Can Kettle Bells save your shoulder?

Have you ever seen one of these?

In our clinic we heavily utilize kettle bells in the treatment/rehabilitation of shoulder pain.  We do this for several reasons:

1) It teaches your shoulder how to stabilize as a group.  You have 4 rotators cuff muscles.  When we need control in our shoulder, we need all 4 cuff muscles to work together.  So why have we grown up doing those tired old band exercises for our shoulders?

2) Working your grip helps rehab the shoulder.  A kettle bell naturally utilizes grip strength, otherwise you'd drop the weight.  In the medical field we measure grip strength as an indicator of overall neurological health of your shoulder and arm.  So working your grip is working your shoulders,  especially when you can't raise your arm overhead due to pain.

3)  Kettle bells teach you the best way to use your shoulder.  When you fall out of ideal alignment while holding a kettle bell, your arm automatically starts shaking.  So without thinking about it, it teaches you how to realign your shoulder and minimize the stress on your body.

QUICK TIP

Here's a quick trick I like using to warm up my shoulders before exercise (or as a rehab exercise on it's own).  Pick up the heaviest kettle bell (or dumbell if you don't have one) that you can handle.  Hold the kettle bell by your side (the way it naturally hangs) and rotate your arm left and right as far as it will go in either direction.  This utilizes all of the strategies above to help rehab your shoulder by improving alignment and control of the rotator cuff.  Hold for 30 seconds.

To have you shoulder checked out, please contact me at drscotthoar@gmail.com or dial 561.997.8898.  To check out more visit www.Mobility-4Life.com

Shoulder Pain

Possibly the most common patient I’m getting these days is the shoulder pain patient.  “It hurts every time I reach overhead......” or “ twist my arm back”.  I’ve been joking around with my Crossfit patients that I’m going to write the New England journal of Medicine and propose a new diagnosis called, “Crossfit shoulder”.  It’s that deep pain in the front of your shoulder that shows itself during overhead squats/kipping pullups, etc.  So today I decided to blog about the shoulder.

The shoulder is the most exposed joint in the body.  Why?  It has a better range of motion that any other joint.  Think about it, it moves in 5 different planes!  Really, I think the shoulder is amazing.  It really takes a very specific mechanism of injury to dislocate it, and it has an unbelievable range of motion.  During more cynical times, however, I’ve heard it described as a golf ball on top of a tee that is tilted about 45 degrees.  Because of that, it’s the soft tissues’ (muscles as opposed to bones) job to create stability.  So you need proper muscle function for a truly healthy shoulder.  

Here’s the problem.

Extended exercise, sleeping with your arm over your head, or just poor nutrition can cause decreased oxygen deliverance to the soft tissues of your shoulder, which leads to adhesion (fibrotic buildup) of certain muscles which will cause a shift in the ‘centration’ (the ability to stay centered) of the shoulder joint.  That’s why you feel pinching or tightness in your shoulder muscles around the joint.  

So what do we need to do?

You have a number of options.  Number one- if the shoulder is already in pain, you need intervention.  I recommend a manual therapist (chiropractor/message therapist/physical therapist) that does soft tissue techniques such as Active Release Technique (ART) or Graston technique to restore the elastic properties of the muscle to normalize the ‘centration’ of the shoulder.  

Shoulder Treatment

Number two -  Most people don’t realize the contribution of the thoracic spine (upper back) on shoulder motion.  During an overhead movement like overhead squat, the thoracic spine has a great deal of extension (or backward movement) that allows the shoulders to go back.  Without thoracic extension, all the stress of the overhead movement goes right on that shoulder.  The problem is that people don’t typically address thoracic extension so deficiency is extremely widespread.   There are plenty of manual therapies, correction exercises, stretches that one can learn to address thoracic extension deficiencies.  

Shoulder Exercises 

Upper Back Flexibility

Turkish Get-Ups

If you or someone you know has shoulder pain and would like to avoid surgery, please visit www.Mobility-4Life.com