Need a good warmup routine for upper body day?
We have you covered. As Physical Therapists, we treat a lot of people with shoulder pain that affects their ability to perform workouts, play with their kids, or even how they sleep. As sports rehab professionals, here are some exercises we would recommend to start with for your shoulder pain. Feel free to perform these a few times a week or before your workouts.
Keep in mind, shoulder pain can often be a very challenging injury to work with as it is a very complex joint and this introduction guide is not a “one size fits all” shoulder program, but it can become an effective warmup and reduce shoulder discomfort.
Thoracic mobility
This is a great starting spot because the thoracic spine helps achieve full overhead motion of the shoulder. The better you move in your spine, the less stress you will place on your shoulder when performing lifting overhead. It’s common to have restrictions in mobility in your thoracic spine lead to shoulder pain because the shoulder joint has so much mobility, it tends to compensate for the lack of spine movement.
2. Sidelying Rotation, abduction, and punches
So we started with thoracic mobility to get the spine moving better, now what? Whenever you perform a mobility exercise, you always want to perform some sort of strengthening or active muscle contraction after to get the muscles working in that new range and to get warmed up for your lift that day.
Here are three great exercises to improve the strength and endurance of the back of your shoulder. Make sure to keep all of the reps slow and controlled!
3. Serratus Anterior Punches
Lastly, we always want to include some serratus anterior (a.k.a. the boxer’s muscle) strengthening in our upper body days. This muscle is extremely important in keeping our shoulder blade stable and taking stress of the front of the shoulder. The serratus anterior acts like a suction cup to keep the shoulder blade anchored on our ribcage, this creates stability and makes us feel less ‘wobbly’ during upper body movements.
Feel free to try these exercises and see how they go! If you have been dealing with stubborn shoulder pain for a while, it is best to be evaluated by a physical therapist in person to customize your plan to get back to doing the activities you love!