Last blog, I discussed how to gain mobility in your shoulders by showing you some awesome exercises. Hopefully you have been using them!

In this blog, I want to discuss stability, in regards to the shoulder complex. I want to show you a few exercises you can do to fire up those stabilizers around your shoulder. These can be used as a warm-up, filler, or finisher in a workout session.

Okay, so what the heck is stability? A simple answer for defining stability would be the bodies ability to resist forces in all types of movement from all types of directions. When discussing with athletes, I like to use the analogy of a muscle car. The engine of the muscle car can produce a lot of power, but how good are the brakes on this muscle car? I am comparing the “strong & powerful” muscles to the engine of the muscle car and the stabilizers are the brakes of the muscle car.

As an athlete, you may be able to produce a lot of force because your strong, but can your body “pump the breaks” and absorb that force. This scenario happens a lot with athletes who throw or hit overhead. They have enormous amounts of force, but when push comes to shove, their stabilizers cannot absorb that force efficiently. That’s when an injury can happen.

In this video, I show you some different variations to performing loaded carries from the overhead (straight arm ) position as well as from the 90/90 (bent arm) position. I really like these variations for our athletes at BFP because it forces the athlete to maintain a strong position for a set distance while being under load.

Check em out, try em out, do em!

In order on the video

Plate Carry

DB Waiters Carry

Bottoms up KB Carry

Banded Chaos Carry

90/90 DB Waiters Carry

90/90 Bottoms up KB Carry

90/90 Banded Chaos Carry

Coach Silas