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Hit me with your best shoulder exercises (Read 13035 times)

jwi

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Hit me with your best shoulder exercises
October 15, 2016, 09:20:11 am
I filmed myself climbing the other day. It was really embarrassing to watch. My most obvious problem is that I have very little control in the shoulders. My shoulders roll forward and up toward my ears on steep terrain (a habit that is not helped by my weak fingers that are making me prone to lift the elbows). When I loose all control of the shoulders it is very hard to start movements from something else than bending the arms... making me look like a total beginner.

I want to do something about this, and I am trying to put together a programme of stretches, activation exercises and some compound movements / shoulder sling exercises.

It seems like that my main problems are 1) lack of mobility, 2) weakness in all isolated movement around the shoulder joint, in particular in adduction in the medial and transversal planes. It should perhaps be mentioned that I am astoundingly week in upward rotation of the shoulder girdle (like in military press, an exercise where I cannot handle more weight then untrained people).

Please hit me with your best shoulder exercises, stretches etc! (I have access to a pull up bar, a floor, bands, and  dumbells, but not much weights (can buy a little bit more if necessary))
« Last Edit: October 15, 2016, 09:43:24 am by jwi »

erm, sam

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Where to begin!
I think wall angels are a really good place to start with shoulder excersises. They start to train the shoulder blade stabilisers to switch on properly and start to stretch the lats and other muscles that pull the shoulders forwards and down.
Also when you get into them they work really well for starting to think about upper thorasic mobility that is typically poor in climbers and contributes to bad posture and poor overhead extension.

So they work on a range of issues in one thing.



Chin down and extend hands to above head in the end, if you can.

There are SO many excersises to improve the shoulders, in so many different ways the problem is deciding which ones to focus on...

erm, sam

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Wall angels are the excercise that keeps on giving. Here is another perspective on them that I think is interesting.

Where he has the straight arm here, it is super important to have shoulders down and elbows facing in and back as much as possible. There is a lot of difference in terms of stretching value if the arms are properly straight with the inner elbows facing in and back, compared to a slight bend with the inner elbows facing each other more directly.. If you experiment with it you will know what I mean.. I think Kstar would call it internally rotated.

dave

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German hang/skinningthe cat on a bar?

rjtrials

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IYT's

Especially T's on trx or ring setup.  Game changer for me to be able to keep my scapula retracted during hard moves,  instead of the shoulders rolling forward.

Nibile

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If your shoulders lock up to the ears it's also lack of strength in the lower traps, rhomboids and lats. All work as scapulae depressors, that is what you want.
Try doing the first part of a pull up just by depressing the scapulae.

thekettle

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Another vote for IYTs here. I do them face down on rings, dropping really deep in to stretch pecs and lats. Unlike vast amounts of stretching, theraband and physio work, IYTs have been a clear game changer for my shoulder stability (which was so poor it lead to double shoulder surgery before 30). Twist push-ups with a light dumbell in each hand also seem good for scapular control.

jwi

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Thanks for the recommendations!

From the wall angels it is clear just how big problem I have with mobility. I've been doing them for a while, and there is no way I can keep my forearms to the wall and having any kind of range of motion.

Will try the IYT's front&back and report back.

It is tricky to analyse what's wrong when comes to individual muscles. I'm OK at pull-ups, and not crap at hanging rows & similar. OK at push-ups & muscle-ups. (Absolutely not ok overhead). None of the bigger muscles on front and back look underdeveloped for someone my size.

So far I'm looking at
Stretches
Static stretches +
Shoulder dislocations


Activation exercises
Wall angels
Serratus push ups
Plank Shoulder Taps
Band pull apart
External rotation w/ band
Hanging shrugs (might give impingment?)
Band deltoid raise
Dumbell reverse flys
Wall slides (glenohumeral abbduction)

Compound movements
IYT front
IYT back
Partial pull-up behind neck

Muenchener

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I can add one my physio recommended to me for outward rotator activation: lying prone on the floor, pull a broomstick from arms straight overhead to behind your neck.

jwi

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Nice. That one hit a problematic spot on my right shoulder very hard.

kelvin

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I can add one my physio recommended to me for outward rotator activation: lying prone on the floor, pull a broomstick from arms straight overhead to behind your neck.

Is this arms overhead and in mid air or overhead as in on the floor?

jwi

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I was assuming prone as in face-down?

kelvin

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That'd work. Cheers.

Trying everything now that I have some mobility to work with. The angel wings thing shows up just how lacking I am but doen't help to much to address the issues I think.

Muenchener

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I can add one my physio recommended to me for outward rotator activation: lying prone on the floor, pull a broomstick from arms straight overhead to behind your neck.

Is this arms overhead and in mid air or overhead as in on the floor?

Lying face down on the floor, arms just above horizontal.

mrjonathanr

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Interesting stuff. Reading round some of Christopher Sommer's blogposts I gained the clear impression he believed most non gymnasts were so lacking in basic mobility that pushing strength exercises hard would only result in injury unless mobility issues were first addressed as the number one priority.

Muenchener

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He discusses that at length in his podcast with Tim Ferriss. Basically doesn't think most adults should be allowed  anywhere near rings without several months of remedial mobility first.

mrjonathanr

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I listened to that, he's pretty insistent. Hmm.. Wonder why my shoulder is giving me grief at the mo.... :-\ Should have listened again maybe.

Anyway Muenchener, (sorry OP) I have a question, if you would:  http://ukbouldering.com/board/index.php/topic,27492.0.html

Danke!

erm, sam

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Wow, just listening to that podcast. I thought I was working on mobility but I now realise I have to work harder!

mrjonathanr

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kelvin

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Well, that was an interesting listen for the most part.

Interestingly, the exercise he first thought everyone should do, jeffereson curls, is the one I definitely couldn't get near doing - tight hamstrings and solid thoracic etc.

Thanks for the heads up.

BicepsMou

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<<Hanging shrugs>>

Do you mean the same thing as scapular pull-ups?

->  

 Otherwise, I’d highly recommend those.

One caveat though. When I started with these many years ago, I had so little control over the shoulder blades (although not having the slightest issue with pull up strength) that I found starting in a hanging position too challenging and even risky w.r.t engraining wrong movement patterns as well as injurie potential. So I found it helpful to start this exercise with feet on ground / chair in order to take off bodyweight (and later on raising intensity step by step by moving the foot support further out). This has kept the intensity low enough to start in complete control, learn the right feeling of retracting / pulling down the scapula and only then move to gradually more challenging position with more weight.

Helped me a lot in getting my shoulder more stable on steep overhanging terrain, and especially in shake-out positions, where shoulder strain is especially high.

mrjonathanr

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Some interesting stuff on this thread.

These exercises and explanations seem clear and useful:
http://drbenkim.com/posterior-capsule-stretch-shoulder.htm

jwi

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<<Hanging shrugs>>

Do you mean the same thing as scapular pull-ups?

That's the one. I'll be careful.

Nibile

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<<Hanging shrugs>>

Do you mean the same thing as scapular pull-ups?

That's the one.
That's also the one that I suggested 100 posts ago... Then here it comes Dr. Andreo Spina and everyone goes Oooh and Ahhh.
 :'(

slackline

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A picture] video is worth a thousand words.

 

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