Hi! This is Keith Scott from Back to Form Fitness, and today I am going to talk about shoulder health. I am going to give you some tips today that'll help combat a lot of the shoulder problems that I see in a lot of people out there. Most of us tend to have rounded shoulders, and what rounded shoulders are, they are direct result of sitting in front of a computer too long, driving in your car, doing the wrong things in the weight room, and just generally over developing the front of your upper body, not enough of the back and the shoulders or the back of the upper body.
Now what we tend to have is this round and it causes all kinds of problems and issues. It can cause a lot of pain, impingement, tendonosis, and just a lot of problems all the way around. Today, I am going to give you some tips and show you some exercise that help correct that problem and help eliminate a lot of the pain that people have with their shoulders.
I am going to go through a couple of different exercises that you can do in the gym or even at home, and overtime, hopefully you will help your shoulders to get healthy and when I show these tips, I just want you to keep in mind that it's not going to happen overnight, it's going to take a little bit of time but once you get these things down, your shoulders will start to feel good again, and you will be able to do more during the day, and hopefully increase your fitness regimens, so you can get stronger and not have these problems again. So sit back, relax, stay tuned, and I am going to come right back, and show you some things you can do to help your shoulders.
The first thing you want to do if you have shoulder problems is we want to try to do more pulling motions. A couple of things that you can do just off the bed, you can do a lot more cable type of motions if you have a cable pulling machine in your gym or even in your house; fingers like this with your elbows locked down against your body, and below 90 degrees, your elbow is going to stay below 90, especially if you have shoulder problems, and use with a row. You can do this with a cable pulley, you can do it with a resistant stand, anything like that, in which you can row and as you row, you are going to pinch your back together, your upper back, and then release slowly. This will help train the muscles in the back, activate them, and counter the type of rounding that I talked about the front of your shoulders.
Second exercise, you can do is just with the dumbbell. It doesn't have to be a very heavy dumbbell, you can use any kind of dumbbell, and again another rowing motion. You can do what I called 2 point rows, which you are just standing with a little -- your back a little bit bent, and you are going to row straight up and straight down. And each time you row, you want to pinch your upper back together, come back down, pinch your upper back together, come back down. You want to do both sides and make sure you are doing them evenly and again pinching your upper back again. What this is going is activate those upper back muscles, counter the round that we have in the front. Because your elbows are in the down, it's going to keep your shoulders safe, and you shouldn't have any pain with that.
The third exercise I am going to give you is kind of a new one. Most people haven't seen before, some people called this stick ups because the nature of the motion but basically what we are going to do is we are going to stand against the wall and bring your arms all the way up. What you want to do is keep your arms flat to the wall in a stick up position and what you are going to do is as your arms are up and your upper back are against the wall, you are going to slowly drive your elbows down to your side and then slowly bring them back up, drive down, slowly bring back up, and as you do this, you are going to pinch your upper back together, each time you drive your arms down.
This looks like a very easy exercise but after about 8, 10, or 12 repetitions of this, you are going to feel an intense pressure between your shoulder blades. That's a good thing. What you are doing there is activating those muscles in your traps, in around and you are causing your shoulders, a lot of those muscles in your upper back to activate and again this is a great exercise to get your shoulders healthy. It will combat the rounding that we have in the front and help activate those muscles in the back.
So you need to do about 8, 10, 12 of these two couple of sets. You can do these at home against the wall, the key is keeping your back flat and your arms flat against the wall. If you combine the rowing with the band or the cable, the dumbbell rowing and these, just three simple exercises, you are going to start to see a big change in your shoulders. Your posture is going to improve, it's going to go from here to here, which everybody wants to have, and better yet, you are going eliminate that pain and start to feel better. Stay tuned for another episode, we are going to go over some other tips to help save your shoulders and eliminate that pain that a lot of us have.
Transcription by:
Scribe4you Transcription Services