The shoulder. Maybe it's not the best design out there, but it does allow people to do some pretty amazing things. When you think about which joints in the human body are most susceptible to injury, there is healthy competition between the shoulder and knee for the top spot,
But it's not a fair fight. The knee is a highly complex hinge joint designed to deal with an insane force in the frontal and sagittal plane that is inherent to the flexion and extension of the joint. The knee contains a series of stabilizing ligaments (ACL, PCL, MCL, LCL) and menisci (medial and lateral) that offer additional stability and act as shock absorbers to deal with varus and valgus forces as well as internal and internal forces.
The shoulder joint and the surrounding muscles, on the other hand, are a kind of ball joint that was primarily developed to stabilize the glenohumeral joint. While this allows for amazing flexibility and freedom of movement (certainly much more freedom of movement than the knee), all of this flexibility and complexity can make the shoulder more susceptible to injury.
The shoulder is under pressure
Conclusion: The shoulder is not well designed to deal with the horizontal and vertical forces that we exert on it in strength and condition, But with intelligent programming and thoughtful extra work, you can train hard, push big weights, and avoid the kind of injuries that we've all probably had one or two times and get stronger in the process.
Because of the range of movement that the shoulder is capable of, it is important to train the surrounding muscles so that they are strong in as many of these ranges of movement as possible.
At Gym Jones, we use a series of isometric grips where we ask the shoulder muscles to do what they were designed to do – stabilize the glenohumeral joint. For example:
- Double kettlebell / barbell rack
- Overhead kettlebell / barbell wears
- Mixed kettlebell / dumbbell bears
- FLR planks
- ring boards
- Side boards
- Light weight presses with isometric overhead handles
- Squat overhead
- Slosh pipe carries and holds
We also use a number of additional shoulder exercises to get as strong as possible in different areas of movement, including:
- Dumbbell side elevations
- Leaning over rear delta flies
- Breast flies
- pushups
- Parallel pushups
- Ring pushups
- pull ups
Feel free to add these shoulder-specific movements and exercises to your existing programming if they are not already available, Remember to stay light enough to ensure perfect technique and only increase weight if you can do it perfectly. Technology is of paramount importance in shoulder work. Don't let your ego sneak in!
Increase your training and increase your strength
As with all other types of training Your sets and rep structures should be progressiveStart at the lowest volume that will adjust and work to the maximum that you can recover from. Go out there and build some bulletproof shoulders.