Workouts – Shoulder Injury Prevention

If you’ve been lifing weights for any period of time, you’re likely to have “tweaked” your shoulder at some point. My most serious shoulder injury came during a military deployment when I was working out twice daily, sometimes with heavy weight. I experienced overuse injuries with both of my shoulders and was forced to avoid pressing movements for over two months. As you can imagine, this limited my workout options quite a bit.

In researching why this injury had happened, I learned a very important lesson through my reading and speaking with medical experts: The shoulder is not a weight-bearing joint. It’s a mobility joint. We often treat is as a weight-bearing joint by performing heavyweight overhead presses and heavy dumbbell lateral raises. Each of these can cause serious injury.

The workout below is my shoulder injury prevention series. It was derived from Terry Laughlin’s shoulder and rotator cuff exercises in his book, Total Immersion.

Workout Name:  Shoulder Injury Prevention. This series of exercises strengthens the shoulder girdle and rotator cuff.

Body Part:  Shoulders

Instruction:   Perform a thorough warmup prior to beginning this series. Arm circles, are sufficient. I’ve found that performing this workout after swimming increases the range of motion and makes the series more effective.

Perform each of the following exercises (except the wall slides) with cables or resistance bands. Both provide constant resistance throughout the range of motion and allow you to perform the entire workout while standing (vs. performing external rotations while lying on your side). Use very light weight. Each exercise should be performed for one set of 15 repetitions before moving to the next exercise. You should feel slight muscle burn beginning around rep. number 9 or 10.

Workout: (I perform this entire series on the Freemotion Dual Cable Cross)

• Wall slides – Standing with heels, buttocks, and shoulder blades against a wall, lift your arms, place the back of your hands against the wall as if you were signaling a field goal. Slowly slide the hands up and down keeping the elbows, wrists, and back of your hands against the wall at all times. Come down to the point where the arms make a “W” and overhead as high as your range of motion will allow.
• Front shoulder raises (palms up) – Place cable handles at the lowest position. Standing with your back to the cables and palms facing front while gripping handles, alternate raising each arm to the front to shoulder height.
• Front shoulder raises (palms down) – Place cable handles at the lowest position. Facing away from the cables and palms facing to the rear, alternate raising each arm to the front to shoulder height.
• Lateral raises (30 degrees) – Place cable handles at the lowest position. Facing away from the cables and hands at your side (palms facing the body), simultaneously raise the cables laterally to a finishing position of palms facing the ground and in line with the front of your toes. Lateral raises that are performed straight out to the side place the shoulder in an awkward position and can cause impingement.
• Bent lateral raises (rear deltoids) – Place cable handles at the lowest position. Facing the cable apparatus, bend at the waist with an arch in your back (not rounded), and a slight bend at the knees. Grab each cable with the opposite hand and simultaneously pull each across the chest as if you were “spreading your wings.” Imagine squeezing a grapefruit between your shoulder blades at the end of the movement.
• Standing lawn mower – Place cable handle at elbow height. Stand with cable machine at your side. Grab cable with opposite hand and pull across abdominals keeping forearm in line with cable.  Repeat repetitions with the opposite arm.
• Internal rotations – Place cable handle at elbow height. Stand with cable machine at your side. Grab cable with hand closest to the machine. Keeping elbow at your side, rotate forearm toward abdomen. Repeat with repetitions on the opposite side.
• External rotations –  Place cable handle at elbow height. Stand with cable machine at your side. Grab cable with opposite hand. Keeping elbow at your side, rotate forearm externally away from the body. Repeat with repetitions on the opposite side.

The shoulder is involved in most upper body exercises, certainly those that involve the arms. It is important to take care of this vital joint.