Monday Mobility – Shoulders [Victoria BC CrossFit]

Shoulder Mobility and Lat Activation:

Coach, Massage Therapist and Personal Trainer Kirby Bohan, BHSc is here to take you through some shoulder mobility and lat activation. For more information or if you would like a session with her, please contact her directly.

Our shoulders are very mobile joints and are capable of a wide range of motion. However, a lot of people still manage to find limitations in certain movements. Due to the wide range of motion our shoulder have they are often exposed to the many risks of injuries from a variety of angles.

People often try to compensate for a lack of shoulder mobility with increasing the arch in their lower back, all this is doing is crushing the lumbar spine structures to create a whole other world of injuries. Please look back at previous post regarding the importance of neutral spine. 

This first exercise is a global movement for the shoulders: (Dislocates = A & Round the World = B)

A:

• Take a PVC pike and place it in your hands (roughly snatch grip wide)
• Place hands out wide on the PVC pipe with your arms long and lose
• Bring the pipe up and over your head as far as it goes
• Continue to cycle the PVC pipe back and forth over your head ensuring your arms are staying straight
• You should aim to take each repetition a little further every time

B:

• Bring your arms off to the side overhead
• Cycle the dowel around your body, keeping arms straight

If unable to cycle it all the way around:

• Cycle the bar back and forth on one side, then swap to the other.

 

A great way to activate and stretch your lats is with this next exercise:

• Take a medium strength band (purple) and tie it to one of the pull up bars
• Put your hand through the band and hold
• Take a step back, lean forward and let the band distract your shoulder
• Gently pull your shoulder back into its socket (you should feel your lats switch on here)
• Slowly rotate your palm down and up 
• Rotate through the movement for 1min 
• Swap hands over and repeat steps on opposite shoulder