Improving Shoulder Stability with Exercises

Push-ups can be a great way to start building muscle strength and size.

But what happens when you start doing a lot of them,

even when trying to use

perfect technique and you get shoulder pain? That

was the case for my patient, Dan.

For ten years, he dealt with left shoulder pain

when trying to do any horizontal

pressing. Now, he had seen the doctors, he had got the cortisone shots, but his

pain never went away. No one had checked the quality of his

movement.

My examination revealed he lacked external rotation stability.

One exercise I gave him to help with this was a banded bench press.

Now, the idea is that you tension a band

and slowly go through your horizontal

press. If you feel any symptoms at all, you pause and then tension the

band even further, then you continue on.

But what this does is teach the rotator cuff to do its job

better of

stabilizing the shoulder joint. Go slow with these.

One rep should take about ten seconds to perform.

After we retested, these were pain-free, showing he was finally on the right

track.