Ever pulled, strained, or just wished your shoulders felt better? I’m sharing tried-and-true tips for building shoulder strength and releasing tension, so you can move with confidence and ease every day.

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Show Notes 

Introduction: Thanking God for the opportunity to create this podcast.

• Personal Experience: Sharing a recent shoulder injury and rehab journey.

• Importance of Shoulder Health: Emphasizing awareness for golfers, tennis players, swimmers, and everyday movement.

• Key Pillars: Posture, mobility, and stability as the foundation for healthy shoulders.

• Practical Tips:

• Checking shoulder alignment while sitting or lying down.

• Avoiding repetitive and overhead movements to prevent injury.

• Incorporating simple stretches, such as arm reaches and hugs, to release tension.

• Using fascia release tools like tennis balls for maintenance and relief.

• Strengthening stabilizing muscles, including rotator cuffs, with TheraBands and targeted exercises.

• Call to Action: Encouraging listeners to schedule consultations for personalized strategies.

Key Takeaways:

1. Posture is foundational: Keeping shoulders down and back prevents injuries.

2. Repetitive movements can harm: Modify activities like swimming or lifting to reduce strain.

3. Strength and mobility are essential: Combine stretching and strength training for stability.

Transcript:

Hello, everybody and welcome back to Better Than A Pill. I'm super excited to have everybody here with me again today and just want to take a minute and thank God, first of all, for making this podcast possible. And today's topic, we're going to be talking about keys for shoulder health. Anybody ever have a tear?

I know I have. I just recently in the past year have rehabbed one and so our shoulders. I know some of you listening today or golfers or you're playing tennis or you're swimming. Or maybe you were an ex athlete. I know a few of you, whatever it might be. I even know some people that have been.

In the rowing team, whatever it is, your shoulders, you realize how precious your shoulders are once something happens. And I'm going to go through the key essentials that we're going to need when it comes to, to shoulder stability. And we're always going to go at the standpoint of inner, for a healthy shoulder or no matter what it is, integrating our pillars into that.

Posture, definitely key to remember how we want to be sitting, keeping our shoulders down and back. A lot of us are rolling forward and just being, having that awareness, even getting support for your back. A lot of you've seen the guide we've created, just get, that can even help with your shoulder alignment.

And then when you're. You're doing things when you're lying flat. You can really get a sense of your shoulder shoulder blade checking in with your shoulder. It's the placement. When you're lying flat and you're relaxing you get more of an awareness and then you can take that and apply that to whatever you're doing.

You're standing. So it's about building the awareness. And then. Okay. The reminder and learning what does it feel like to have a stable shoulder. A lot of times we're not in a stable position and then we add upper body work to that. Some of you might be lifting weights or heavy weights and stuff and that can really wreak havoc on the shoulders.

Not so good. I've seen one of the biggest injuries are all the overhead movements. Not so good for everybody. And especially if you've struggled with shoulder injuries in the past, that's always an area I'll point out to people is beware of the overhead new movement. Some people are fine with it, but a lot of people aren't, especially if they struggled with shoulder injuries, repetitive movement.

So anything repetitive movement can wreak havoc on the shoulders. I'm just going to use the swimming as an example. And  I know I've learned I've had to, I've had to break things up or limit the amount I'm not competing. And, if you're not competing, you don't have to maybe do as much, when it comes to overall movement, let's say swimming is something that you do.

You can limit that. You can break up your strokes. You can add in some water running is wonderful. 20. 20 minutes, 30 minutes to eat. We can get benefits from 10 guys. So just being mindful, I don't like the word cardiovascular exercise. I use intentional continuous movement for a reason  because we can abuse it.

And that's the bottom line. We can just abuse it. And then the repetitive movement is just not good. Real simply, our pillar to free up tension in the shoulders, we've got our two, we've got our mobility stretches. Really simple, just stretching your arms out in an arm reach or giving yourself a hug, one arm at a time or both arms together to re, to release tension in the back of the shoulders.

So we've got the front and the back of the shoulders, even down to, if you're doing the front of the shoulders, the wrist, the elbows, you can sometimes feel tension. All of that is, is related. It doesn't take much to do those two exercises. I'm speaking loud about them. You can be sitting at a desk, okay, and checking in.

You're totally fine. I know I say this all the time. And then two to three hours later, after doing work, oh my goodness, you just realize all the tension that you can be storing in your shoulders that you're just not aware of, unless you're actively checking in. Releasing that tension, fascia release tools, and in the program, we have specific balls that we use that I love for general fascia release and maintenance of the shoulders that are awesome, that work well.

And they, we, the shoulders aren't that big. So we always start at the bottom and work the way up checking with the front and the back of the shoulders directly relate to the neck. And so when we're carrying shoulders tension in the shoulders that can also affect our neck.

And then I like to actually, if there's issues, especially past issues with tears or whatever it might be, a tennis ball is really good because it's small for getting in there and breaking up adhesions lying on it. You will know where you have one cause you're going to feel that point, that pain point.

And you can if you do have a tear, you can see a physical therapist, but you're going to need to do all these things eventually to, these things are all, are going to help you building up strength in the muscles. Here we go. Strength in the muscles that stabilize the shoulder.

So we're looking at rotator cuff, internal, external rotation, very simple with the TheraBand. I like to do three different positions with the hand. So we target all aspects of the shoulder of the rotator cuffs. That's very achievable. Very necessary. Also we do a  tube exercise. I call it the armpit exercise.

We're working on this radius interior, the front of the shoulders. That also helps to keep the shoulder in place. That's often overlooked. And if that's not strong or active, a lot of people aren't even engaging it. Then. our shoulders are more likely to be injured. That's just the bottom line and things can happen.

Stretching overhead, reaching all of those things we need and we can get them in different movements. Just a total body stretch, guys, reach your arms in the air and stretch, grab a towel, grab a pole. It doesn't matter what it is to stretch your arms long. Some of you doing a modified child's pose, whatever it might be.

So it starts by bringing awareness. To your shoulders and then working on her strength, working on releasing tension, all of those key things. And then being very mindful and you will, even in building a foundation or the therapeutic Pilates, become more aware of your shoulder stability through exercises.

So I will throw that in there too. But, um. Just becoming more aware of your shoulders and little simple things like I shared today, you can start off by just releasing tension with some basic mobility stretches. So hopefully this has helped some of you today. Struggling with shoulders are big.

They're real. I get it. Trust me. I do. And if you are struggling with whether it's shoulders or stiffness or back, whatever discomfort it is, I am ready to connect with you. If you want to start living pain free and enjoying the activities you love again, with confidence, reach out here. I've got 26 years of experience in improving health, alleviating pain and other discomforts.

And I'd love to share. Personalized insights and strategies with you so you can get rid of the fear of hurting yourself or injury and say hello to a life with more activity and less pain. So you can schedule your consultation today by clicking the link in this episode or reaching out to support at movementcraft.

com. And because you're a listener of the better than a pill podcast, let us know you get a special rate. And I just want to thank you all so much for listening today. And I hope this conversation has brought you some helpful insights. And we release new episodes every week on Wednesday. And I truly look forward to having you join me then.