Finding shoulder-safe exercises

Tigerboy · May 21st, 2009, 10:52 PM

My shoulders are taking a long time to recover, and it has been a month. Luke suggested I might have a muscle imbalance (whatever that means

) and directed me to this T-Nation article:

http://www.tmuscle.com/free_online_a...lls_and_shrugs

I am pretty sure I have rotator cuff issues. Most of my pain is near the shoulder apex. I'm a hands on kind of guy, I don't need to know all the theory behind something, I just want to know what exercises to do, so I went right to the bottom of the article.

I tried some pushups at the gym just for the heck of it, and I did far fewer than I normally can. My chest was nice and sore the next day, so I know that exercise targets my chest. Excellent.

I'd like to compile a list of shoulder-safe exercises. I'm pretty sure I won't be doing any barbell bench presses - perhaps dumbbells are safer. One problem with the barbell bench is that I was doing it with shoulders flared out (this was recommended by a Milos Sarcev technique that Jay Juliano posted a while back, which caused a lot of discussion at the time). The idea was the Milos technique targetted the chest, but the problem is, in my case it targetted the shoulders too, and you really don't want to be doing shoulders in a chest exercise.

I'd like to return to deadlifts and squats. Squats I'm certain are okay, they stay far away from the shoulders (whose sole purpose is to simply support the bar). Deadlifts I'm less sure of, since you're lifting, but my guess, besides hamstrings, it gets the upper back and stays away from my shoulder issues.

May 21st, 2009, 10:52 PM	#1 (permalink)
Tigerboy Tight as a Tiger Silver Member Join Date: Nov 2001 Location: West Virginia Age: 43 Posts: 2,364 Rep Power: 129 Blog Entries: 2 Thanks: 5 Thanked 9 Times in 8 Posts Credits: 68,224	Finding shoulder-safe exercises My shoulders are taking a long time to recover, and it has been a month. Luke suggested I might have a muscle imbalance (whatever that means ) and directed me to this T-Nation article: http://www.tmuscle.com/free_online_a...lls_and_shrugs I am pretty sure I have rotator cuff issues. Most of my pain is near the shoulder apex. I'm a hands on kind of guy, I don't need to know all the theory behind something, I just want to know what exercises to do, so I went right to the bottom of the article. I tried some pushups at the gym just for the heck of it, and I did far fewer than I normally can. My chest was nice and sore the next day, so I know that exercise targets my chest. Excellent. I'd like to compile a list of shoulder-safe exercises. I'm pretty sure I won't be doing any barbell bench presses - perhaps dumbbells are safer. One problem with the barbell bench is that I was doing it with shoulders flared out (this was recommended by a Milos Sarcev technique that Jay Juliano posted a while back, which caused a lot of discussion at the time). The idea was the Milos technique targetted the chest, but the problem is, in my case it targetted the shoulders too, and you really don't want to be doing shoulders in a chest exercise. I'd like to return to deadlifts and squats. Squats I'm certain are okay, they stay far away from the shoulders (whose sole purpose is to simply support the bar). Deadlifts I'm less sure of, since you're lifting, but my guess, besides hamstrings, it gets the upper back and stays away from my shoulder issues.