Shoulder Exercises: Mistakes and Blunders!

Avoid Mistakes While Doing Shoulder Exercises

Shoulder injuries aren’t something to shake a stick at – they can happen in the blink of an eye. They can also happen over a long period of misuse. If at anytime you start feeling the slightest aching pain, you need to stop what you’re doing and put the weight down. There’s never a good time to push your shoulders to the limit. Let’s try to avoid these scenarios so you can keep you shoulder muscles healthy!

• With any of the shoulder workouts (and chest exercises), it’s important to make sure you don’t arch your back! With your back as straight as possible, there should only be a slight gap between your back and the seatback. This is one of the classic ways to cheat! What I mean is, when you arch your back, you’re giving yourself a chance to lift heavier weights through the extra leverage your creating. Yes, you’re lifting more weight, but now your getting your whole body into it instead of your shoulder muscles! Avoid injuries and a weight plateau: keep your back straight and don’t cheat!

• Don’t bring barbells or dumbbells behind your neck during any shoulder exercise. This puts a ton of stress on the shoulder joint and can lead to rotator cuff injuries. This sort of movement forces the humerus to compress against the scapula, putting a large amount of stress on the rotator cuff muscles to stabilize the joint. There’s really no point for performing this sort of movement – it has extremely low benefit while also being very risky!

• Don’t overindulge yourself in these exercises. Using your entire body weight to hoist the weight over your head is a recipe for injury. Stay calm, and do the exercise as it was meant to be done. Using slow, exaggerated movements is the best way to go!

• Don’t lock your elbows! This obviously puts a lot of stress on your elbows – simply stay away from this!

• When doing any sort of standing shoulder exercise, make sure to keep your body as static as possible, aside from the movement of your arms. You want to target your shoulders with shoulder workouts, not your legs or abs!

Use these tips when doing your shoulder workouts to help prevent injury and to avoid a weight plateau. You’ll be well on your way to developing powerful deltoids and strong rotator cuff muscles.

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