There is something you must understand about the shoulder joint.
It is the MOST movable of all the joints in the human body.
As a ball-and-socket joint, it has the most range of motion.
(The other ball-and-socket joint where the leg meets the hip, is comparatively severely restricted.)
What does that mean to you?
All that mobility comes with a drawback.
Mobility and stability can be thought of as polarities. With extra mobility comes less stability.
And, ultimately, that means greater chances of injury. Do you have, or have you ever had, issues with one or both shoulders? Think about people you know. Is it common? Yes, it is.
And many different types of injuries are possible.
How many people can’t lift their arms overhead without some restriction to the movement?
Does that mean you should stop using your shoulders altogether? Baby and coddle them so as to avoid injury? Nope! That’s a recipe for disaster as it’s use it or lose it here.
The problem is that most people do not really USE it.
Sure you may do some pressing like pushups, handstand pushups, bench press or military press. Maybe some dips.
But think about it.
To generalize, the shoulder has 6 planes of movement.
• Overhead
• Below
• Front
• Rear
• Outside
• Inside
So let’s look at those exercises just listed…
Pushups and bench press hit the front plane.
Handstand pushups and military press hit the overhead plane.
Dips hit the below plane.
What about outside, rear and inside?
Most people NEVER use them. Do you?
Not only do you want to build mobility and flexibility in these other ranges of motion but go back to what we started talking about.
You need stability. In other words, you need strength.
To further complicate it, these six planes of motion are generalizations. Really the shoulder and arm can move through a three-dimensional 360-degree sphere.
How much of that are you touching on?
For the mobility, and just touching on the stability too, see my Intuitive Mobility course, which is on sale now. Furthermore, this will teach you how to listen to your body so it can teach YOU exactly what movements you need to get range of motion or out of pain.
For stability with mobility across all six planes, you can also see 8 Amazing Shoulder Flows for Strength, Mobility, Resiliency & Pain-Free Movement available only for Inner Circle Members.
This features a written newsletter as well as 8 videos showing these specific moves and why they work so well. You can also dive deeper into mobility with my 6 module course, Intuitive Mobility.