How Corrective Exercise Can Solve Your Shoulder Pain

It’s amazing how just one body part malfunctioning can negatively impact the quality of our lives. If you’ve had a bum shoulder before, you know exactly what I’m talking about.

The good news is that we can create solutions that result in long term shoulder health. One of the BEST ways to do this is through exercise. Today’s post will cover how we can make shoulders function better using exercise.

Focusing On Shoulder Pain At The Source

Before we get into how to use exercise to make shoulders work better, we need to first understand the mistake that most make when thinking about shoulder pain. And that mistake is focusing on where the shoulder hurts.

Many people with a shoulder injury like to focus directly on the area that hurts. They want to know exactly why it hurts “right there.”

The problem with focusing on only the place a shoulder hurts is that the pain is just a symptom of the problem. Beyond the pain/discomfort is a failing movement system, and in order to get great results for the shoulders, we need to fix those faulty movement systems.

So, how can we use exercise to make our shoulders work better? Here are 5 ways exercise can improve shoulder health.

#1 - Better Core Stability

When I say “core stability,” what I mean is the ability of all 35 muscles that surround the spine to stabilize the spine against unwanted movement, while allowing for wanted movement.

Why is core stability so important for your shoulders? The best way I can explain this is with an analogy. Imagine you are a pirate in a canoe with a canon. There’s an enemy ship, and you want to fire your cannon into them. So you fire your cannon but…the cannon goes nowhere, and the ensuing explosion sinks your canoe.

Why did the cannon ball fail to launch? It’s because your tiny canoe wasn’t a stable enough surface for your cannon to launch from. Your cannon needs to push back against something in order for the cannon ball to go somewhere. – like land, or a giant and massively heavy ship.

In this analogy, your shoulder is the cannon, and your spine is the unstable surface your cannon had to push back against. If your core isn’t stable, your shoulders will never be able to express full power or mobility, and will experience injury/overuse over time. Core stability is essential for shoulder health, and the more core stability you have, the better your shoulders will function. In physical therapy circles we call this concept “proximal stability for distal mobility and power.”

#2 - Better "Scapular Sling" Movement

There are two flat bones that sit on top of your ribcage in the back. These bones are called scapula or commonly “shoulder blades.” Attached onto the scapula are 9 muscles, known collectively as the “scapular sling,” responsible for moving your shoulder blades in many directions. If your scapular sling is malfunctioning because of coordination or imbalance problems, you will end up with a problem in the shoulder, or upper back. Pressing, pulling, and stabilizing movements are the best ways to get your scapular sling functioning optimally.

#3 - More Engaged And Competent Lats

When most people think about how they generate strength from their shoulders, they think of their pecs and deltoids. However, it’s the overuse of muscles like your pecs, deltoids, and rotator cuff that lead to injury. What we need to do instead is learn to stabilize our shoulders using our lats.

The lats are these big, board muscles that attach onto the arm bone (humorous) and onto the spine, ribs, and even the pelvis. While many people think about the lats as pulling muscles (which they absolutely are) lats also play a major roll in stabilizing the shoulder and the spine during arm movements. Learning to use your lats better will take stress away from your shoulders and upper back.

#4 - Enhanced Pelvic Stability

Remember when we talked about how things going on below the shoulder effect the shoulders? Well, if your pelvis isn’t stable, your shoulders will be impacted.

In the figure above, you can see how your shoulders have to compensate for a pelvic shift caused by pelvic instability. I know this might sound kind of “out there,” but I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been able to help a client with a shoulder problem by improving their pelvic stability. What happens at the hips and pelvis impacts your shoulders in a BIG way.

#5 - Improved Coordination Between The Core, Lats, Scapular Sling, And Pelvis

Traditional bodybuilding has lead many personal trainers, gym enthusiasts, and even some physical therapists to believe, falsely, that muscles (and joints) should be trained in isolation. The problem with this theory is that in real life outside the gym, many joints in different areas of the body have to work together in order to produce efficient, pain free movement. This is called coordination, or motor control, and you need it for healthy shoulders.

In the prior 4 sections, I have discussed how we need a core stability, a functioning scapular sling, Lats, and pelvic stability for healthy shoulders. What I didn’t mention is that all 4 of these aspects of shoulder health need to work together, at the same time, to create super healthy shoulders.

So how do we challenge all of these aspects of shoulder health at the same time? By creating smart exercises, of course. Below is an example of how we integrate all 4 of these aspects of shoulder health into ONE exercise.

Here is how the arch press challenges each of the four aspects of shoulder health I have mentioned in this article.

1. Core Stability. As the Ultimate Sandbag is pressed overhead, the core has to reflexively engage. This is because overhead pressing creates a long level arm across the trunk.

2. Scapular sling functionality. One of the major functions of the scapular sling is to upwardly rotate the scapular during overhead motions. Bringing the sandbag overhead and back down challenges this major aspect the scapular sling.

3. Teaches the lats to work better. Even in an overhead pressing movement, the lats should engage to stabilize the shoulder (especially during the “eccentric” or lowering phase). Grabbing the sandbag with the hands and “pulling it apart” further engages the lats during this movement.

4. Pelvic stability. This arch press here is done in a position known as “half kneeling.” In half kneeling, there is a narrow based of support, which may make the athlete lose balance from side to side. In order to prevent themselves from falling over, the athlete must recruit the muscles responsible for pelvic stability (chiefly the adductors- glute med/min- the adductors, quadratus lumborum, and all other muscles used to create frontal plane stability).

Conclusion

Shoulders malfunction all the time, but these malfunctions rarely, if ever, are caused by the shoulder joint itself. Instead, shoulder problems are often caused by a lack of core stability, scapular sling capabilities, a lack of lat engagement, and.or pelvic instability. Fortunately, a well-planned personal training/corrective exercise program can systematically solve each of these potential problems and result in serious improvements in shoulder health and comfort.