You don't need shoulder rehab if you know this
I’ve talked about the anatomy of the shoulder before
But, that’s really only half (probably less than) the story. By knowing the rest of the story about how the shoulder actually functions, you’ll see why
Shoulder “rehab” is often not even necessary.
There’s a ton of nuance here but I boil shoulder function down to
are you pushing or pulling
what direction are you pushing or pulling
Let’s take a look here:
Here’s a standard vertical press.
And here’s a pull up
If you take the bar away from each you can see that
The START position of the press is the FINISH position of the pull up.
And vice versa.
You can visualize pushing and pulling horizontally (bench press vs row) and see it’s also similar.
Most shoulder pain problems are because they violate these patterns and don’t have the strength + mobility to get to that position, so
not strong enough to do a pull up
not enough shoulder ROM to press fully overhead
bad general technique
So Step 1 to restoring shoulder FUNCTION is to make sure you can achieve the START and FINISH position of each.
If you can’t, no “rehab” program will work and any actual strength program will make you worse.
We have a few ways to solve this
targeted mobility work addressing common compensation patterns
targeted drills to teach positions
correct exercise selection and/or instruction so you do them right
Expect to see more paid posts as we share these solutions to solve your shoulder issues.
If you need help now reach out
Most generic rehab only looks at overhead ROM, tries to fix it, but never figures out WHY it’s limited.
Obviously I don’t limit my clients to ONLY these movements, but
Building a solid base of strength + mobility allows the freedom to tolerate these other variations.
But you don’t really need these other variations.