you to use your shoulders without letting those internal rotators and those lats come into it. Looks easy, but it's not that easy. Good luck and if you need any help email me at steve@balanceinmotion.com.au