Walk into a commercial gym tomorrow and you will immediately see about 20 benches of all kinds and 5-6 chest and shoulder press machines. If you walk around a bit, you might be able to find one pull down machine, one seated row machine, and one or two pull up bars. For many people out there, this has become the norm for strength training equipment. This description may not even provoke a response if you have spent a significant amount of time in the gym. The problem, however, is that this shows a flawed exercise paradigm. The reason the “pressing” equipment far outnumbers the “pulling” equipment is because of demand, and it is the average gym goer that wants to press! The bench press, shoulder press, chest fly, shoulder raise, high pull, and all other types of pressing exercises. Pressing has become overwhelmingly popular, especially in the male population. The only problem: too much pressing leads to imbalances, which can lead to pain and injury.
A Fetal Culture
It is not just the exercises that lead to imbalances, it is our daily life. As we have talked about before, we live in a culture of inactivity. In other words, we sit. And we don’t just sit—we hunch. We have a computer in front of us all day, work on a keyboard that keeps our arms tucked in, and we stay there for 6-8 hours every day. So every day we reinforce our shoulder-forward position at work, and then go to the gym where we press. This is problematic for two reasons. First, we are already pulled forward and the press motion only works to shorten our chest, shoulder, and neck muscles more. Second, when your shoulders are pulled forward, you are not able to properly stabilize your shoulder joint for pressing, especially in the overhead position. Your shoulder joint depends on having a vertical alignment so that the ball and socket of the shoulder can sit in its proper position. When your upper body becomes hunched over, it can actually be impossible for you to line up your body properly.
Who Doesn't Have Shoulder Pain?
The problems stemming from our hunched posture have become so common that over 60% of people who are 50 or older are walking around with a rotator cuff injury right now. These are not always symptomatic, but there is an injury or past injury nonetheless. The bad news is that if you are not exercising right now, you may find out that you have a weak or injured cuff the hard way: re-injury. The good news is that whether you are training right now or not, you have an opportunity to change what you are doing, and start working toward better posture and better shoulder stability. The first thing you can do is read Why Your Baby Moves Better than You and Stand Up for Your Life! which will talk more about posture. Second, you can drastically decrease pressing in your exercises. If you have ANY shoulder pain during a movement, you should not be doing it. If you know that your rotator cuff is weak or was previously injured, you should avoid almost all overhead pressing. Third, you should start working the tissue.
Tissue Quality Comes First
Before we can hope that our exercises will do anything for us, we have to make sure that our tissue quality and length will ALLOW us to perform those exercises. There are a number of areas that need to be focused on to best prepare us. First, we must work on the chest. By rolling (massaging) the chest muscles, then stretching them, we can help to prepare them for the stretch they will inevitably experience during pulling exercises. Second, we work the neck. The neck and shoulders are very much connected and along with rounded shoulders, sitting all day in front of a computer also leads to a forward head posture. To effectively straighten out the spine, we roll and stretch the neck as well. Third, we focus on the shoulder blades and back. This incorporates a lot of areas, but we can prepare them all with similar work. Once we have worked on all of these areas we are ready for exercise.
In next week’s article we will review the exercises that will best help in shoulder positioning and strength. For now, just work on the stretches and massage work above, and continue to focus on daily posture.
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