Indestructible Shoulders

As a sports performance coach our job is to insure that our athletes are to be healthy before the season starts and while the season is going on. A lot of coaches neglect that part because it does not bring in the money. They would rather train them with parachutes, quick foot ladders, and speed and quickness drills because that stuff looks cool and will bring in the big bucks. That is why you see so many injuries in sports today, because instead of strengthening joints, muscles, and trying to increase bone density they are trying to get paid.

Here at Samson S&C we pride ourselves in having our athletes be prepared for the pounding they will endure during the season. A common injury that I see all the time is shoulder injuries whether it is an impingement, tear, or dislocation. These are common in all sports and should be paid attention to with great detail. We have our guys perform a series of warm ups that help stretch, stabilize, and strengthen the shoulder muscles.

The warm up consist of 100 skips jump rope. Foam roll your upper back and your lats to your rear delts. Then we will perform 10 reps of shoulder dislocations. Followed by 3 sets of 20 secs each arm of capsule stretching. After the stretch we hit some X jumping jacks, seal jumping jacks, and overhead jumping jacks. The last two warm ups we perform are Hammer slams 10 each side and slosh pipe circling. This is the warm up we perform with our athletes for their shoulder.

You will notice in our videos that we like to do a lot of shoulder exercises with rotation in them and overhead pressing. We cut out the overhead pressing when the season starts just because their shoulders are beat up from the wear and tear the season puts on their body. We like to incorporate seated DB cleans, L-raises, and internal and external rotator cuff into their programs. This allows us to strengthen the shoulder and add some extra mobility in it as well. We also do plyo push ups to help their shoulders get used to the blunt force they will receive in the season, the plyo's will help them develop a lot of their stabilizers and joint health. We also use heavy overhead presses as well to develop brute strength in their shoulders and to add on some much need size. We will have them use leg drive in all overhead movements so they don't have too much pressure on their shoulder joints.

Here is a video of a shoulder circuit we like to do for shoulder health and mobility.