♪ Bob and Brad, the two most famous ♪
♪ physical therapists on the internet ♪
- Hi folks, am Bob Schrupp, physical therapists.
- Brad Heineck, physical therapists.
- Together we are the most famous physical therapist
on the internet.
- In their opinion, of course, Bob.
- All right, today, we're gonna talk about ten guidelines
for lifting weights with shoulder pain.
Lot of you wanna continue to work out.
That's fine, but we don't wanna irritate the shoulder.
If anything you're doing is bothering the shoulder,
you just can't do it.
I'm sorry, you just gonna have to hold off
until it heals or it starts to feel better.
- Otherwise it'll continue to irritate
and become a chronic situation and...
- Then you're in for it.
- Yeah, it's not fun that way.
- All right, so number 1, you wanna avoid machines
for doing the chest press or bench--
- Bench press.
The reason is, the machines are in a fixed position.
So they're gonna force your shoulder into positions
they may not wanna go.
- Right, you're not gonna change the movement.
Everything is locked in.
- There can't be a natural functional movement.
- And if part of that irritates the shoulder,
that's the way it is.
That means you should do another alternative.
- So a bar's better, because the bar is gonna...
You're gonna get some free moment
but not as well as dumbbells, separate dumbbells.
- Sure.
- Would even be better.
But the best one is probably exercise bands.
- Sure.
- Because with the bands,
you're gonna have complete free motion.
We just like bands, they just seem easier on the joints.
Don't it seem that way to you, Brad?
- Yeah, again the bottom line is you're gonna do
what does not irritate your shoulder.
We've got a friend right now, actually, Chris.
Bench press bothers his shoulders.
So what does he do?
He keeps bench pressing
and his problems are going on for about a year now.
- Sure.
- And it's---
- And I understand, especially you're younger that you feel
like you can't get enough workout with bands.
- Right.
- And there's some point to that.
If you're a heavy lifter, it's gonna be difficult, but--
- Right.
- In that case, maybe go to the dumbbells.
- But it is good for shoulder rehab
'cause you're getting good motion,
you can vary it.
If it hurts, like I have one exercise from swimming
and what I do is I work with the band in that motion
with less resistance.
And now I went from one band to two bands
and I can still do the motion.
I'm building myself up for the real activity,
same thing with injured shoulder to get to the weight.
So you can use the band as that buffer
that in between exercise until it gets strong enough.
And if it is a bench press, you can work this
and you can easily change resistance by stepping out.
You don't have to go out
and put some more plates on or move it around.
- And you may not want to go back as far.
- Right.
- You gotta stay, don't go extend this far.
Yeah, just stop right there.
- Do have a 50% range of motion or 75%
oftentimes that end range or where you come way back
if you're benching and they get that the bar
comes to your chest, as far as you go,
that can be where the irritation.
- We're actually gonna show that Brad.
So, just to tell you real quickly,
I hurt my elbows one time.
Both of them, with doing curls
and I had to stop using the bar and I went to the bands.
- Were you on a, like a preacher bench?
- No, I wasn't.
- Okay.
- It's funny, I was using a free bar,
but they really started hurting
and it took me several months
before I could go back to the bar again.
- Yeah, sure.
- To the bar.(Brad laughs)
So anyway, number 2,
that's the one we were just talking about.
We're gonna come over here now.
I'm gonna move the lights so we can see us.
And I'm gonna lie down on the bench.
I even said that, right Brad?
- Yes, we've gotta keep the English majors happy.
- So we don't have a bench for doing bench press here
but I'm gonna go to the end.
So this is the thing that Brad was talking about,
where you bring it way down.
So look how my shoulder is extended .
- Yeah, right here.
So when you're in the throes of the shoulder pain,
you're gonna wanna just do shallow ones.
- Lighter weight--
- Lighter weight.
- Pain free range of motion.
- Yeah, next thing is you don't wanna have
the elbows way out like this.
This actually starts making your shoulder
more like EVP impinged.
- Correct.
- Or you actually damaging the tendons
and it's actually a test we do.
The Hawkins Kennedy test where we're in this position.
- Like that or the crossover,
it's one of those deals.
- What you wanna do, instead of having a weight like this
is having a little bit of diagonal, like that.
- So yeah, we're trying to get that shoulder
in the neutral position, which is when your elbow
is closer to your ribs versus out here.
- I can understand, you're not gonna be like this.
- Right.
- But you're gonna be out further.
- Yeah, modify it. Try to get to that position.
- So, again you're gonna let your body decide here.
You're going to let you know before or during or after,
if it's hurting you.
That's when you gotta watch what that particular problem.
Number 4, avoid shoulder presses.
This is especially true behind the neck.
- Yes.
- So watch what my shoulder is doing.
Look how much I'm extending my shoulder.
That's way back
and I'm doing this.
And a lot of times people, especially
if they're trying to keep a good posture
they're even extending the arm even more.
- Right.
And, and I'm not to be honest Brad,
I'm not even a big fan of doing them this way
because the reason is
if you have really, really good form, I'm okay.
If your shoulder isn't bothering you, I'm okay.
But if you're having shoulder pain,
I wouldn't even do forward presses here.
- Well, the increased odds
for impingement are so much greater.
And the one behind the neck, people get head for a posture
and you can irritate your neck
and cause a whole another set of problem.
Yeah, so I would definitely avoid doing both of--
- And there is people that really like these exercises.
- I know.
and they're saying, oh, you are guys are fooling.
Well we're therapists that treated
a lot of impingement people.
- We've had lot of people that came in
and said, "Well I didn't listen to you
and then that's why I'm seeing you right now."
Do you wanna show the same is true with pushups, Brad.
That you wanna not have abduction.
You wanna have your arms really, elbows
as pointed much to the side as possible.
- Can we go down Jesse?
Yeah, so if you have a...
And some people aren't even aware of their biomechanics
with push-ups, but if you're going out to the side.
- Well, look at how his arms are way out to the side.
- And I can feel some stress on my shoulders
and I really don't have any shoulder problems.
What if I point my fingers more straight ahead,
get over my shoulders more.
- Look how tight his elbows are to his sides.
That's perfect form, Brad.
- And again, let's say you're doing these
and you have a painful shoulder
and you can do 'em pain-free 50% of the way,
but you go farther, it starts to hurt.
- Right.
Then you just do that 50% of pain-free range
until it improves and lower as tolerated.
- Do what it allows your body to do,
Do what your body allows it to do, because it's just
you're not doing anybody any favors by pushing it.
- Pain receptors are there for a reason,
so listen to 'em.
- Shoulder raises, when you do shoulder raises,
let's say you're doing just a straight forward like this.
I want you to only go to 90 degrees
when you start going above like this
there's the chance of impingement again,
especially again, when you're
in the throes of shoulder pain.
If you can do this, pain-free, go ahead and do that.
If you can only go up to 45 degrees
- Right. - Just go up to 45 degrees.
Ideally even a better way to do it,
is to actually, what we call, do it in scaption.
That means you're in kind of in line with the socket
and the shoulder blade itself.
- Right.
- So you're going out, I don't know what,
20, 30 degrees Brad, would you say?
- Yeah, you know if you're out to the side,
here's the abduction, here's the sagittal pane.
We're going--
- About halfway and between--
- Halfway, a little bit more to the abduction
- And then you're bringing up that way.
It's lining up with the socket better.
The glenoid fossa, as we would say,
- Yeah.
- Mufasa.(Brad laughs)
- All right, number 8, shoulder raises, the same thing.
These are all talking about the same thing.
Use less weight with these.
These are small muscles,
it doesn't take a lot to build them.
It doesn't take a lot to make them healthy.
So you're not gonna do a lot of weight,
even if you're a strong guy.
Right, so he's talking about the rotator cuff muscles
versus the deltoid, the polar muscles of the shoulder.
The smaller muscles, you have the rotator cuff muscles,
keep the joint where it's supposed to be.
- To stabilize.
- Right, and we gotta really pay attention to that.
- On number 9, you really wanna make sure
you're strengthening your postural muscles
because the postural muscles help keep the shoulder...
Are the base of the shoulder.
- Right.
- That's what I'm trying to think of here Brad.
- Foundation.
- The foundation, right.
So Brad, do you mind grabbing the pillow there?
I'm just gonna show real quickly
a series that you can do.
- Oh, for that.
- Yeah, so this scapular--
- Yeah, for the scapular,
to strengthen the muscles around...
just doing these, the Y's,
and you can have a pillow for your head.
But you can do the T's.
- So he's out like this, if you're looking
from the top down and you can do the reverse Y's
and you can do these with weight, obviously.
Even if you're a strong person, again,
you won't be able to tolerate much weight on those.
- Right.
- You probably start with a pound and if you're really
in good shape, maybe five pounds eventually.
So the pillows under the chest, just to elevate it,
it makes the exercise easier.
Another thing is where you put your thumbs up or forward.
Like down here, I like to put the palms away.
- Right.
- But you can change that and see which way it's easiest
and tolerated the best.
Listen to your body.
- So again, if you get that scapula
and shoulder blade in place,
a lot of times your shoulder problems go away.
- Sure
- A lot of shoulder problems are caused
by the shoulder blades being forward.
- Number 10, these are exercises,
you're gonna outright...(Brad laughs)
Outright avoid.
- Yeah.
- So number 1 is chest flies where you...
I'll lay down, I'll lay down in the show, Brad.
So basically let me grab this.
It's what we kind of alluded to before,
where you're gonna do chest flies
'cause when you do those you bring weight down like this
going way into extension.
So you could do 'em shallow like this
but don't go way down like this.
- Right, it depends on how you do your flies.
Some people have a little straighter elbows,
so it's more like this.
- Oh yeah, right, right, right.
It's not like this, you're right.
Chest flies are more like this.
- Right and that actually stretches,
especially when you get back here.
It's nice to put a stretch on a healthy shoulder
but if you've got an injured shoulder,
you go back and that's where you could have just bang,
just like that.
Tear some tissues and set yourself way back.
- Now we already talked about behind the neck press ups
but also behind the neck pulldowns.
- Oh, yeah, lat pulls.
- Yeah, lat pulldowns.
So you have the bar.
So basically you could, if that was the bar.
- Yeah, we know they're not straight but--
- You're pulling down like this
and you're strengthening the latissimus dorsi.
But again, you can do 'em this way
but don't do 'em behind the head.
- Yeah.
- The last one is bench dips.
- Right.
- I don't know why anybody wants to do these anyway,
there's a lot better ways to strengthen the triceps
but you wanna show 'em Brad?
- Yeah, and some of these,
if they're your favorite exercises
you're gonna be like, I can't stop that.
Well, you know--
- There's so many alternatives to this.
- So I'm kind of in the way,
but this really puts the shoulder at end-range
with a fair amount of force on it.
- Yeah, when you do dips the right way with a bar,
you can kind of lean forward and you can take
the stress off.
- Right, when you got the actual dip bar, yeah.
So, all right, that's the 10 guidelines
for lifting weights with shoulder pain.
If you wanna print out of this list,
go to bobandbrad.com, go to the program section.
And under the program section, this whole video is a part
of a series of videos on shoulder pain.
- Sure.
- I don't know, we've got 30 some videos I believe.
- On the shoulder?
- I believe and so if you go to that shoulder pain section
you'll see the videos, you can pick out which ones
you might wanna watch.
- Right.
- Look for this one,
Ten guidelines for lifting weights for shoulder pain
and underneath it there'll be a printout.
You can print out, it'll have everything we said here today.
- Right, it's a good deal.
We don't even ask for an email.
- It's free, there's no cost
and we don't even ask for your firstborn child,
so... (Brad laughs)
Thanks for watching.