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The gluts are essential for preventing back pain and for bending. The bridge is an excellent exercise for activating the gluts.

How do you fix shoulder pain? Are your shoulders rounded forward? These shoulder issues can affect the highest level athlete to someone who rarely workout. We discussed in the last post about keeping your shoulders back and good exercises for that. In this post we are going to talk strictly about the shoulder joint or glenohumeral joint. A key component to rounded shoulders is lack of internal rotation or getting the arm behind your lower back.  If you are able to get your arm behind your lower back, does your shoulder round forward? The object is to pull that shoulder back just like we pulled the scapulae back. Here are some exercises for this issue.

It sounds counterintuitive to work on internally rotating your shoulder but this muscle is in the best position to pull your actual shoulder joint back. The first exercise is rotator cuff self-massage, the second is stretching into IR and the third is actively internally rotating your rotator cuff.

Ok, what have we covered so far?

#1 We have tested for rounded shoulders in the push-up position.

#2 We have tested limitations that cause anterior shoulder pain. 

So now the question is how do we fix rounded shoulders?

If the scapula cannot retract (meaning bringing shoulder blades together), it also means they are probably protracted (aka rounded shoulders). Below is the scapula movement that needs to occur on the rib cage to bring the scapulae together.

 

So If the scapula does not retract, how can we get into a proper shoulder position. We see this done wrong all the time in the gym. People are constantly rounding their shoulders when doing exercises. The serratus is a muscle found underneath your shoulder blade that can hinder your ability to pull your shoulder blades together.

Here are a couple of great exercise to help with serratus retraction (aka bringing those shoulder blades together)

The following video shows 4 exercises to improve retraction of the scapula.