TRAINING FOR SHOULDER HEALTH

There are a few misconceptions on shoulder health that are crucial to address for anyone dealing with shoulder injuries or looking to maintain a healthy shoulder throughout throwing and overhead activities.

1. Many folks think that shoulder health is rooted in the rotator cuff, which leads to lots of banded internal and external rotation exercises. There’s nothing wrong with doing those exercises, however, most shoulder injuries, specifically those that present with pain in the rotator cuff, are actually rooted in the upper back and other larger supportive mechanics of the shoulder. So, when you do all that banded shoulder work on the rotator cuff, all you’re doing is treating symptoms, not causes.
   
2. When many gymgoers look to stabilize and strengthen their shoulders, they do a lot of isolated shoulder work like lateral raises and front raises. Truthfully, these aren’t doing much unless your goal is body building. The shoulder is a very unusual joint, and both in daily life and sport activities it works in conjunction with our back, amongst other things. If you want to have a functionally strong shoulder, you need to choose functionally adequate exercises, which means little to no isolation, and more compound exercises like rows, pull ups, push ups, etc.
   
3. Not so much a myth but more of a common mistake that affects the shoulder - many folks do a lot more pressing exercises than pulling. This means lots of benching, push ups, pec flys, etc, and very little pull ups, chin ups, rows, or other similar exercises. This overdevelops the chest relative to the back, and since the shoulder is attached to both, people end up with asymmetrical strength from front to back, meaning the shoulder gets forced into internal rotation and adduction on a consistent basis, forming the foundation for tendonitis, labral tears, and other common shoulder injuries. If you want a healthy shoulder, make sure you do enough pulling exercises to protect the shoulder from the back.
   

Strength training is very nuanced, particularly in the sport performance niche. Be careful when pulling information from generic resources or body building backgrounds. If you want a healthy shoulder, work compound lifts, meaning pulls and pushes, both horizontal and vertical, that incorporate more moving joints than just the shoulder.