Strong and Pain-Free Shoulders
Introduction:
Strong, pain-free, and healthy shoulders are vital for everyone, whether you're a professional athlete, trader, baker, or kindergarten teacher. Shoulder health affects our ability to perform various tasks, from athletic activities like grappling, wrestling, punching, lifting weights, or throwing a basketball to everyday actions like typing on a laptop or lifting objects.
Improving Shoulder Stability:
When it comes to enhancing shoulder stability and health, many people tend to focus on unstable overhead pressing exercises and rear delt movements, such as oscillatory training with elastic bands (pressing with plates or kettlebells attached to a bar by elastic band) or reverse peck deck. While these exercises can improve coordination and strength, they have no significant benefits for improving shoulder stability and health and just reflect a poor knowledge of the anatomy and biomechanics of most trainers and health practitioners.
Understanding Shoulder Anatomy:
Let’s talk about shoulder anatomy first. The shoulder is the most gifted joint on the human body in terms of mobility (you can move it a lot), but the least gifted joint in terms of passive stability (it is not so stable). The shoulder joint, unlike the knee joint for example, which is supported by 4 strong and thick ligaments has almost no support from soft tissue and relies heavily on the strength of its surrounding muscles. That is one reason why are shoulder dislocations much more common than dislocations of any other joint in the human body.
Forces Acting on the Shoulder Joint:
Two main forces acting on the shoulder joint: internal rotation and external rotation of the glenohumeral joint. The latissimus dorsi and pectoralis major, some of the biggest and strongest muscles on the upper body, are responsible for internal rotation. In contrast, the teres minor and infraspinatus, much smaller and weaker muscles, contribute to external rotation. This creates a significant imbalance in shearing forces on the shoulder joint and makes the shoulder joint a very poorly designed joint. The less imbalance you have in these shearing forces, the more stability you have, the more stability you have, the more strength you can produce, and the healthier the shoulder joint.
Conclusion
To improve shoulder stability it is essential to balance the internal and external pulling forces, recognizing that they may never be precisely equal due to variations in size and strength potential. For this reason, you should frequently add to your program an exercise strengthening external rotation with both abducted and adducted arms to strengthen both Infraspinatus and Teres Major.
What are some good exercises to improve shoulder stability?
1) External Rotation on the Knee: Sit or stand with your elbow bent at 90 degrees, close to your side, and your forearm resting across your abdomen. Hold a resistance band or lightweight dumbbell, and rotate your forearm outward, away from your body. Control the movement back to the starting position. Repeat on both arms.
External rotation - elbow on knee - DB
2) External Rotation with Adducted Arm: Lie on your side with your affected arm bent at 90 degrees and your elbow resting on your side. Hold a resistance band or light dumbbell, and rotate your forearm outward, away from your body. Slowly return to the initial position. Perform on both sides.
External rotation - side lying - db
3) Rows to Neck: Stand with your feet shoulder-width apart and hold a resistance band or cable handle in one hand. With your elbow bent, pull the band or cable handle toward your neck, keeping your elbow high and close to your body. Control the movement as you extend your arm back to the starting position. Repeat on both sides.
