Rant and Tip for July 21, 2011

Today my friends who follow my workout routine will be working their shoulders. The shoulders are a very complex group of muscles. I have an impingement in mine. It does affect how hard I can throw a ball. I don’t through like a girl, oh wait a minute my daughter can throw harder than I can. She has a cannon for an arm and likes to show you just how hard she can throw. One coach at the beginning of the softball year was in pain after catching from her throwing to home plate.

The shoulder is made up of 4 joints and 5 linked bone groups, which are related and work together. The shoulder has the greatest range of motion of any joint in the body allowing complete global movement allowing you to position your hand almost anywhere. The shoulder has to be a free moving joint, unlike the hip it is not a ball and socket joint. It encompasses a complex series of ligaments and muscles to achieve and maintain the joint. Your deltoid is the muscle group on top of the shoulder. There are three parts to your deltoid, the anterior, lateral, and posterior heads. The Anterior Deltoid contributes too many Pectoral-related movements, e.g. bench press. The Lateral Deltoid is most active in dedicated lateral movements. The Posterior Deltoid is often activated in back exercises that involve the Teres Major and Rhomboid muscles. The Teres Minor is part of the Rotator cuff and is vital to keeping the humerus from popping out. The humerus is the upper arm bone. The main function of the Rotator Cuff is to stabilize the shoulder joint. The exercises I have laid out will work the shoulders well to help keep them strong. I will be updating the shoulders exercises to include more Rotator Cuff work shortly though.

Have a great workout!

TIP:

Do not wait to have shoulder pain checked by a physician, especially if you are just starting out. You need to make sure that you keep the shoulder strong. If you find you have shoulder pain that is affecting your bench-press you probably have a Rotator Cuff injury. My bicep tendonitis is does not affect my bench, however it does stem from the impingement in my shoulder and as I stated the other day that comes from some back muscles that connect to the shoulders.