Posted October 15, 2013 Individualizing Your Shoulder Program for Dummies

Shoulder anatomy is pretty amazingly complex for such a relatively open area of the body. The basic joint is the glenohumeral, the ball and socket joint that produces most of the movemment. The secondary joints include the scapulothoracic, acromioclavicular and sternoclavicular, which allow the arm to move through a range of motion in the saggital and frontal planes to a much greater degree than by just using the glenohumeral joint.

Raising your arm overhead involves movement from all four joints to get the scapula to rotate on the thoracic spine and get the arm to elevate away from the body. Much of the movement potential of the shoulder is going to be dependent on the thoracic spine position and also on the neck position. Trying to elevate the arms when in a flexed position becomes more difficult as the shoulders tend to protract and elevate compared to a neutral spine, which means the shoulders are almost out of range of motion available to them in the movement before they’ve even begun to move.

[youtuber youtube=’http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WlMMJcE8qY’]

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Along the same lines, the posture of the individual can make or break the chances of them having some sort of shoulder injury or reduction in strength for their prime movements. By flexing the spine, the shoulder goes into the position mentioned earlier where the shoulder blade is protracted and rotate up compared to neutral. This brings the humerus into closer connection with the acromion process and increases the chances of developing some form of impingement or rotator cuff wear and tear.

Additional to this, the posture can have an affect on the brachial plexus, the bundle of nerves and blood vessels that comes out of the neck and goes down the arm. This bundle runs off the cervical spine, over the first rib, and under the clavicle. Here’s a very detailed video on the prevalent anatomy, if you’re wanting to get your anatomical geek muscles stroked.

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Top these concepts off with the fact that there’s 3 main types of acromion processes, which alters the available range of motion you can take your shoulder through without running into impingement, and you have a very simple structure with a very complex relationship to the soft tissue around it and optimal function.

That being said, it’s a simple set up with a complex structural interplay that can let you hoist a metric shit-ton of weight with some good technical setups and training adaptation. That, and a suit that’s stiffer than Bruce Jenners face.

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Pretty sure the suit wouldn’t have budged for anything less than 4 plates a side, but still, it’s a thousand plus pound bench!!!

As awesome as that is, it’s made even more amazing due to the fact that the bony structure of his shoulders is probably only minimally different compared to the average 30 year old walking into the gym. He may have some additional sclerification (thickening of the bones), and maybe a slightly thicker diameter matched for the same body size. Essentially, he uses the same structure, but takes advantage of mechanical positioning and soft tissue interplay to make grown men weep when comparing their own feeble benches to him.

I can guarantee you his pushup positioning doesn’t look like this.

The trick to assessing shoulders is twofold:

1. Determining mobility: if they’re limited, is it due to a bony block, inflamed tissue, positional alignment, or general wear and tear that comes with age?

2. Stability: if it’s limited, is it due to a lack of strength through the area, a compensation pattern that drives the shoulder with different muscles (common patterns include dominating with the upper traps and serratus anterior), or congenital laxity through the system? This would mean the body would have a lot of additional movement possible, and most people hang at the end of their fascial tension instead of their ligamental tension.

So with so much variation in shoulders, how the heck do you get down to doing a program that’s right for you? Well, if you don’t have a history of shoulder injuries, you can pretty well do a bunch of stuff without any kind of issue at all, you just have to be mindful of positioning and alignment. If you have a history of injuries, they tend to follow some predictable patterns.

One of the brightest guys in the world when it comes to shoulders is Eric Cressey. The guy can talk scapular mechanics with the best in the world. I ad a chance to shoot the breeze with him during his workout at Cressey Performance a few months ago when I was there, and just the stuff off the top of his head when he has blood pushed into his legs instead of his grey matter is more than most people have after finishing grad school.

He works with a lot of baseball players, from the high school ranks all the way up to the pro guys. He has someone from pretty much every MLB team training at his facility, as well as hundreds of hopefuls, each trying to get strong as a bull while balancing the delicate demands of their extremely mobile shoulders (compared to the general population), and has helped change how a lot of the strength and conditioning industry views shoulder training, as well as the applicable use of certain techniques with hypermobile athletes.

He’s released a free video series talking about shoulder health and assessments today, and I really think you should check it out. It’s free after all, and if it makes a difference in how you look at shoulders, programming and assessments, it’s definitely worth the cost (which is zero). Consider his video the second half of this post which answers all the questions I brought up about structure and developing a program that anyone can do but that’s still individualized to what they need most.

CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE VIDEO