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Shoulder Mobility Exercises

Scapular Mobility Exercises

If you have shoulder pain and stiffness while using your arms overhead, I encourage you to add scapular mobility exercises to your self care routine, as optimal movement of your shoulder blades along the posterior surface of your ribcage is vital to ensuring proper biomechanics of your shoulder joints when your arms are raised overhead.

If you're new to scapular mobility exercises, I would start with the Cow-Cat drill found here: Read more

 

Hanging Exercises to Improve Shoulder and Spinal Mobility

Hanging from an object overhead is one of the most effective ways of maintaining and improving shoulder and spinal mobility.

Be sure that you are warmed up before engaging in hanging exercises - ideally, you want to take your shoulders and spine through a solid warm-up and even work up a bit of perspiration to ensure that your tissues are well perfused with blood to prevent injury. Read more

 

A Closer Look at Stick Mobility Exercises

This video demonstrates some movement patterns that you can do with a long stick or dowel. I shot this video indoors with hope that closer positioning to my tripod allows for easier viewing of these movements.

Using a stick to take your shoulders through these and other movements can help you identify and work through restrictions in shoulder, trunk, and hip mobility. Read more

 

Hanging and Swinging Exercises for Improved Shoulder and Spinal Mobility

For an overview of exercise progressions that you can work at to improve your mobility and balance in a systematic way, please feel free to visit our Mobility Exercise Progressions page here:

Mobility Exercise Progressions

For some suggestions on how to set up a simple workout area at home, please feel free to view: Read more

 

German Hang for Shoulder Extension and Arm Strength

The German Hang is excellent for improving shoulder extension and strength through the arms, including grip strength. Read more

 

Mobility Exercise Progressions for Upper Body Mobility, Including Hanging and Swinging Drills

Day 4: Upper Body Mobility, Including Hanging and Swinging

German Arm Swings:

Chinese Arm Circles:

Band Exercises:

Supine Arm Circles: Read more

 

How to Improve Shoulder Extension

There are very few activities of daily living that require us to use our innate capacity for shoulder extension - that is, to actively use our arms while they are behind us. This translates to having short biceps, brachialis, and pectoralis minor muscles, which predispose us to elbow and shoulder issues, including golfer's elbow, tennis elbow, and shoulder impingement syndrome.

For this reason, it's best that we include shoulder extension exercises in our self care programs. Read more

 

The Best Stretch for Tight Shoulder "Shawl" Muscles

If you experience tightness in your shoulder "shawl" muscles, you will likely benefit from this stretch, highly effective for lengthening your trapezius and levator scapulae muscles.

Please be sure to enable audio for guidance. If you have any questions, please feel free to leave them in the comments section below or you can always reach me at benkim@drbenkim.com. Read more

 

Posterior Shoulder and Scapular Stretch

This is an excellent stretch for ensuring healthy tone of the muscles, tendons, and ligaments that surround the posterior region of your shoulder and your shoulder blade. Read more

 

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