The Most Unusual Shoulder Mobility Exercise

Many people probably wonder why we go about training so differently? The funny part is I think the question is “why don’t people try to train the body as it is designed more often?” If you look at the history of strength training it has largely been following what we have just done before. Could you imagine if most industries just kept doing what they do even when they get more information? That’s why when it comes to addressing a common issue like shoulder mobility it shouldn’t shock you that we are going to approach it a bit differently than most.

When it comes to helping people move, feel, and perform their best, there tends to be two big areas of concern…hip and shoulder mobility! Makes sense if you think about it because if we don’t posses proper range of motion in these areas we end up not only being able to perform certain exercises, we can’t lift higher loads, but we find ourselves having issues in areas like shoulders and the low back.

That is probably why shoulder mobility exercises have been on such the rise. Most focus on the shoulders and/or the thoracic spine. The thoracic spine is often less familiar to most, but unlike the lumbar spine the thoracic spine is suppose to possess some good levels of mobility. However, many lack that mobility and it impacts their shoulder mobility. The best example is just letting your posture sink a bit and try to take your arms overhead. Then stand up and see how your range of motion changes.

While shoulder mobility has become such a discussion for so many addressing the REAL issues have been missed. For example, you will see many people perform a thoracic mobility exercise like the following….

Now, is there anything wrong, bad, etc. about such a movement? No, not at all. Is it addressing the core issue of lack of shoulder mobility? Not usually. The people that tend to do well in this type of drill already possess good shoulder mobility, those that do not often struggle and see minimal improvement. Why is that?

Few people ask WHY is the thoracic spine and shoulders shut down? Most will blame just bad posture or sitting and they are kinda right, but not for the reasons they think. People will assume our body just takes these postures, but what they miss is when we sit our core stabilizers usually shut down along with our hips. If you look at the diagram of the chains above and how the body connected, you should start to see the key issue in shoulder mobility.

If our core stabilizers and our hips are not active then our thoracic spine tries to become more stable than mobile. It won’t matter how much we stretch or try to perform bodyweight shoulder mobility drills, your movement won’t change much because we are not addressing the real issue of WHY your mobility is limited.

It surprises most people that we actually start with load, but load does several things…

-It allows us to create tension which helps activate the core.

-We gain feedback upon how to stabilize an area.

That’s why a series of movements like DVRT Master, Sean Lettero, might seem to have very little to do with shoulder mobility, once you understand these concepts you see they have EVERYTHING to do with it!

As good as these DVRT movements are, I wanted to REALLY hit one that most people don’t understand the goal which is our Leverage Presses. We don’t talk about them as much as we should because there is so much about DVRT we like to espouse first. Thinking about it more, we probably should!

Why would THIS DVRT exercise have such an impact on shoulder mobility? I wrote a little bit ago that this exercise was very different from something like a landmine press. In a landmine press the load is in front of the body so as you press up the tension of the body decreases. In a Leverage Press, when you press out the load which creates more tension like a dynamic plank. Knowing where load is coming from is important.

Leverage Presses allow us to create that core tension, that integration of the entire body. We stabilize what might have been turned off and show how quickly it can improve how we move. If you think this is just me trying to sell you on an unusual exercise check out what happened when Coach Paul tried the same!

Seeing how fast we can improve things like shoulder mobility isn’t a magic trick, but just understanding how our body functions and what happens when it doesn’t work right! Exercises to us aren’t just about working a muscle or even a pattern, but trying to teach the body how to work correctly based on its design. That’s why we share information, not just exercises with YOU!

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