The Iron Jungle 4: The Shoulder Conundrum
Welcome back to the Iron Jungle, savages!
It’s Spring Send Season here in the Ohio River Valley, which means all of the off-season training for outdoor climbing in Red River Gorge, New River Gorge, and Chattanooga gets to be tested by spring breakers and local dirtbags alike! It also means that some of you (myself included) are coming to the end of an intense training cycle, and your body might be feeling a little beat up. Lastly, it means we are halfway through the Sport Climbing portion of the USA Climbing season. Many of you reading this are in the thick of indoor Lead qualifiers, having just finished the Bouldering part of the season without a break in between.
Overtraining and overuse issues seem to always rear their ugly heads this time of year. This month in the Iron Jungle, we are going to look at one of the most common joint issues that athletes see us for at Elite Performance Climbing. I’ll teach you some assessments we use with our athletes to identify if the shoulder problem is actually a shoulder problem or if it's coming from core dysfunction causing shoulder dysfunction. Strap in fam, because we are going into big brain mode to explain how all of this is connected!
Let’s start with a watered-down and simplified anatomy lesson. Your upper middle back and shoulder musculature are the primary movers for Shoulder Flexion, bringing your arm overhead in front of you like you’re about to hit the big hill on a roller coaster. They also bring your arm overhead out to the side of you like a snow angel or jumping jack motion, which is called Shoulder Abduction and Scapular Upward Rotation.
Now, the primary antagonist or opposite mover, for those joint motions, is your Latissimus Dorsi, which I’ll be referring to as your Lat or Lats. These muscles are the largest ones in our upper body, and they have many, many jobs. Two very important ones for climbing shoulder function are Shoulder Extension, which is bringing our arm behind us opposite of the direction of shoulder flexion, and Shoulder Adduction and Downward Scapular Rotation, which are bringing our arm into our side of a “jumping jack” motion.
The rad thing about your Lats is that they do lots of other jobs too! Many of which are antagonists to our abdominal and oblique muscles. As long as all of those muscle groups are active and communicating with your brain, those overhead joint motions will be completely uncompensated and operate through their full range of motion (ROM) pain-free. HOWEVER, if your abdominal muscles have stopped working, your brain will use muscle tightness in your Lats to protect and stabilize your spine since it can't rely on your abdominal muscles to do so any longer. That’s awesome! The bummer wave, however, is the Lat tightness protecting your spine is now restricting the Range and Plane of Motion of your overhead shoulder motions, causing joint dysfunction, which doesn't feel great.
So, how do you know if you have core dysfunction that is causing your shoulder problem? Try these four assessments that we have our athletes complete as part of their 34-joint mobility assessment. Operate in a pain-free range of motion and take notes on your results for each. Were the left and right sides equal in ease of motion and range of motion? Was one side better than the other? Was your joint motion pain-free?
Trunk Rotation
Start by sitting upright on the floor with your legs straight in front of you as shown. If you are unable to start in this position, elevate your hips by sitting on a yoga block or similar object
Place your hands across your chest with your elbows pointing forward to 12 o'clock.
Now SLOWLY rotate your upper body to the left in a pain-free range of motion.
SLOWLY return to the center 12 o'clock
Rinse and repeat on the other side
Did anything feel weird?
Where?
Trunk Side Bending
Start by laying on the floor flat on your back with your arms across your as shown
Keeping your bottom, back and head on the ground, SLOWLY side bend your upper body to the left in a pain free range of motion
Now return to the starting position
Rinse and repeat on the other side
Did anything feel weird?
Where?
Shoulder Flexion
Sit upright on the ground with your legs straight in front of you
Lock your Left arm straight at your side.
Keeping the elbow locked straight at all costs, slowly raise your arm in front of you from 6 o'clock up toward 12 o'clock in a pain free range of motion as shown.
SLOWLY return to your starting position
Rinse and repeat on the other side
Did anything feel weird?
Where?
Shoulder Upward Rotation
Start by laying flat on your back with your arms by your side.
Lock your Left arm straight at the elbow.
Keeping your arm locked straight and on the ground as you move in a pain free range of motion, SLOWLY Upwardly rotate your arm from 6 clock starting position up toward 3 and 12 as shown.
SLOWLY return to your starting position.
Rinse and repeat on the other side
Did anything feel weird?
Where?
Once you’ve completed these assessments, take a look at the notes you took. Was there asymmetry between the right and left? If you find asymmetry in the trunk assessments, you can almost bet the farm your core dysfunction is causing your shoulder dysfunction.
If you are interested in knowing more about activating your body to reverse the asymmetry, check out our IG!
Hakuna Matata and Cowabunga fam!
This article originally appeared in Sport Climber Magazine. The magazine has since ceased publication
