What's up, guys?
Jeff Cavaliere, ATHLEANX.com.
Today we're talking about shoulder pain, and how to get rid of that nagging pain discomfort
you get inside your shoulder every time you lift your arm overhead.
It doesn't necessarily have to be during shoulder exercises, or pressing exercises.
Even getting in position to do some tricep exercises, or even a squat can become challenging
if you have that shoulder pain.
I'm going to show you how to get rid of it in four steps.
I'll actually use Jesse here as our model.
We're targeting four areas here.
First of all, we know he has this terrible childhood tattoo over here.
Now he's going to learn how to count because he's got new tattoos, with courtesy of the
muscle marker.
One here, we're going to target the rounded shoulder.
The second thing we're going to do is, we're going to work on this area up here; the rotator
cuff.
It's going to play a big, important point on your shoulder pain.
Number three: we always have to hit the lat here, too.
It plays a critical role, as you'll see.
Then finally, right there.
How's that, Jesse?
Right there.
Number four.
Thoracic extension.
You want to make sure we're taking care of that as well.
So one by one we're going to attack each of these areas.
So right away I pointed out number one here, are these rounded shoulders.
Guys, I actually di an entire video dedicated to 'how to fix rounded shoulders.
Jesse was in that one too, actually, because when he first started out – show them what
you looked like, Jesse.
It was more like that.
A lot of you will look like that, especially if you spend any time sitting at a desk at
all.
It happens.
Our bodies start to adapt in this way, but you need to fix that.
I'm going to link that video in the description below.
I'm also going to link it as the main video at the end of this video because I want to
give it its full justice.
It's a whole step by step approach to making sure we can address this one problem.
But why does it matter right away?
Because in order to have full mobility of the shoulder – because the shoulders are
very mobile joints – you'd better allow it to explore all of its range of motion because
of the ball and socket, by not doing things to screw that up, and putting blockades in
the way.
That's exactly what you do when you round your shoulders.
The anatomy of the shoulder joint itself actually prevents elevation of the shoulder beyond
a certain point, because the bones actually start to rub up against each other, based
on the structure of one inside the other.
You need to allow it to be free, and open.
Which actually leads us into our second area; the rotator cuff.
You need to have the ability to externally rotate, but try it yourself.
Get here, round your shoulders, and then try to lift your arm as high as you can.
You're going to hit a natural block.
But that doesn't have to be the case if you address it like I show you in that video.
Leading on from there, we know if we want to get out of that rounded shoulder posture
the rotator cuff is going to be critical in helping to do that.
It's not a single muscle, guys.
The rotator cuff consists of four muscles that work to help externally rotate the shoulder
– three of them actually do – and we want to get that external rotation.
Now, we don’t want to just do that through strengthening.
What we also want to do is know that we have mobility into external rotation because we
lose that.
so what we do is, we take a band right here, we hook it around our arm just like this,
we put our arm up, back behind our head here, and then we step out.
So the band is pulling me back, and I've got my arm driving upward here, into external
rotation here at the shoulder, and I can feel that nice stretch, and mobilization back into
there.
So with Jesse the same thing can be done.
He goes and sticks his arm through the band, he's anchored up high, he pushes up back,
behind his head, and he steps out, and through, getting this elevation with external rotation.
We know in order to get the two of them to work together, that's the only way to get
that arm up, overhead.
Remember, we talked about the rounded shoulder.
I get blocked here.
If I actually externally rotate my arm, and raise again, it actually goes right up without
any issues.
If you want pain free pressing you're going to have to make sure that you maintain, and
maximize all the external rotation that you have in your shoulder in order to do that.
All right, number three: you have to make sure you're attacking the lats.
Why?
Why are the lats so important?
Why are they causing a lot of overhead shoulder pain?
Because they're restricting your mobility overhead if you're not addressing them.
I'm talking about, not just a stretch, but the tissue quality itself, by working on rolling
out the lat.
Here's how, and here's why.
If you look at the lat itself, it comes from the back of the arm here, and it goes all
the way down, into the back, attaching to the vertebrae in the mid back, into the low
back, and even attaching to the pelvis itself, through fascia.
So we actually have this connection between your pelvis and your upper arm.
If this is tight, how is this getting raised up, in front of you?
It's not.
So we have to make sure that we address it.
So what we do is, we get into a setup with a band here, and with a foam roller.
We wrap the band around the arm, and then we position yourself on top of the foam roller
like this.
Now what's cool is, now as I roll back I'm actually getting some distraction, and elevation
here from the band.
It's pulling my arm up, into a greater stretch here of the lat.
We don’t want to just get this side of the lat here, from the side.
More importantly what you want to do is, you want to roll flat – and you'll feel it right
away – on top of it, and roll that way.
Jesse will actually demonstrate the agony of this while he does it.
So he wraps it right around his arm here, he turns on his side so he's getting the lat
from the side there, and rolling back, and forth.
Oh, he's groaning.
I'll get the microphone right here.
JESSE: God.
JEFF: Now, even better, roll flat on top that way.
Now go.
JESSE: Oh!
JEFF: So nobody does this.
Nobody ever rolls, actually, the mid portion of the muscle.
No one ever really works on that.
When we stretch we work on the two endpoints.
The beginning, and the end of the muscle.
But we're not really working on the middle.
That's where we harbor all the tightenesses that are preventing the range of motion that
you need to actually get that arm up, overhead.
Now, step four to fixing this thing altogether – and it has to be step four because we
need to have that lat flexibility in place first, before we try this.
It's to attack the thoracic spine.
Again, an area that we do not pay enough attention to, especially when it comes to trying to
raise our shoulder over our head, without pain.
We think "Oh, it's all our shoulder pain."
No.
The shoulder is always going to be a slave to the joints below it, and that is our thoracic
spine.
So what we do is, we put ourselves in a position here on anything – it could be a bench – that
we have to be able to get our elbows up on top, and then most importantly – don’t
do it yet, Jesse – the main thing is going to be dropping through the thoracic spine.
Letting everything sink through.
So come back up to the top again.
From here, drop the hips down just like that, and that gives us the thoracic extension that
we need.
But now we can make it better.
We can reinforce the lat stretch that we had going on before by wrapping a band around
our hands, just like this, positioning the elbows on top of the bench, and then trying
to spread the band apart, which is going to activate external rotation of the shoulder,
reinforcing everything that we've been working on.
Then from here, Jesse is going to try to dive down to allow the arms to travel up higher,
or at least closer to his body, which increases the thoracic extension here it demands, and
gets a better stretch on everything.
Thoracic extension at the same time that we had the lat stretch going on.
The activation of the external rotators happens because of the band.
So he's just trying to pull it back in here, he holds, 30 seconds, now come up, relax.
Again, the first move, drop down, you can see the roundedness here through the thoracic
spine.
Now, there you go.
Drop it in through there.
Chest out.
Chest pushes out as far as you can.
That opens up the thoracic spine.
Then he reinforces it by dipping down, increasing the stretch on the lat, and also activating
the external rotators.
You do all four of these things and I promise you, you're going to start noticing far less
pain whenever you go to lift your shoulders up, overhead.
There you have it, guys.
There's a four step approach to eliminating that pain that you get – that nagging shoulder
pain – every time you try to lift your arm up, overhead.
It doesn't have to be there.
Especially if you take a numeric approach to it.
Literally, one, two, three, four.
I think I'm going to make Jesse keep those tattoos because it really does complement
this Mickey Mouse tattoo over here well.
If you're looking for a program that puts the science back in strength, that realizes
that all this stuff matters, even when you're thinking about lifting overhead; it's the
stuff that happens in the back.
It's the stuff that happens around the side.
It's all the things that happen, and all the joints around that which are ultimately going
to influence how you perform.
It all matters.
We put all the science into all of our programs over at ATHLEANX.com.
If you've found the video helpful, leave your comments and thumbs up below.
Let me know what else you want me to cover, and I'll do my best to do that for you guys
in the days, and weeks ahead.
All right, guys.
See you soon.