Shoulder is such a complicated structure. Just by working on hypertrophy or strength of the shoulders may not lead to healthy shoulder where you can scratch your back or reaching for the object that is above your head without any discomfort. Even with lifters, athletes, bodybuilders, shoulder injuries are common. However, athletes have started to realize that there are smaller muscles, such as rotator cuffs, needed to be strengthened to utilize the bigger muscle group, such as deltoid and triceps, at its maximum capacity.
Anatomy of Shoulder
When people speak of shoulders they typically talk about the lump at the top of the arms. However, that is just a part of the shoulder. What makes it complicated is the scapula or also known as shoulder blade.
Shoulder is consisting of 4 main joints. It is supported by the clavicle via acromioclavicular joints and clavicle is anchored to the top of sternum (chest bone) via sternoclavicular joint. Then the upper arm is supported by the scapula or shoulder blade via glenohumeral joints, which is the structure that we commonly call shoulder. There is one another joint that does not mentioned too often called scapulothoracic joint. This joint is bringing the entire shoulder blade unit to rib cage at thoracic or upper back region.
There are so many muscles that contribute to stabilizing and moving shoulder joints. Some of the well-known shoulder stabilizing muscles are the rotator cuffs, which consists of supraspinatus, subscapularis, teres minor, and infraspinatus. These muscles stabilize humerus, which is upper arm bone, to scapula. Another famous one is trapezius. It is diamond-shaped muscles in the back and covers large surface area of upper back. Origin is bottom portion of the skull and vertebrae from C7 to T12. Insertion is clavicle, acromion, and scapula. Trapezius not only stabilize the shoulder blade but also is involved in rotation, retraction, elevation, and depression of the scapula. There are other muscles such as pectoral minor, serratus, rhomboids, deltoids, and part of biceps.
Commonly known major shoulder or arm movement muscles are pectoralis major, latissimus dorsi (lats), and deltoids. Of course, shoulder stabilizing muscles will also participate in the arm and the shoulder movements.
Exercises Relation to Shoulder Movements
Shoulders has 10 different movement patterns, and the exercises are based off from these movement patterns. First 6 are flexion, extension, adduction, abduction, internal and external rotations are all relative to glenohumeral joints where humerus and scapula meets. Some of the common exercises from these movement patterns are front raise, lateral raise, open/close doors.
Remainder of 4 movement patterns are scapula depression, elevation, retraction, and protraction which are all relative to scapula. Some of the common exercises are pull ups, rows, chest press, and shoulder press.
Although there are 10 different movement patterns, many of the common exercises does cover multiple movement patterns. For example, pull up or lat pulldown uses extension, abduction, external rotation, depression, and retraction. Shoulder press uses flexion, adduction, elevation, and protraction. Therefore, you can cover several movement patterns by using 2-3 exercises.
Exercises to Restore Shoulder Movement
To restore movement of the shoulders it is important to emphasis all the shoulder movements. In the video I have demonstrated some sample exercises to restore the movement of scapula, humerus, and skull. Skull may sound surprising, however, when you think of the trapezius you will understand that tight trapezius can lead to immobility of the neck and can cause stiff shoulder, neck pain and also an headache. This routine may help those who had upper body training session or had long computer work or long-distance driving.
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