The Best Sandbag Exercises For Bad Shoulders

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard it…”I can’t do that, I got bad shoulders!” It doesn’t matter if it is DVRT Ultimate Sandbag exercises or any exercise that requires their shoulders to move well. People have already decided they can’t, but we always say they will.

No, we aren’t twisting people’s arms (yes, pun intended) in doing certain exercises. However, far too many people hear WHY they supposedly have bad shoulders and then decide nothing they can do about it. It is really sad because they close down themselves from not only great workouts, but movements they SHOULD be able to do.

Of course I am sensitive to the fact that if you had a pretty legit surgery, caution should be taken with your shoulders. However, for most people, they just haven’t been taught to move well, or how to deal with what appears to be chronic issues.

Do You REALLY Have Bad Shoulders?!

I can’t emphasize enough, the people that I really do approach with great care are those that have had significant surgeries on their shoulders. So, if you are one of those people, because I am not working with you directly, please advise your doctors first or at least start very light with this drill!

Now the rest of you, trust me, I get it. You stretch, you do your mobility drills to improve your range of motion then you avoid exercises that take your arm overhead. How is that working for you? Believe it or not, for most people I hear doing the same the answer is typically a shrug of the shoulders followed by “ok”.

That sucks because it doesn’t HAVE to be that way. I am not going to suggest doing stretching, mobility, or soft-tissue is bad, but it does depend upon the time and amount of work you do in these areas. For starters do you have a way of seeing if you got better?!

More times than not I have found that “bad shoulders” can be fixed with doing two things. Teaching that pressing comes from the feet, not the upper body. It is the HARDEST thing to teach people because it doesn’t look like it makes sense. However, if you can master this strategy you will find that you almost don’t feel ANYTHING in your shoulders when you press. In fact, when people call overhead pressing, “shoulder pressing” I know right off the bat they don’t know HOW to press properly.

The other key is to keep your core braced. Ironically, that works directly with creating force into the ground. When people create force into the ground their pelvis and core braces giving them a stable platform for the upper body to function. Of course this where being intentional with our DVRT Ultimate Sandbag exercises comes really into play!

This may sound great, but HOW do you teach people how to do both? Leveraged pressing has become more of a thing with the popularity of things like landmines, however, I find that even though landmine pressing is easier, it doesn’t teach people these principles. You will see that in the Ultimate Sandbag exercises above that leverage FORCES our body to do some of the things we just spoke about.

That is because leverage can be used in many different ways, angles, and reasons. When we use this DVRT Ultimate Sandbag exercises drill the body is made to drive through the feet and when the hips extend those glutes get tight, the core braces, and then all of a sudden that press moves up! Yes, this is a relatively pain free way of pressing, but more importantly watch what it does for improving the movement quality of your shoulders AND hips!

Learn how we use DVRT Ultimate Sandbag exercises to help “bad” shoulders into strong and resilient ones! Save 25% on our DVRT Restoration program HERE