Hey everybody it's Doctor Jo, and today I'm going to show you some stretches and
exercises for your shoulder in real time. So follow along with me let's get started.
So we'll start off with my favorite the pendulums. So grab
your most bestest can of soup or vegetables. I think this one is corn. This
is just to help open up your shoulder joint a little bit. You don't have to use
anything, I think it makes it feel a little bit better. Now the key with
pendulums, this is really important,
you're not actively moving your arm. This is supposed to be a passive range of
motion movement, and a lot of people tend to do it actively. You want to move your
whole body to make your arm move. So it's really just dangling there the whole
time and then you're using the momentum of your body to make it go around. So
let's just start with around 10, it doesn't have to be exact, but we're going
to do circles to start off with. So we're going to ten one way and then 10 the
other way. So it really just let that arm hanging down. It's not moving, it's just
hanging there and then use your body to go around in circles like that. So
you're gonna probably move it actively just a little bit, but you're really
trying to just let it hang down, open up that joint, and feel really really good. So
you do about 10 one way. Now we're going to reverse it and see how my whole body is
moving? I'm making my arm move with my whole body, so it's almost like a dance
you just dancing around a little bit doing doing movement and then that's
about 10
the other side. The next one is going to be a front-to-back movement, so kind of
shift your leg position a little bit, but again your arm is just hanging down kind
of going along with the movement. So now just back and forth so 10 of these or
about ten. Just kind of rock in back and forth. If you are still having a hard
time you think you're moving your whole body a lot, take something like a band or
a tie if you have one, and then move because if the band's moving, your body's
moving If your arm is moving and not your body, than the band's not moving, so
that's a good way to know that you're moving your whole body. So about 10 of those,
and then the last one for the pendulum is going to be a side-to-side. So same
thing it's just hanging there, and you're moving it side to side. So just kind of
swinging back and forth. Letting that joint open up ajd let that arm kind of
swinging back and forth there.
Alright so that was probably about 10 maybe a little bit more. Set that soup
can down vegetable can. Now the next one is going to be stretching out the
shoulder going into flexion. You can use just a smooth top, countertop, flat chair.
I like using a Swiss ball, I know a lot of times people don't have a Swiss ball, but
then that kind of works your stability a little bit as well. But just to start off,
we're going to do a 30 second time for these. Make sure your thumb is up when
you're stretching this because that opens up the joint. And if you have it flat
down sometimes that impinges it a little bit if you're stretching a lot. So
make sure your thumb is up, and you're going to stretch your arm forward and
bring your whole body forward as you go. And then we're going to hold it for about 30
seconds. So just sliding forward and then taking your bottom and sitting kind of
down to your heels if you want a little bit more of a stretch. And you can see
here, you're getting a stretch. You might feel it in the armpit area you might
feel it pinching the top a little bit.
If it's very uncomfortable come back up a little bit,
slide it up a little bit, you want this to feel tension in there, but you want to
be comfortable, you don't want it to be painful while you're doing it. So make
sure you're just nice and relaxed, thumb up on top,
shake it out a little bit. Give it about 10 seconds if you're not alternating
back and forth. If they're both hurting, then you can do the other one and then
come back to give it a break, but otherwise just give it about a five to
ten second break just to let those muscles kind of reset themselves and then go
back into that stretch. Bottom back to the heels if you want a bigger stretch,
you can kind of bring your four head forward to get that big stretch, nice and
relaxed. Feel a good stretch sometimes even down past your armpit a little bit
into the shoulder blade area. That might be where you feel it and again just that
nice good comfortable stretch not a painful stretch. Shake it out again. Uh oh, my times going.
Then go again and stretch back.
Holding that stretch there. If you want to wiggle your fingers a little bit you can. Get
some extra stretch in there. Hold it. It's getting ready to beep, but we got about
10 more seconds because it was going when I didn't want it to go. Again if you
need to come up just a little bit, that's fine. Don't feel like you have to push
hard and be uncomfortable whole time.
Ok so now we're going to come up and do some band work. So if you've got a thera
band that is great. If you don't, you can use the canned vegetables or soup, but I
like the resistance bands because it's going to give you a little bit more of a
workout and work those muscles in different ways. So the most important
part here is to make sure you step firmly on the band so it doesn't come
back up and pop you. So what you're going to start off with is just coming up into
flexion, but make sure you keep your elbow nice and straight. Sometimes it's
going to want to bend a little bit, but you want to keep your arms straight as
you can.
Thumb up again, and again we're just going to start off with about 10 of
these. But it's going to come straight out in front of you to about a 90 degree,
and then slowly come back down. Don't let the band just pop back down. Make sure
you're controlling it because the going back down is just as important as the
coming up. So it should be a nice smooth motion the whole time.
You don't have to come higher than that 90 degree because then you might put
your putting extra pressure on that shoulder, so just coming you know pretty
parallel to the ground and then back down. Let's do two more of those. Oops that was a little
high, and one
more. Then nice and slow coming back down. Then you're just going to go out to the
side. So now the thumb is going to go out that way and still up towards the
ceiling. So the same thing,
try and keep that arm straight. Only come up to about the 90 degrees, and we'll
just do about 10 of them this way. I always keep my thumb actually up, you don't have
to you can put it down, but that feels like I'm actually pointing towards the
ceiling it helps give me a target
I guess. Good and one more here, then back down. So then the next one is going to be
into extension behind you. You don't have to go up to that 90, that would be pretty
hard to do because then you're going to start bending forward, but the key here
again is just to keep the elbow straight and the thumb pointing forward. So now
this time, it's going to be about a 45 degree angle. So just coming back
straight behind you, keeping that arm straight.
And if you need a little break in between these, that's fine just press the
pause button for about 10 seconds, and then go again but since you're using a
little bit different muscles if you feel like you can go all the way through
you can.
That's fine. Good one more of those. And then the last one is going to be
external rotation of the shoulder. And so with this one, you want to keep both elbows
nice and close to your side. If they come out, then you're not quite
doing it right. So if you have a problem keeping it close to your side squeezing
in, roll up some towels, put them in between your elbow on your side, and then
squeeze into those. And so you know if the towel drops that's because you're
coming out a little bit. So if you need that extra help you can. Again
thumbs up on top. With this one, try and keep your wrist in a fairly neutral
position because a lot of times people tend to want to do that, but you don't want to
end up messing up your wrist while you're trying to get your shoulder
better. So keeping them nice neutral position, thumbs up on top,
elbows close to your side, about a 90 degree angle at your elbows, and then
just coming out as far as you comfortably can. It doesn't have to be
all the way out to the side because then your elbows are going to start leaving
your side a little bit. And again we're just going to do about 10 of these. So
again nice and slow coming back in. Don't let that band just pop back in because
then you're not getting as much of a workout, you might actually enjoy
yourself a little bit, so make sure you're going nice and controlled, nice
smooth motion the whole time.
Let's do two more of those.
Alright, so there you have it some stretches and exercises for your shoulder in real time,
following along with me. If you have any questions leave them in the comments
section. If you'd like to check out some other videos go to askdoctorjo.com And remember be safe (don't pop yourself),
have fun, and I hope you feel better soon.