UPPER BODY TRAINING
My shoulder is still very sore from the dislocation last week, but it feels okay to do certain movements. I start out every upper body workout with shouler iso movements and I work on activating the posterior delts and upper back. I have been cutting out the dynamic days due to the stress it causes on the tendons of the joints and replacing those days with repetition days to make sure I hit the hypertrophy aspect. The shoulder feels okay to do pressing, but I wouldn’t trust it while performing a max lift quite yet, so I have been performing my max effort upper body movement with pullups and a weight belt. I also believe that I will not lose any strength in my max pressing movements when I get back to them. If you are going to push heavy, you have to pull heavy!
2 SHOULDERS THAT CLICK
One of my friends has been complaining recently of both shoulders getting anterior pain in the same exact spot. The shoulders can be tricky to deal with since they have the most degrees of freedom out of any of the joints in the human body. My friend thinks something might be torn or require surgery, but I think not. The chances of something being torn in the same spot on both shoulders is highly unlikely. So what is it? I would almost guarantee that the muscles surrounding the scapula are not strong and the ratio of pressing to pulling is off. Most guys have a history of performing way more pressing movements than pulling and hardly any worry about the upper back/rear delt/rotator cuff area. And what you are left with is anterior shoulder pain. Remember, unless there is an acute injury, the pain is just a symptom arising from some other area or from another muscle not performing its job. For someone like my friend, I would have them perform pushups with med balls and stability balls as his main form of pushing. I would then be sure to include things like scarecrows, face pulls, band pull aparts and pushup plus to get the scapular muscles activated. I would also make sure to include pullups and heavy pulling. The last thing that must be included is work for mobility of the thoracic spine (upper to mid spine) such as t-spine sit ups and t-rotations. If you have questions on any of the above, email me or check out my video page, I will be posting video in the upcoming days.
INJURED BUT STILL GOING-THE CNS
I dislocated my shoulder last night in my basketball game and although it popped right back into place, it is extremely sore today. This has never happened to me before, but when you get injured, you have two choices, to use it as an excuse for a break or work through it smartly. I choose the latter. I always tell my athletes that even if they have an injured limb, we are still going to train the healthy side. The way the central nervous works is crazy! If I continue to work the right side (non-injured), then some of the those strength gains will transfer over to the injured side, meaning there won’t be much muscle loss and much if any of a strength decline. I will still train the lower body just as hard, but the pushing and pulling movements will be done with a dumbell on the good side only. I will rehab my shoulder by strengthening the rotator cuff and surrounding musculature. I have already begun watching Eric Cressey’s (one of the top shoulder experts in the world) DVD this morning. I will be sure to keep you posted.
