Protect Your Shoulders From Injury With This Exercise

If I had a dollar for every person who complained to me over the years of a shoulder injury - I'd have quite a nice amount of cash!

As you're probably aware, trying to fix a shoulder can be difficult and frustrating.

Whilst your gym buddies are posting their personal bests everywhere, you're treading water and wondering when the hell you'll be back lifting at full strength.

One of the most important steps is to think about PREVENTING a shoulder injury in the first place, as opposed to trying to fix it later.

Strengthening Your Shoulders

First of all, check out this picture of the supraspinatus muscle below:

The supraspinatus is important; stabilising your shoulder joint in just about all movements made by the upper body.

You'll use it bench pressing and whilst shoulder pressing.

A strong supraspinatus may assist in preventing shoulder injuries, at least according to some researchers.

And whilst preventing supraspinatus muscle injuries may be possible, preventing injuries to the tendons is a whole other ball game.

However, a team got together to work out how to strengthen the supraspinatus most efficiently - they wanted to see which exercises prescribed by exercise professionals give patients the most bang for their buck.

Generally there are three exercises used by physiotherapists and trainers to help shoulder muscles better withstand injury: the full can, the empty can and the prone full can.

Here they are:

THE FULL CAN

THE EMPTY CAN

THE PRONE FULL CAN

So the scientists got 22 subjects to do these exercises, and monitored the EMG activity of the subjects' rear and middle delts and the supraspinatus.

So what did they find?

The prone full can (or reverse fly) was observed to be the best overall exercise for the muscles at the rear of the shoulder joint - but there's more to the story.

Check out the graph below for the detail:

The researchers conclude:

"While all 3 exercises produced similar amounts of supraspinatus activity, the full-can exercise produced significantly less activity of the deltoid muscles and may be the optimal position to recruit the supraspinatus muscle for rehabilitation and testing."

It's clear that if you want to isolate only the supraspinatus, then the full-can may be your best bet!

At the end of your shoulders workout - you might want to work your supraspinatus with the full can - which will give the deltoids a rest considering you've just trained them.  

So think about sliding in the full can in at the end of your workout, and this may just help you prevent a shoulder injury!

"Stay Fit, Stay Flexed!" 

Reference

(1) Reinold MM1, Macrina LC, Wilk KE, Fleisig GS, Dun S, Barrentine SW, Ellerbusch MT, Andrews JR. Electromyographic analysis of the supraspinatus and deltoid muscles during 3 common rehabilitation exercises. J Athl Train. 2007 Oct-Dec;42(4):464-9.