Glenn Dawson shows how to fix an elevated shoulder with three exercises: upper-trap release using a rolled towel, lower-trap activation by sliding your fingertips on the floor while lying down, and prone I lifts with your forehead on the ground. Test yourself first with an overhead broomstick squat to see the problem, then retest after to confirm the fix.
If you've got neck pain and tension or trap tightness on one side and you did your overhead squat test and it was elevated like so, we're going to fix it in this video in 3 moves so you can retest and feel better literally the time it takes you to go through the moves in this video. It's insane how fast we can get you results. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, you've never done your at-home 18-second broomstick squat test, look below in the description of this video. And go assess your body and get rid of your pain. For everybody else, do these 3 moves with me and start to feel better right now. First things first, if you have a tight upper trap, that muscle here is tight and it's pulling the shoulder up in the socket. Usually that's going to be where your neck pain is at too as well. We're going to reduce the tension here of this trap first. We've got to release the trap. To do that, all you need is a household item like a towel. Roll it up. Now, in a pinch, I've used a hoodie, I've used a belt, anything that you can throw around your shoulder to make this work. There's no excuse. You can get immediate neck pain relief just doing this exercise. Then I'm going to throw it over. So say I want to get my right side, I'm going to use my left hand to throw it over and catch it with my right hand in the back, just like so. So in the back, I've got it held on to. Now I'm going to twist and then tighten so I have more torque and tension on this trap. I'm pulling down with both arms towards the floor, so it's alleviating the pressure of the trap itself. Now from here, I want you to breathe into the towel or whatever you have strapped around your neck. Hold and then exhale. Each time you breathe, breathe in and open up your rib cage and then exhale nice and slow and create more tension on the way down. If you do this for 90 seconds, you'll see a massive reduction in neck stiffness and tightness. After about 90 seconds, go ahead and move your head left to right. Feel any kind of like nice tension release and then move on to our second motion. All right. Now that the upper trap is released, we can kind of shift the shoulder down. We have to activate those muscles beneath the shoulder blade, the upper trap's cousin, the lower trap muscles beneath the shoulder blade. So to do that, I want you to lay down and put your fingertips into the ground. From here, you're going to slide your fingertips up and then bring them back and squeeze the muscles beneath your shoulder blade the whole time. It's very important to focus and squeeze on the muscles beneath the shoulder blade so that way you're working the correct muscles. Do this about 10 times, nice and slow, and you'll feel the shoulder legitimately start to slide back into the socket where it belongs. Then we just have one more movement to solidify that shoulder joint. Last one we're going to focus on is another lower trap activator. It also focuses on some other shoulder blade muscles to really stabilize the shoulder blade and give you better posture. All you got to do, you're going to slap your face into the ground head first and lift your hands. Literally. This is part of the Y's, T's, and I's. We're just going to do the I so you don't activate this upper trap and get anything more stiff. All you have to do is lay down with your forehead into the ground. Relax your glutes and your lower back, and then lift your palms. As you lift, hold them in the air, slowly lower, and then repeat 10 times. Those muscles are usually really, really weak. So don't be ashamed if it's hard for you to get 10. Those muscles aren't usually strong on somebody with a shoulder elevation. Now, once you've completed this, it's very important— retest. That bar should be a lot flatter right after this. If it is, awesome, you're on the right track. That being said, this is not a permanent solution. To permanently solve, you have to fix the root cause of muscular imbalances. You have to strengthen those weak muscles around the shoulder joint itself and create better posture. To do that, we have a special gift for you in the description of this video. So go look below and take the next step to resetting your body.
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