Lindsey from Moxie Strength & Nutrition demonstrates why barbell overhead presses can hurt volleyball players and shows safer kettlebell alternatives with four-time national champion Ellie Duffy. A bottoms-up kettlebell press forces stabilizer muscles to work by gripping the bell's bottom, while an upside-down press creates natural external rotation. Both are safer for shoulders that lack mobility.
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Hi, I'm Lindsey here with Moxie, Strength and Nutrition. And we're going to talk about strength training in the off season for your athletes, specifically volleyball players. So we're going to get started with talking about the shoulders. So shoulder strength training is very important when you are training in the off season for injury prevention especially. Unfortunately, the standard overhead press that a lot of us are taught to do can't always be safe for everyone. If I put my arms overhead and my back causes an arch, that means overhead pressing isn't always necessarily safe for me. My shoulders doesn't have enough external rotation, so getting behind my body isn't as easy for me. So we're going to show you a couple exercises that avoid that. Additionally, the shoulder is a spiral rotational diagonal. So the shoulder likes to rotate spirally upward. So it's a spiral rotational joint. So it doesn't like to move in that fixed pattern that an overhead barbell often causes. So today we're going to focus on using that spiral rotational joint as it's often used in volleyball. From hitting a natural motion, you're moving, you're not moving in a fixed pattern. So the first move we're going to go through is with kettlebells. So normally I'm not a huge fan of kettlebells actually, but for this shoulder exercise, I do really like the kettlebell. So I have with me Ellie Duffy, who is a four time national champ, played at Concordia St. Paul and was also nominated for NCAA Woman of the year. So she's much better at volleyball than I'll ever be. So she's going to show us how to do these exercises. So we're going to start with a bottoms up kettlebell press. So Ellie's simply going to take the kettlebell, turn it bottoms up. She's at about a 45 degree angle here with her shoulder or 90 degree angle right there. And so the kettlebe gripping the kettlebell on the bottom part with that grip action, you activate and recruit the rotator cuff. Additionally, Ellie has to keep the kettlebell from falling side to side here. So by keeping it from falling side to side, all of her little tiny stabilizing muscles in her shoulder are activated. So this is a great exercise to activate all those tiny little muscles. So from here you're just going to perform a standard upward motion in a pressing fashion. So anyone who struggles with any type of injury in the shoulder, especially from repetition or overuse, can do this exercise with no pain. They should exercise with no pain. So great for even your most seasoned athletes. So she's just pressing up right here. Again, if she really wanted to, she could take this down into a split stance. So down into a split stance right here. This will cause a little bit more stability, take a little bit of the core out of it. And then if you want to add that core back in and make this a really functional movement, you can actually take this into a lunge and press. So she's going to press up, go back down into reverse lunge and press up. Yes. This is a lot of stabilizing right here. Great core movement. Great total functional movement. So that's our first movement, the bottoms up cat kettlebell press. I would do about 10 reps of those per arm and three sets per arm. So the second exercise we can do if you want to advance it. So if you have people that have pain free shoulders, you can advance this exercise and take the kettlebell and actually flip it upside down. So the head of the kettlebell is resting on the back of the wrist. So from here you're causing external rotation naturally, because that head is going to cause it. So as Ellie presses up, you'll see her arm naturally turns out. So causing that spiral back to that spiral rotational motion, her shoulder's naturally going to press out, causing external normal and good, because that external rotation caused on the outside is counteracted on the inside and forces your shoulder to hold into the socket muscle. So this is a great injury prevention exercise. Okay. And if you want to take this a little bit further, you can actually turn it into an Arnold press and bring the weight all the way in front of you and press all the way out, all the way down in front of you and all the way out. This is great for all volleyball players, specifically because this is a common motion, right? So you go from here, you load up here and you're loading up to swing. You're not really using an overhead straight press ever. This is that great spiral rotational motion. Again, you can take this and do it into a lunge and press as well. And again, you're doing about three sets of 10 reps on each arm for this. So these are your two shoulder exercises, the bottoms up kettlebell press and the external rotation kettlebell.
