Shoulder Pain Series: Scarecrow Exercise
Shoulder Pain? Improve your shoulder health
In order to maximize back development and maintain shoulder health, make sure to include small isolation movements for the middle and lower traps, rhomboids, and rear deltoids.
Compound movements will often leave these muscles underdeveloped. It’s essential to train these small muscles with exercises such as:
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- Retract shoulder blades prior to initiating movement
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- Use a neutral grip so thumbs are facing you to bias external rotation
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- “Pretend your biceps is a rotisserie chicken” (???????? ??? ????) to maintain joint centration during rotation
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- Maintain slight elbow bend
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- Straight elbows, initiate movement with shoulder blades
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- Hands pull away from body, keep elbows tight to body, maintain flexed elbow
These exercises can be done twice per week for a few sets of 12-20 reps. Make some room for these by adding them into your warm up, in between work sets as a filler exercise, or in between workouts whenever you have free time.
Scarecrow Exercise
The scarecrow exercise is an excellent exercise for improving shoulder health. During the scarecrow exercise you target abs and shoulders and also involves upper back & lower traps. This exercise can be performed using cable pulleys, dumbbells, or elastic resistance bands. The video below demonstrates the use of cable pulleys.