Best Shoulder Mobility Exercises (Top Picks)

Instantly improve your shoulder mobility with these exercises. First thing you want to do with shoulder mobility is test where you're actually at, and a great test for this is sitting flush up against the wall, bringing your arms back. Ideally, your wrists should be touching the wall, extending all the way up, keeping contact. Fuck you, would you make any more noise next time? Just, just, just do a double, like bang bang, just in the middle. It's fine. I tried to put the pants First thing you should do with shoulder mobility is test where you're at, and a good way to test where you're at is sitting your bum flush up against the wall, elbows pinned back, and wrists up against the wall, pushing up all the way up and all the way down, keeping those wrists in contact with the wall. If you're not able to keep this position, it's often a sign not of tightness but of weakness, and that weakness needs to be addressed with these exercises. So the first exercise we're going to be covering is the on-the-floor weighted stick dislocate. Firstly, the way you set it up— get a stick, you get one of these from Bunnings for about $2, put your weight through. Then when you're lying on the floor, don't just assume lying on the floor in this position is enough. The first thing you want to do is when you're on the floor, bring your belly button in towards your spine and flex your bum as hard as you can. And you want to maintain that position throughout this exercise. Then what you're going to be doing is you're going to be grabbing the stick. See how in this position I'm maintaining that belly button in towards my spine and I'm bringing the stick up and over. Now, depending on your shoulder mobility, you may need to go wider, you may need to take the load off. Either way, you want to be crunching your rib cage on top of your pelvis. That means your belly button is going in towards your spine. And controlling this movement all the way. If this is too easy, let me show you the more advanced version of this. The progression of on the floor is standing up. Now, the floor variation minimizes the movement, which makes it easier. When you're standing up, you need to think about your body position a little bit more. So in this position, you want to have your quads flexed, you want to have your bum flexed, your rib cage should be over your pelvis, and your belly button in towards your spine. Now, in this position, you want to be pushing your arms to the floor as much as possible to begin. As you come up, you want to be elevating and pushing to the roof. And as you come through, you want to keep that rib cage down. And notice when I get to this position, a lot of people want to do is they want to lean back and let their hands go. And then when they come through, they bend their elbows. Now, if you're doing that, you're doing the exercise wrong. Again, we want to maintain that position the whole time. See how my arms are locked? I'm through, I'm not bending my hands, I'm not loosening my hands. I'm really working that range of motion and really working the mobility and strength aspect. Now, depending on where you're tight, you depend on where you feel it most. You may feel it in your pecs, you may feel it in your biceps. Key things is use a load, use a weight that works for you. So if a weight is too heavy, you can just use the stick. You can also regress it back to the floor, and you can also go wider with your hands. I've literally had clients start like this, or they've used a longer stick. The same vein as the weighted dislocate, the next exercise that's really going to help improve your shoulder mobility is shoulder extensions. And the simple reason is most people don't do any shoulder extension work in their day-to-day training. Basically looks like this. I'm going to assume that you're watching this and maybe don't have any strength whatsoever. The easiest way to implement any shoulder extension work is to lay face down. You'd grab two dumbbells like this I'm just going to demonstrate with the plate, and you would move up in this position. So you could do 10 with your hands and palms facing the floor, and then reverse it and do another 10. More advanced version of this would be to implement a stick, or you could load it as such to the arm. So instead of your hands being facing this way, you're going to bring it that way. So your hands, your palms are going to be facing down in this, this shoulder extension, and you're going to bring it up and you're gonna try and hold, 1, 2, back down. So this would be the easiest way to implement shoulder extension work, or the second easiest way. The easiest way is with dumbbells. When you get better at that and you wanna bring it into more of an integrated movement pattern, you wanna be standing on your feet. Again, you're gonna be doing the same thing, and the reason why it's important to learn this standing on your feet is because we really wanna get that rib cage down in this position and then go into shoulder extension. 'Cause a lot of time, people to make up range, is they'll do this and they'll try and like use other body parts to help them get that range. You wanna bring that rib cage down and get into that position there. As you can see, my arms there, you wanna hold it back down. So nothing else is moving, right? You add some load to this, you'll find this surprisingly challenging. Again, because it's just not a movement that a lot of people are exposed to. If you can develop strength through here, a lot of people, feedback will be, they feel it in their triceps. And absolutely, because triceps are involved in that shoulder extension. and sometimes that's what needs to get stronger to minimize that shoulder pain. So the last exercise I'll share with you in this video is actually more of an exercise about stability, because you need to remember that proximal stability will equal distal output. So what does that mean? The more stability we create in a joint, the more we'll be able to express strength. So this is the bottom-up kettlebell press. So what you want to do in this one is you want to bring your lat down so you're stable, and then you're going to be pressing up and through. You really want to make sure you get that full range of motion. You don't want to be coming out and compensating in any way. You want to be down and straight through, and ideally your bicep is going to be covering your ear. And as you can see, there is a chain between the wrist, the elbow, and the shoulder in terms of stability. So if you start rocking around and your grip— you're not able to get a grip— that is a reflection of the shoulder being unstable in this position. So again, I'm pulling down, my wrist is nice and strong, everything is stacked on top, and I'm pulling through. And as a real test, if you can even get into this position, squat all the way down and really maintain. So you're really challenging that stability position there. What are your favorite shoulder mobility and stability exercises? Let us know in the comments below. And as always, for more great videos and tips, hacks, and insights into the world of enterprise fitness, make sure you subscribe and ring that bell for more. Peace out.