Keeping the shoulders healthy is an issue that is near and dear to me because my left shoulder is anything but healthy. It’s an issue that I deal with on a regular basis, always having to be conscious of how my activities may affect my shoulder and always trying to make it stronger. (Unfortunately, I had another partial dislocation in my sleep last week…and do you want to talk about something that will take you from sound asleep to wide-freaking-awake in no time!) So today, I thought I’d discuss some of the exercises that I do to help strengthen and stabilize my shoulders.
But first…the shoulder, itself.
The Shoulder Joint
No other joint in the human body has as many ranges of motion as the shoulder. The blessing of this is all of the wonderful things you can do with your arms, from throwing a 100 mph fastball to hitting that same fastball, from shooting three-pointers to getting the rebounds when your teammates miss. Pressing and pulling movements can be undertaken in virtually any direction because of the ability of the shoulder to move.
The curse is that with great mobility comes great instability. The shoulder is one of the most frequently injured joints and is the most frequently dislocated (especially when we’re talking about my body!), due to its inherent instability. It is comprised of three bones: the humerus (upper arm bone), the clavicle (collarbone), and the scapula (shoulder blade). Technically, these three bones form three joints, not just one, referred to as the glenohumeral, acromioclavicular, and the sternoclavicular joints.
The glenohumeral joint is the ball-and-socket joint that most people refer to when discussing the shoulder. Here is where the upper ball of the humerus joins into the concave portion of the scapula. Unfortunately, the socket that the ball sits in is smaller than the head of the humerus and strong muscles, tendons, and ligaments are required to keep it in place.
The acromioclavicular joint occurs where the acromion (that raised bony part on top of your shoulder) meets the clavicle. The sternoclavicular joint is the point where the clavicle meets the sternum.
The Scapula
What we’re interested in today is the scapula and movements that help to stabilize the scapula. As you can see, it’s heavily involved in the working of the shoulder, being part of two of the three joints, including the major one. It’s also not directly attached to the torso, effectively hanging between the clavicle and the upper arm.
Instability of the scapula is a major cause of shoulder issues, so my goal is to teach the muscles to work together to make sure my scapula is moving within the joint as it should be. And there are a load of muscles that connect to this bone: deltoid, traps, biceps, pectoralis minor, rhomboids, serratus, and rotator cuff to name a majority.
So that means the shoulder has to be worked in quite a few ways. You can’t just go with standard pushing exercises like the bench press or pushups and hope for scapular stability. You have to incorporate various types of pulling, pushing, and rotation, as well as scapular retraction and protraction. Plus, you need to stretch the muscles around the joint to keep your range of motion. It’s like a full-time job!
Let’s get to the exercises.
Diesel Crew Pre-hab
The first video is one that I’ve been using since I had surgery in June 2007. These exercises have done an excellent job of getting my shoulder back to full strength and nearly full range of motion. I need to get back to doing these more consistently because they work very well.
I typically throw these in at the end of my workout to make sure I’m not exhausting my shoulder before going into full-body exercises like the squat and deadlift. They also serve as a nice cool-down.
RKC Arm Bar
A new exercise that I found is called the RKC Arm Bar. I really like this one because I can feel it working very well in my lats and scapular region. I started very low on the weights, using only a 5 lb dumbbell, and have worked up to using 20 lb dumbbells, working in a Turkish Get-up (see below) sandwiched between two 15-second holds.
As Adam mentions in the video, using a dumbbell is less effective than a kettlebell for this exercise because the weight doesn’t pull your arm back. I compensate for that by holding the dumbbell by one end instead of by the handle.
Kipping And Deadhang Pullups
I think everyone knows how to do a pullup. Overhand, underhand, mixed grip…doesn’t matter. I find both kipping and deadhang pullups to be beneficial, though I unfortunately don’t have anywhere to do kipped pullups right now. I think that may actually be slowing progress of getting my shoulder back to where it was a year ago before the first post-surgery dislocation.
Now, if your shoulders are messed up, you should be careful with kipping pullups. But the kipping motion does seem to help my shoulders loosen up and strengthen. Just be careful not to drop too quickly with any kind of pullup until you’re sure your shoulders can handle absorbing the extra force at the bottom of the pullup.
Kipping itself, without the pullup, can actually be beneficial, just by moving the arm through a range of motion while weighted.
Turkish Get-ups
This is an exercise that will get you funny looks, but works very well. As you can see in the video below, you just hold a weight vertically and stand up from a supine position. This forces your shoulder to stabilize the weight through a very broad range of motion.
Jeff Martone of Tactical Athlete has credited the Turkish Get-up, or TGU, with rehabbing his chronically dislocating shoulder. I’ve seen videos of him doing TGUs while holding people instead of weights…I’m a LOOOOOOONG way from that.
Use These For Pre-hab Or Rehab
Of course, you may wonder how well these exercises actually work when I still dislocate my shoulder. It’s unfortunate that I completely undid the surgery by getting the labrum anchors ripped out playing basketball, then fully dislocating playing volleyball (I have since given up volleyball and basketball). But until that fateful rebound, my shoulder was as strong and healthy as it was before the surgery.
So the exercises do work …I just happen to have retorn my labrum, so things that should be holding my shoulder in place aren’t. But that’s why I keep working all the harder to get the muscles where they should be, in hopes of staving off a second surgery.
What other ways do you know of to rehab your shoulders?
Keeping the shoulders healthy is an issue that is near and dear to me because my left shoulder is anything but healthy. It’s an issue that I deal with on a regular basis, always having to be conscious of how my activities may affect my shoulder and always trying to make it stronger. (Unfortunately, I had another partial dislocation in my sleep last week…and do you want to talk about something that will take you from sound asleep to wide-freaking-awake in no time!) So today, I thought I’d discuss some of the exercises that I do to help strengthen and stabilize my shoulders.
But first…the shoulder, itself.
The Shoulder Joint
No other joint in the human body has as many ranges of motion as the shoulder. The blessing of this is all of the wonderful things you can do with your arms, from throwing a 100 mph fastball to hitting that same fastball, from shooting three-pointers to getting the rebounds when your teammates miss. Pressing and pulling movements can be undertaken in virtually any direction because of the ability of the shoulder to move.
The curse is that with great mobility comes great instability. The shoulder is one of the most frequently injured joints and is the most frequently dislocated (especially when we’re talking about my body!), due to its inherent instability. It is comprised of three bones: the humerus (upper arm bone), the clavicle (collarbone), and the scapula (shoulder blade). Technically, these three bones form three joints, not just one, referred to as the glenohumeral, acromioclavicular, and the sternoclavicular joints.
The glenohumeral joint is the ball-and-socket joint that most people refer to when discussing the shoulder. Here is where the upper ball of the humerus joins into the concave portion of the scapula. Unfortunately, the socket that the ball sits in is smaller than the head of the humerus and strong muscles, tendons, and ligaments are required to keep it in place.
The acromioclavicular joint occurs where the acromion (that raised bony part on top of your shoulder) meets the clavicle. The sternoclavicular joint is the point where the clavicle meets the sternum.
The Scapula
What we’re interested in today is the scapula and movements that help to stabilize the scapula. As you can see, it’s heavily involved in the working of the shoulder, being part of two of the three joints, including the major one. It’s also not directly attached to the torso, effectively hanging between the clavicle and the upper arm.
Instability of the scapula is a major cause of shoulder issues, so my goal is to teach the muscles to work together to make sure my scapula is moving within the joint as it should be. And there are a load of muscles that connect to this bone: deltoid, traps, biceps, pectoralis minor, rhomboids, serratus, and rotator cuff to name a majority.
So that means the shoulder has to be worked in quite a few ways. You can’t just go with standard pushing exercises like the bench press or pushups and hope for scapular stability. You have to incorporate various types of pulling, pushing, and rotation, as well as scapular retraction and protraction. Plus, you need to stretch the muscles around the joint to keep your range of motion. It’s like a full-time job!
Let’s get to the exercises.
Diesel Crew Pre-hab
The first video is one that I’ve been using since I had surgery in June 2007. These exercises have done an excellent job of getting my shoulder back to full strength and nearly full range of motion. I need to get back to doing these more consistently because they work very well.
I typically throw these in at the end of my workout to make sure I’m not exhausting my shoulder before going into full-body exercises like the squat and deadlift. They also serve as a nice cool-down.
RKC Arm Bar
A new exercise that I found is called the RKC Arm Bar. I really like this one because I can feel it working very well in my lats and scapular region. I started very low on the weights, using only a 5 lb dumbbell, and have worked up to using 20 lb dumbbells, working in a Turkish Get-up (see below) sandwiched between two 15-second holds.
As Adam mentions in the video, using a dumbbell is less effective than a kettlebell for this exercise because the weight doesn’t pull your arm back. I compensate for that by holding the dumbbell by one end instead of by the handle.
Kipping And Deadhang Pullups
I think everyone knows how to do a pullup. Overhand, underhand, mixed grip…doesn’t matter. I find both kipping and deadhang pullups to be beneficial, though I unfortunately don’t have anywhere to do kipped pullups right now. I think that may actually be slowing progress of getting my shoulder back to where it was a year ago before the first post-surgery dislocation.
Now, if your shoulders are messed up, you should be careful with kipping pullups. But the kipping motion does seem to help my shoulders loosen up and strengthen. Just be careful not to drop too quickly with any kind of pullup until you’re sure your shoulders can handle absorbing the extra force at the bottom of the pullup.
Kipping itself, without the pullup, can actually be beneficial, just by moving the arm through a range of motion while weighted.
Turkish Get-ups
This is an exercise that will get you funny looks, but works very well. As you can see in the video below, you just hold a weight vertically and stand up from a supine position. This forces your shoulder to stabilize the weight through a very broad range of motion.
Jeff Martone of Tactical Athlete has credited the Turkish Get-up, or TGU, with rehabbing his chronically dislocating shoulder. I’ve seen videos of him doing TGUs while holding people instead of weights…I’m a LOOOOOOONG way from that.
Use These For Pre-hab Or Rehab
Of course, you may wonder how well these exercises actually work when I still dislocate my shoulder. It’s unfortunate that I completely undid the surgery by getting the labrum anchors ripped out playing basketball, then fully dislocating playing volleyball (I have since given up volleyball and basketball). But until that fateful rebound, my shoulder was as strong and healthy as it was before the surgery.
So the exercises do work …I just happen to have retorn my labrum, so things that should be holding my shoulder in place aren’t. But that’s why I keep working all the harder to get the muscles where they should be, in hopes of staving off a second surgery.
What other ways do you know of to rehab your shoulders?