CategoriesCorrective Exercise

New (To You) Scapular Stabilization Exercises

I’m still in Europe.1

Today’s guest post comes courtesy of former CSP intern and now current rock-star PA based strength coach, Rob Rabena

Shoulder health is always a hot topic amongst baseball players and overhead athletes. To keep a healthy shoulder, there are a lot of variables that come into play.

Most of these variables are trainable.

Other factors such as pitching mechanics, sport stress, and life stress are hard for the strength coach to control and train. The goal of this post is to provide some new exercise variations to help keep the shoulder healthy – whether you get paid to throw a baseball 95MPH or if you’re Bob from Accounting.

I have always been a big fan of scapular isometric perturbations to train the scapular muscles. I usually do a standing ball to wall at different arm positions.

Lately I have been playing around with different lower body positions as well.

Check them out!

Half Kneeling and Standing Split Stance Ball to Wall Stabilizations

 

What Does It Do: Trunk and scapular control/stabilization.

Through an added manual isometric perturbation, the athlete needs to control the arm and trunk to not fall over or lose joint position.

This is a fantastic integrated scapular exercise where the athlete needs to not only control the entire body, but also the arm. This exercise helps maintain the head of the humerus in the socket. The athlete should feel the posterior shoulder during this exercise.

Key Coaching Cues:

  • Don’t let me move you
  • Open your fingers wide and feel the ball
  • Feel your foot on the ground
    • Left foot- Left outside heel and left big toe
    • Right Foot- Press your arch into the ground
  • Inhale and fully exhale before beginning
  • Breathe throughout the exercise, don’t hold your breath
  • Reach arm, don’t over pull the scapula down and back
  • I usually place the athlete at end ranges of the shoulder

Science and Research:

Oliver et. al. (2016) found that in the lunge position (the TGU and prone I) had significantly greater serratus anterior EMG compared to other exercises.

A greater EMG during this position is most likely from the scapulae in protraction.

Protraction or reaching can do wonders for shoulder health, scapular health and position of the ribcage. Always take in consideration that EMG studies are not the end all be all when it comes to exercise selection.

Who Should Use It:

Any overhead athlete such as baseball, tennis, swimming, softball and volleyball would be recommended. This can be used to help prevent any future injuries with anyone who has a history of shoulder problems or pathologies.

Program Design:

 2-4 sets of 10-15sec or until athlete fatigues or technique/position is lost.

I would suggest that the half kneeling position can be used at times as a regression to the standing ball to wall variation. The standing Split Stance variation is definitely a progression due to the narrow base of support and difficulty of the exercise.

See the list below to help with program design as well as for training floor regressions and progressions.

Quadruped: Ball on Ground

Standing: Ball to Wall

Supine: Off-Table

Half Kneeling: Open Chain Variation

Progression Order:

  1. Quadruped ball on ground
  2. Half kneeling ball to wall
  3. Standing ball to wall
  4. Standing split stance ball to wall
  5. Supine off a table
  6. Open Chain Variations

Conclusion:

When training the shoulder or scapular muscles, be sure to mix up and progress lower body position when utilizing a manual isometric perturbation.

References:

Gretchen D. Oliver, H. A. (2016, March). Electromyographic Analysis of Traditional and Kinetic Chain Exercises for Dynamic Shoulder Movements. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research.

Author’s Bio

Rob Rabena, MS, CSCS, is the Director of Sports Performance at Maplezone Sports Institute (MSI) in Garnet Valley, Pennsylvania, where he trains high school, college and professional baseball athletes.

Prior to joining MSI, he was the head strength & conditioning coach at Cabrini College, working with their nationally ranked lacrosse team. In addition to his work at Cabrini, he completed an internship at Cressey Sports Performance in Hudson, Massachusetts in 2012.

Rabena earned his B.S. in Exercise Science with a focus on Health Promotion from Cabrini College in 2011, and his M.S. in Exercise Science with a focus on Strength and Conditioning from East Stroudsburg University in 2012. He is a certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist (CSCS) through the National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA).

Instagram- @robrabena3

Twitter- @RobRabena

CategoriesExercise Technique Exercises You Should Be Doing

Exercises You Should Be Doing: 1-Arm Bottoms-Up Anything

Drake said it best:

“Started from the bottom now we’re here.”

Based off last week’s article on Building the Squat From the Bottom and today’s apropos titled post, you may think I’m obsessed with bottoms.

Kim Kardashian and J-Lo jokes aside, you’re 100% correct.

When I was coaching at Cressey Sports Performance and working with numerous overhead athletes, utilizing bottoms-up exercises was a daily occurrence…many times serving as a starting point for guys traveling to Massachusetts to train after a tenuously long baseball season or maybe recovering from an injury.

Get it?

Started From the Bottom?

Bottoms-up? Starting point?2

In case you’re not picking up what I’m putting down: I like bottoms-up (kettlebell) exercises.

Like THIS one. And THIS one.

There are many reasons why, too.

1) Better Shoulder Health and Rotator Cuff Activation

With regards to shoulder health and rotator cuff activation, there aren’t many things more effective than holding a kettlebell upside down. Because grip becomes more of a “thing” here, a phenomenon called irradiation comes into play. Simply put: grip strength helps the shoulder to “pack” itself, providing more stability to the area.

Don’t believe me?

Hold your arm out in front of you making a fist. But don’t do anything, just hold it there.

Now, MAKE A FIST (as if you were going to thunder-punch a T-Rex). Notice how your shoulder kinda tensed up and “packed” itself. That’s irradiation.

Moreover, when we start talking about the rotator cuff muscles and what the anatomy books tells us their function is we get this:

  • Internal/external rotation of the humerus.
  • Abduction of the humerus
  • Humeral depression (counteract pull of delts)

All of this is correct. And, I defy anyone to put this bit of trivia in their Match.com profile and not be beating people off with a stick.

However, the RC’s true “function” is to keep the humeral head centered in the glenoid fossa.3Bottoms-up KB carries are an excellent choice to train the rotator cuff in this fashion.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnpS41ag5ME

 

2) De-loading

I am a firm believer in lifting heavy things. The slogan of this site is “Because Heavy Things Won’t Lift Themselves” for crying out loud.

That said, it’s important to pump the brakes from time to time and understand (and respect) that lifting “heavy,” all the time, isn’t necessary to build a strong, durable, aesthetically pleasing body.

It’s the backbone, of course. But the “go heavy, or go home” mentality can be just as deleterious and stagnating as going too light.

What I also love about bottoms-up exercises is that they serve as a built-in “de-load” mechanism for many trainees, not to mention a tricky way to place a spotlight on any glaring side-to-side strength/muscular imbalances.

Have someone perform a 1-arm Bottoms-Up Bench Press or Overhead Press and watch as it becomes abundantly clear which arm is stronger than the other.

 

What’s more, because so many trainees like to “muscle” their exercises4, many of the smaller, stabilizing musculature gets the shaft. And thus, nagging injuries may occur.

Relax: I’m not going all Tracy Anderson and saying something asinine like “it’s important to use lighter weights so we can target our deep, less angry, stabilizing muscles. Also, dipping your left hand into a bucket of unicorn tears detoxes the body of sadness.”

What I am saying, however, is that it’s okay to use an exercise such as this as an accessory movement to help address a gross imbalance or weakness, or to even help build some muscle. The Bottoms-Up KB Overhead Press is actually one of my favorite shoulder exercises to build mass because it forces people to be strict with their technique.

  • Squeeze glutes, quads, and abs.
  • Lock rib cage down.
  • Press

3) Core Stability

I don’t feel I need to spend a lot of time on this one. Performing any unilateral movement (upper or lower body) has obvious core training benefits.

Here, not only are we getting all the benefits described above, but we’re also getting the benefit of challenging our core musculature to prevent any un-wanted motion (in this case: lateral flexion, rotation, extension, etc).

Bottoms-Up Split Squat

 

Bottoms-Up Bulgarian Split Squat

 

Bottoms-Up Reverse Lunge

 

With all these drills the objective is to stabilize the kettlebell so that it stays upright throughout, while at the same time maintaining a good thoraco-pelvic canister (minimizing rib flair and excessive anterior pelvic tilt).

[A good way to visualize this is to think about an invisible line being drawn from your nipple line to your belly button. You want to “connect” your rib cage to your pelvis and LOCK IT DOWN. The invisible line should stay the same throughout the duration of a set and not get longer].

You’ll notice on all the examples above I make a fist with my free hand to help increase bodily tension. This is important to help maintain that canister

4) And Lastly, Because I Said So

How’s that for a legit reason to give these exercises a try?

CategoriesRehab/Prehab Strength Training

Why Shoulder Injury Prevention Programs Are Failing

I recently had the opportunity to write an article for Stack Magazine, which is an online resource for high-school athletes and coaches.

When I was originally contacted and asked if I’d be interested I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to write about.  Then it hit me:  Um, dude – you work with a crap ton of baseball players, why not start there?

Seemed like a logical course to take, and that’s exactly what I did.

Now understandably, not everyone who reads this site is interested in throwing a baseball 90 MPH and could probably care less about “arm care.”

Besides chicks dig the long ball, right?

But I’d venture a guess that even though this article is geared towards baseball players, there are some universal nuggets dealing with shoulder health that has a lot of applicability towards the general population as well – especially with regards to the “true” function of the rotator cuff (and how to train it) and how the anterior core enters the equation.

That said, I want to demonstrate to Stack Magazine that the TonyGentilcore.com entourage can reach P-Diddy levels.

I’d really love for everyone to check out the article, give any feedback (positive or negative; hopefully mostly positive), and if you feel so inclined, “Like” it and share it on Facebook and Twitter.

Snuggles!

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