I want to list the five worst shoulder exercises that cause your shoulder pain and show you how to do them correctly.
As an injury specialist, I come across all kinds of injuries, and one of the top injuries I come across is shoulder injuries and shoulder pain.
Now I want to show you the five worst exercises for your shoulder and then give you a couple of solutions that you can do for those worst exercises.
So I want to go through exercise # 1.
And exercise # 1 is a Single-Arm Row, a prevalent exercise. Often, the common thinking for any shoulder injury, shoulder pain, or shoulder prevention program is to do some rowing exercise or one-arm row.
Many people end up doing it wrong, and it worsens their shoulders. It ends up reshaping their shoulder the wrong way. And it leads to their shoulder being in a shape that increases the risk of a shoulder injury and pain.
Now hopefully, you saw the mistake that I am making. Let me go through that One Arm Row movement. I can reach down, come up and then go through that rowing movement.
And how if I kept on doing it, it would make my shoulder worse, reshape my shoulder the wrong way, and guaranteed to create more shoulder pain.
I can make a little tweak to my technique to prevent shoulder pain, avoid my shoulders from being injured, and allow me to continue working out pain-free by preventing anterior humeral glide or migration, which results in my shoulder being pulled forward unnecessarily.
Two Main Structures of Shoulder
The shoulder has two main structures. There are active structures; when your muscles are turned on, they provide great stability to your shoulder. When they are turned off, we rely on stability from the non-contract out structures like the ligaments, tendons, labrum, and bone.
Now, if I have those muscles on and I am pulling the arm, what I am doing is I am changing the centration of that shoulder joint. I am also stretching those non-contract structures, which can increase the risk of a shoulder injury and shoulder pain.
I will show you what you can do to turn this lousy exercise into a good exercise. Before you grab the weight, I want to ensure that your scapular muscles are active and turned on. Reach down and activate those scapular muscles, then pull up and bring the weight towards me.
As you bring the weights towards yourself, build tension in the lats and have a stable platform with your shoulder blade or scapula. Now go through that rowing movement, maintaining that active scapula and the pressure within the lat.
Make sure when you put the weight down and pick it up that you are not getting that pulling movement (almost like replicating pulling the arm out of your socket, which you don’t want to do).
So there you go, this is exercise #1—one of the five worst shoulder exercises you can do. I will be back with the second-worst one you can do.
Take care and goodbye,
Rick Kaselj, MS
