5 Quick Tips to Save Your Shoulders in the Gym
Posted on 11. Aug, 2010 by Keith Scott in Back to Health, Blog, Rotator Cuff Pain
Got shoulder pain? A lot of people train hard trying to reach their goals. They push themselves in the gym, lift heavy things and get stronger. Sometimes people join boot camps, and group exercise programs and find themselves pushing their bodies beyond their normal limits. All of this is great in order to reach your fitness goals. One of the biggest things that jams up progress is pain and injury. A very common problem that I have dealt with for many years with my athletes and clients is shoulder pain and injury.
The shoulder is used and abused and people pay the price eventually ending up with rotator cuff pain and problems or sometimes frozen shoulder. Since we can move our arms in all kinds of directions, it sets us up for a lot more potential pain and injury in the gym. Add resistance and fatigue, and the shoulder becomes one of the most injured body parts in the gym year to year.
Here are 5 quick tips to help save your shoulders in the gym:
- Keep Your Elbows Close. When pressing horizontally (bench press, push up) or overhead (over head shoulder press) always keep your elbows in and closer to your body. This is the safest position for the shoulder complex. Flaring your elbows outward can be extremely unsafe and places the shoulder in a very dangerous position. Although to many, this may seem like a strange way to press, it is the safest. Don’t worry, you are still going to affect the muscles and get the positive aspects of the exercise that you are doing, but in this case you are being safe. You will find that in many cases, your shoulder pain that you would have normally had, disappears.
- Avoid anything behind the neck. If you are doing behind the neck presses, pull downs, etc…stop doing these immediately. I don’t know if a more dangerous position for the shoulder joint than to place the weight behind your neck. If I had to write an article entitled: The best way to hurt your shoulders, this would be the first motion I would include. Many bodybuilding routines include these type of exercises and while they may be effective, they are very unsafe and will lead to shoulder problems for certain. Keep your hands and the weight in front of your face at all times and you will decrease your chances of injuring your shoulder dramatically.
- Switch up your pushing to pulling ratio in your program. I have been telling my athletes this for years, long before it became “popular” around the fitness industry. It is important for good shoulder health to do more pulling motions and less pushing. That does not mean cutting out pushing motions (i.e. bench, press, etc…) rather it means just adjust your ratio so you can have pain free and healthy shoulders. If you want to do your pushing routines, great, just add more pulling. I recommend a 3:1 ratio between pulling to pushing if you had or have a shoulder issue. If not, I still recommend a 3:1 ratio. However, if healthy and just looking to prevent, you can get away with a 2:1 ratio. You should be adding rows, chin ups and other pulling exercises to your program.
- Add pushups to your program. Pushups are awesome for shoulder health. Many people assume that pushups are basically the same as bench pressing. While the motion is pretty much the same, the pushup is much better and safer than the bench press. Without getting into the physiology of it all, just know that pushups work the muscles of your scapula as well as the important stabilizers much more than a normal bench press does. Adding pushups will help strengthen the entire shoulder complex as well and work those “pressing” muscles. It is a great substitute exercise when you are in the middle of a shoulder issue and cannot “press” anymore.
- Do a pulling exercise before you do any pushing movements. For example, if you are going to do some kind of benching, do a set or two of seated rows, or another pulling type of exercise. This will help to activate the muscles around the shoulder joint and help it work correctly. In turn, it will help keep the shoulder safe and many people even see an increase in their pushing performance. Try to always do pulling prior to pushing in your programming.
Take these tips into consideration before your next training session. Whether you are working on combating an old shoulder injury, have current shoulder pain or just want to avoid a shoulder problem, these tips can help you keep your shoulders safe. If you are suffering from rotator cuff pain check out my 90 second rotator cuff pain solution.
