Number 1 Exercise To Prevent Shoulder Problems

By Biagio Mazza

Today we are going to talk about the number one thing you can do to prevent shoulder problems.

It's gonna seem weird and maybe unsure to a lot of you as you hear this, but it's actually to take your arms, grab on top of something and hang.

Now, the challenge with that is that if you have shoulder problems already, that's not going to work really well typically. Usually that makes the shoulder problems worse.

But if you're not having shoulder problems, or if you've gotten over an old injury and you're just looking for some preventative strategies, that is the number one thing you can do, is just grab on something and hang.

Now, if you can't hang and let all your body weight stay down there, then what you can do is put your hands onto a bar or something that's stable and just unweight yourself by bending your knees to get some stretch through the shoulders there. That helps to open up the shoulder joint.

Really, in any given day as Americans, we rarely hold our hands up over our head for more than a few seconds at a time. That motion gets lost and then we start having problems with that motion as we reach, lift and move the arm to try to manipulate objects and that sort of thing, so keeping the arm up for periods of time really helps to train that to do better.

In terms of time, ideally you can build up to seven minutes a day of hanging. I would be lying to you if I told you that I did that seven minutes every single day, but I try to. I try to at least get a couple minutes every morning as I go through my workout on my own, of just arm hangs to just work on my shoulder mobility.