I've had some great results with:
- Kettlebell work. TGU/Halos/Arm bar are all great exercises for shoulder health/strengt/mobility.
- Dead hangs [1].
- Some light stick mobility exercises such as [2].
[1] https://www.t-nation.com/training/tip-two-surprising-exercis...
One thing I learned is that a lot of shoulder stuff comes from tightness of the pec minor, which now in retrospect is pretty obvious. Some things that I do that have really helped with shoulder stuff:
1) Shoulder dislocates with an aikido jo. Any rigid stick works, like a broom handle.
2) Camel pose (ustrasana), but coming into it a bit differently than is usually taught in yoga classes. Keep your knees hips width distance apart, with your toes tucked under (rather than pointed), and sit on your heels. Grab your heels with your fingers on the inside of your feet (if you were to open your hand your thumbs will be pointing directly backwards). Make sure you have good shoulder rotation here. Now lift your pelvis up while holding on to your feet, get your pelvis stacked over your knees, and think about lifting your chest to the sky. Send your breath into your upper chest for 5-7 breaths and then come out the way you came in. This really opened my pec minor.
3) Gomukhasana with arms clasped behind your back. Use a strap if you can’t get the bind (it might take a while for this rotation to open).
4) Pull-ups. Lots of pull ups. Started with dead hangs, then would do 50% of max 6x times per day 3-4 days a week. Would retest max every 3 weeks. Got myself to about 15 per set before I decided I didn’t need to do that many pull ups.
5) cat cow with wrists flipped, fingers pointed backwards. Really focusing on the shoulder rotation and getting straight arm scapular engagement.
6) Infraspinatus strengthening a few times per week with light weight. Exercises were described in this article: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3655748/
7) Lots of side planks (vasisthasana). Be careful with this one, it can do a lot of harm if you go too hard with it before you’re ready.
8) Not for shoulder per-se, but what really strengthened my neck muscles over the years has been practicing headstand the way it’s taught in ashtanga vinyasa yoga. (Sirsasana -> urdhva dandasana -> sirsasana -> childs pose).
During quarantine I started supplementing my regular yoga asana practice with Dylan Werner’s True Strength series and I highly recommend it if people are wanting an incremental body weight training series. Lots of mobility work in there too.
Word about pull-ups. I was doing pullups 3X a week, and I tried not overtrain by a very very gradual increase over months in an Excel-sheet-level programming, since the pandemic and I got a pull-up bar at home. I was super careful. And yet it happened - it's called Golfer's Elbow and it's technically called medial epicondylitis, and it hella sucks. It lasts many months, it doesn't magically go away if you do nothing, because I think it's due to a muscle imbalance (impossible to confirm that via online research, just anecdotal), and it's very painful. In the mornings I get a stinging elbow pain just by lifting a piece of paper or scratching my head.
So careful with the pullups.
Your cat cow with wrists flipped sounds very intriguing, I'm going to explore that.
It's interesting that Yoga fixed you up. Glad that helped and thank you for sharing.
But for sure, the most important advice is to pay attention to your body and go easy on it when appropriate, injuries are no fun!
Can you elaborate ? I believe you are saying you intentionally dislocate your shoulder but I am skeptical that that is actually a thing ... I think maybe you mean you are adjusting, or popping, your shoulder ?
Genuinely curious ...
You can vary the intensity of it by your hand positioning on the stick — start pretty wide at first and eventually reduce the width between your hands over time. Be careful with it and take your time, opening your shoulders takes a while (years).
I was doing TGU for a while, I should get back into it. Part of it is pandemic-lack-of-space, and part of it is, overhead movements cen trigger the headaches.