There have been times during my training when I've experienced terrible shoulder pain. It occurs more often with pressing movements, push-ups, dips, planche, handstands or bench presses.
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It's a weird pain, almost like a stabbing pain.
It's not your chest or triceps.
It’s near the front of the shoulder but deeper down in the shoulder.
Have you felt it before?
What is it, and how do you fix it?
Over the years, I've helped hundreds of clients overcome shoulder pain and set new personal best in their upper body pushing and pulling movements.
99.9% of the time, it's due to weak shoulder stabilisation muscles, specifically the rotator cuffs or the mid-and lower trapezius.
Our ability to move through a full range of motion and produce force is limited when the shoulder isn't stable.
The small shoulder stabilisation muscles play a key role in helping the larger primary mover muscles (pecs, lats, triceps, biceps, etc..) produce force. Unstable shoulders are weak and prone to injury.
It's like trying to shoot a canon out of a canoe.
The cannon is super powerful and can shoot a cannonball a very long way until you place the cannon on an unstable surface.
If you were to fire a cannon from a canoe, the cannonball wouldn’t go far, and the canoe will flip over.
A canoe isn't a stable surface.
If you're trying to press or pull a heavy load with unstable shoulders, you will struggle to produce force and might even flit over.
So, how do we fix it?
Simple, stop doing all pressing movements for the rest of your life.
Nah. Just kidding.
It's best to stop all movements that cause pain until you fix the issues.
Don't continue to pick at the scab of a recovering wound. You’ll only slow down the healing process.
While resting movements like push-ups, dips and bench, you can continue to train by strengthening the rotator cuffs and the trapezius.
Let me explain why.
The rotator cuff of the shoulder:
There are four muscles that make up the rotator cuff complex: the supraspinatus, infraspinatus, teres minor, and subscapularis.
Together they work to stabilise the shoulder and allow the primary mover muscles (such as the pecs and triceps) to create high levels of force.
If the rotator cuff muscles are weak, our force production is limited. That goes for all upper-body pushing and pulling movements. Yes, it'll impact your chin-ups, rows, overhead press and more.
Increasing the strength of your rotator cuff increase your upper-body pushing and pulling strength.
It's that powerful.
Therefore, isolating external shoulder rotation is essential to shoulder stability, health, strength development and longevity.
This is where movements such as side lying shoulder external rotations, knee-up shoulder external rotations, and half kneeing arm abducted in front shoulder external rotations can be a real game changer.
World-renowned strength and conditioning coach Charles Poliquin was big on structural balance. He argued that the external shoulder rotator should be able to perform eight reps of the knee-up external shoulder rotation exercise with 9.8% of your maximum bench press weight.
If you can bench press 100kg for one rep, you should be able to perform eight reps of the knee-up shoulder external rotator exercise with 9.8kg.
What about gymnastics movements? Poliquin had percentages for dips, chin-ups, pull-ups and more. So, we can calculate this weight by using our 1RM on these exercises as well.
Building strength in the shoulder rotator cuff is step 1.
The Trapezius
The mid-trapezius, also known as trap-2, is the muscle that sits between your shoulder blades that helps to retract the shoulder blades and extend the arms behind your back. Think the bottom of the bench press or push-up and all chin-ups, pull-ups and rowing variations.
The mid-traps bring stability to the shoulders in the retraced position.
We also want to strengthen the mid-traps to counterbalance our "bro-session" training (bench and biceps). High volumes of horizontal pressing lead to shoulder pain when we fail to balance horizontal pressing with horizontal pulling.
We see this often in “fitness classes” where participants do a “shit tone” of movements like burpees, push-ups, and wall balls.
Again, this is where structural balance helps to prevent pain and decrease the chances of injury.
We can train the mid-traps with movements like band pull-aparts, scapular rows, reverse flies, and Powell raises. Not to mention all of the rowing variations.
It's critical to focus on retracting and depressing the shoulder before flexing the elbow in rowing variation as we're aiming to strengthen the mid-trapezius, which we should be. Flexing the elbow before retracting the shoulder won’t help train the mid-traps effectively—the technique you use to perform rows and pull-ups matters.
The lower traps are often overlooked and undertrained.
The lower traps are located in the middle of the back and run virtually the length of the thoracic spine.
During push-ups and bench press, the shoulder blades must stay depressed for stability. If the shoulder shrugs up towards the ears, the total force production decreases and the chance of shoulder pain or injury increases.
This is where the lower traps come to the rescue.
Movements like single arm, head supported trap 3 raises, incline bench prone trap 3 raises, and prone unilateral trap 3 raises, ankles crossed are helpful in building lower trapezius strength.
It's essential to keep the arm at a 45* angle away from the torso during these movements, as this correlates with the alignment of the muscle fibres in the lower trapezius.
Charles Poliquin also recommended that you should be able to perform eight reps of the head-supported trap 3 raise, with 9.8% of your maximum bench press weight.
In summary
By increasing the strength of the smaller shoulder stabilisation muscles, specifically the rotator cuff complex and the trapezius - we can overcome 99.9% of shoulder pain in movements like push-ups, dips, handstand push-ups, planche and bench press.
We can decrease the chances of a shoulder injury and increase upper body force production in all planes of motion.
Can you afford not to be training these muscles?
I program external shoulder rotation and trapezius exercises in all programs I create for online students. It's that important.
You'll also find all of the upper-body skill-based training templates on The Sustainable Training Method website also contain external shoulder rotation and trapezius exercises.
This includes Building BodyWeight Strength - levels 1,2 & 3 and the Best Skin The Cat Program Ever.
It's just that important.
Give it a try, and see how you go.
If you've got questions, please leave them in the comment below.
Thanks for watching.
Until next time, happy shoulder stability training.