I’ve been reading a lot of posts lately on, shoulder pain, a very common problem in the general population as well as weightlifting community. Now there are many different causes of shoulder pain and it would take a very long time to even simply describe many of them. With that in mind, commonly found is an imbalance of muscles related to the shoulder complex that leads to an individual becoming more prone to injuring this very mobile joint, and its surrounding structures..
The specific muscle imbalances I talk about can be described as an upper crossed syndrome. If you care to look this up on the internet you can but I will summarize it. What you have is someone with very tight anterior musculature and “stretched” posterior musculature. I say stretched in quotations because it doesn’t necessarily mean flexible but none the less it is still lengthened relative to ideal. Therefor you have are tight anterior deltoids and pectoralis muscles and “stretched” rhomboids, middle traps, lower traps, and further upper back muscles. This displaces the biomechanics of your shoulder.
What happens is that the muscles that help to stabalize your scapulae, shoulder blades, are weak and not working properly. This can cause impingement of certain muscles, bursitis, tendonitis and so on. I found a sheet online with some basic scapular strengthening that will help to prevent some, but not all, common shoulder injuries. The first 5 of this sheet are very important. Performing these exercises is very different from what many are used to. You do not pile on the weight and do low reps. Typically, you use 3-5# and perform 3-5 sets of 15-25 about 3x/week. Make sure to squeeze the muscles being used at the top of each rep for 3-5 seconds. If you are able use 10# or more then you are likely performing the exercise wrong.
I hope that at least someone will find this information helpful.
http://www.hsedu.com/HEP/Shld Scapular Exercises.pdf
The specific muscle imbalances I talk about can be described as an upper crossed syndrome. If you care to look this up on the internet you can but I will summarize it. What you have is someone with very tight anterior musculature and “stretched” posterior musculature. I say stretched in quotations because it doesn’t necessarily mean flexible but none the less it is still lengthened relative to ideal. Therefor you have are tight anterior deltoids and pectoralis muscles and “stretched” rhomboids, middle traps, lower traps, and further upper back muscles. This displaces the biomechanics of your shoulder.
What happens is that the muscles that help to stabalize your scapulae, shoulder blades, are weak and not working properly. This can cause impingement of certain muscles, bursitis, tendonitis and so on. I found a sheet online with some basic scapular strengthening that will help to prevent some, but not all, common shoulder injuries. The first 5 of this sheet are very important. Performing these exercises is very different from what many are used to. You do not pile on the weight and do low reps. Typically, you use 3-5# and perform 3-5 sets of 15-25 about 3x/week. Make sure to squeeze the muscles being used at the top of each rep for 3-5 seconds. If you are able use 10# or more then you are likely performing the exercise wrong.
I hope that at least someone will find this information helpful.
http://www.hsedu.com/HEP/Shld Scapular Exercises.pdf