Shoulder Workout To Prevent Injuries In Office Workers

Monday is traditionally international chest days in gyms across the globe. A lot of guys who are serious about their training head to the bench press areas of the gym and solely focus on building their chest muscles. I understand the concept of muscle isolation for growth and performance however working out in this way can lead to injury especially in office workers.

This probably isn’t the news many of you wanted to hear. Here are a few of the reasons why isolating the chest can be a bad idea for office workers and here is an alternative shoulder workout to prevent injuries in office workers.

What we know about the pec muscles is that they are extremely dominant, which means that once they are engaged they have a tendency to remain switched on even when they aren’t been directly used. For people who work at a desk all day they usually have hypertonic pecs already and then when you add a heavy session of chest dominant exercises the pecs will take over from all of the small stabilising muscles. We also know that a lot of concentric contraction in the pecs followed by 8-9 hours of sitting will cause them to become really short and tight.

So, what happens when you have hypertonic, short and tight pecs? Your shoulders will become internally rotated and hyperextended which puts a lot of pressure on the joint capsule and small rotator cuff muscles. The little rotator cuff muscles can’t fire correctly when the shoulder joint is not sitting in a good position within the joint which causes them to get inflamed and prone to tearing. This generally can lead to bursitis, shoulder impingement, rotator cuff tears and in some cases labrum tears. None of these are fun.

It’s not all doom and gloom though and I’m certainly not saying that you can’t or shouldn’t include some chest exercises into your training programme but I do think that stepping away from a purely chest exclusive day is necessary. I generally recommend that people do a push/pull day when focusing on chest. This type of training would include one push movement followed by 2 pull movements to counterbalance the pec dominant press movement. A good warm up that includes some rotator cuff strengthening work and a cool down which includes pec stretching and mobilisation is also recommended. Below is a sample of this sort of work out.

Warmup

1. 400m row

2. 20 x band int/ext rotation each side x 3

Workout

A1. Bench press 5x 6-8

A2. Rear delt face pulls 5 x 15-20

A3. Bent over row 5 x 15-20

B1. Chest Fly 5x 8-10

B2. Seated row 5 x 15-20

B3. Pull up 5 x 5-10

Cool down

1. Banded pec stretch

2. Self myofascial release pecs and lats on trigger point ball or foam roller

Help Prevent Shoulder Injuries with Our Shoulder Workouts

I hope you’ve got something from my top shoulder workouts tips. It’s never too late to start using these shoulder workouts to help you feel more comfortable in the office.

Interested in learning more? Contact us to book an appointment with your Brisbane CBD Chiropractor.