Do We Take Care Of Our Shoulder Enough?

May 11, 20203 min read

My number one goal is always to make my clients happy and keep them healthy and it is harder than you think. Why? Because most of the times, what our clients want is not the same what they actually need.

For some reason, people love to train their front side of their body more than the back. People just don't place enough enphasis on building solid stabilisation patterns on the back side of the most complex joint which is the shoulder joint.

We have always seen people doing overhead presses and we think we should do them too, this how we should train too. Even if we don't manage to get clearly into the good position, we lift those weights overhead and start pressing them as we have seen it before.

Very important that you don't have to train like a certain person with their certain goal, you need to realise what your skills are and train personalised to you needs!

If you train smart enough, if you train effectively enough you will be able to unlock those certain thing and reach those certain goals. Using regression/progression pyramid is the key. You need to shift your focus from reaching someone else's goals to your results and training optimally to your skills.

When it comes to training the approach, one size fits all is not true. One size fits no one. Our anatomy is different, our movement patterns are different... You need to train the way it's good for you.

It might catch up with you slowly, not in 6 weeks, 6 months but maybe in 6 six years. You burn out, you get injured or just feel shit with amount of stress you put on your body on a daily basis. But I believe it can be prevented and you can sustain your health, your fitness.

You need to take away your wants sometimes and you need to take care of you needs. Because the goal shouldn't be just to get there where you want to be, but to be able to maintain that level without any pain, any injury.

Now, back to the shoulder joint. Sport science experts say, that in the next 5-10 years chronic front shoulder pain is going to be the most common. Right now most people focusing only on lower back, lower back, lower back and totally forget about the even more complex shoulders. Yes, taking care of the lower back is very important, but we need to start paying enough attention to the shoulder joints as well.

I'm sure some of you did experience it already at some point and it's not only coming from your poor posture, but from your ways of training. You need to adjust the exercises, focus more on the right warm-up and build in enough mobility exercises into your programs.

When I say posture, I'm not talking about static posture, the way you sit all day. More important the way you move, your dynamic posture. And this is when the body-mind connection comes back from my earlier post.

Do you look into the mirror and check the way you move? Do you see what you should see while pressing the weight over your head? Because that is what more important. It's not how heavy you can go the next week... It's about what is your posture looks like during those movements you do.

Shoulder Mobility Tips

Whatever kind of training I'm about to do, I always start with mobilising my thoracic spine and my shoulders. Here is some of my favourite ways to do it.

Thoracic Stretch - is a great way to mobilise your upper back after sitting all day.