They are why halter tops and frat boy tanks were invented, and you work hard to get them looking good. But shoulders are the #1 most commonly injured joint amongst overheard athletes (volleyball, tennis, swimming, throwing sports) and CrossFitters. One study reported shoulder injury prevalence in CrossFit as high as 31%, with the most injuries occurring during gymnastic and power lifting movements. No matter how cute your halter top is, nobody looks good in a sling so let’s break these bad boys down and make sure you don’t become another statistic
First are foremost, the best way to prevent injury is to ensure you have proper body positions throughout a movement. Duh, right? Injuries almost always occur when athletes are fatigued or lack the proper body awareness/mechanics and start compromising form for “completion”, whether they just need one more rep to beat that biotch who always wears way too much makeup to the gym, or are grinding away at a long chipper. But you might be compromising positions in a surprising way.
gotta beat her- shoulders be damned!
First- the setup. Ever watch the Crossfit Games and see a beautiful goddess toss her luscious ponytail before each lift? Well, they’re f-ing up.
this should be a neutral angle (180*)
This broken spine position is preventing full capacity nerve signals from reaching shoulder/arm muscles (which can lead to weakened stabilizers) just like a kink in your hose prevents all the water from reaching your dead lawn. Additionally, this position slams the vertebrae together where your neck and upper back meet, which can lead to pain and irritation in your neck and shoulders. Dr. Charlie Weingroff talks about how to fix this position with a packed neck here, instantly nixing this issue.
a kinked hose waters no lawn
Next- the pull. Most athletes lack full rotation at the shoulder and bleed out power through their rounded thoracic spine to try and create some slack in the system. Not only are you limiting your PR, but repetitively forcing your shoulders through rotation in an anterior shoulder position shears away at those tiny anterior structures (pec, supinaspinatus insertion, biceps tendon, AC joint, etc) and overstretches posterior structures (scapular muscles, lats, axillary nerve etc) .
"so i creep, yeahhhhh" -- TLC & shoulders
This can lead to shoulder impingement, a common diagnosis for athletes who have begun noticing shoulder pain with reaching and overhead motions, as well as biceps tendonitis. At a minimum, you should be able to lay flat against the floor and rotate your shoulders up to place the back of your hands flat, and rotate down to be about a fist's distance away from the floor without extending your midback. When rotating your shoulders down, the closer you can get to flat palms, the closer you’ll be able to keep the bar path to your body during a pull.
minimum shoulder rotation
And speaking of a rounded thoracic spine, if you don’t have good spinal mobility, good luck getting into a solid overhead position. Many athletes are deskbound by day, and have increased midback rounding from 9-5 while at their computers. You know in Jerry Maguire, when the little boy drops a knowledge bomb and declares “the human head weighs 8 pounds!”
well it actually weighs closer to 12 pounds, but you get the point. Every inch forward your head sits adds another 10 pounds of stress across your shoulders, and multiply this times the number of hours you are sitting- at work, in the car, Netflixing.
Anyone who has tried overhead squatting with a tight midback will tell you that it does not feel good, and a tight back requires a lot more motion out of your shoulders to stay in a stable position. Repetitively forcing your shoulders to push through more motion than they comfortably have to will lead to overuse injuries like rotator cuff strains and tendonitis, and could result in trauma if you try and throw enough weight overhead into an unstable position.
Enough doom and gloom-- now to the good stuff! if you are someone with a current shoulder injury or shoulders are your Achilles' heel (Achilles' shoulders?), the following exercises are my most prescribed, and will get you back on track to fill out your sweet frat daddy man tank by spring break.
for preventing shoulder injuries: (if you don't have a crossover symmetry system at your gym, you can easily create one with resistance bands or the jump stretch bands that all gyms have). These will help work on scapular stability and thoracic mobility, combatting the poor positions discussed earlier.
if you currently have shoulder pain: my number one option for you to continue strengthening without further irritation is eccentrics, meaning, the negative work of shoulder exercise. Some of your best options will be eccentric pull-ups and bench press (which you'll need a friend for)
but really, if you currently have shoulder pain, forget eccentrics! why haven't you come to see me yet?!