How To Train For Life!

Happy Friday!

Welcome to the second edition of the “Train For Life” newsletter!

This week’s edition we are going to dive into some “shoulder stuff” and talk about how we can keep this area strong and healthy for life as we train and exercise…

Please note there is a FREE upper body training session attached below that can be used to keep the shoulders strong and resilient, whilst still training hard.

But first lets start with a little bit of background information just to set the scene…

To keep it simple, the shoulder is a ball and socket joint in which the head of the upper arm (humerus) attaches into the shoulder blade (scapula).

The shoulder joint (glenohumeral joint) in most people has more mobility than all other joints in the body, meaning it will have less stability.

This makes it a bit more prone to certain injuries such as joint dislocations, rotator cuff tears and labral (cartilage) tears given the mobility and stability tradeoff.

On top of this we need to respect the amount we use the shoulders in daily life, sports and exercise which can also contribute to wear and tear.

If you’ve been training for a number of years and done your share of “heavy pressing”, then it’s fairly likely you might have already experienced some niggles or injuries in your time?

If you have and or feel you need you need to change up what you’re doing then keep reading as we’re getting to the practical tips now.…

Lets look at some key adjustments you can make in your upper body training as you get older, in order to reduce injury risk and keep your shoulders healthy:

• Substitute barbell bench pressing - Instead include more dumbbell pressing, machine and even cable pressing exercises that might be less stressful on the shoulders overall.

   

• SLOW your exercise tempo down - Slower controlled tempos tend to reduce some of the overall forces placed on your joints.

• Be INTENTIONAL about squeezing the working muscles in each exercise - The more you can get the muscles to take the weight the less your joints will have to take (especially key in pressing exercises).

• Row before your press - STOP pressing first in your sessions. Some kind of rowing exercise like a dumbbell row or seated row will throughly warm your shoulders up before you go into any pressing exercise.

• Avoid direct overhead pressing - Instead choose a 75 or 60 degree pressing angle using a bench as most people lack optimal overhead range of motion.

• Train the muscles of the scapula - Exercises for the rotator cuff are great but also include some shoulder blade retraction and protraction exercises for overall health and stability (More on this below).

• Leave 1-2 reps in reserve on your work sets - Avoid training to failure all the time, once you lose tension in the muscles and quality of movement you place more stress on your joints.

To put this all into context, the FREE session at the bottom should give you an idea on how to set your sessions up to spare your shoulders and keep them healthy as you continue to train hard.

For now thanks reading and stay tuned for the next edition of Train For Life next Friday!

Daryl