Hi guys, I'm Mai-Linh Dovan, Certified Athletic Therapist and Founder of Rehab-U Movement and Performance Therapy.
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This week, we're going to talk about shoulder extension mobility.
So when we talk about shoulder mobility, we tend to focus on overhead and mobility, right? And we're thinking about that flexion range of motion, that abduction range of motion. And one of the ranges of motions that we don't stop to think about sometimes is shoulder extension.
Okay, why is shoulder extension important for things like bench press, push-ups dips, muscle-ups? If we're talking about CrossFit, what's going to happen is when the hands come close to the chest, if the athlete doesn't have good shoulder extension, the scapula is going to tilt forward to make up for that missing range of motion and they're going to wind up in that rolling forward position, okay?
Now, there are a number of ways that you might see this, you might see it during movement, or you might use something like the trunk lowering test in your assessments. And that's where you might kind of see that shoulder rolling forward as someone comes down in a push-up. I'm going to show you what that looks like. Caro's going to come in and demonstrate for us. So she's going to do a good trunk lowering test where she just lowers down to the ground and you can see she's nice and stable. Now, with some people, what will happen is as they get closer and closer to the ground, the shoulders will start to dump a little bit more forward. Okay. They're going to get a little bit more shrug, a little bit more retraction. She actually has a hard time doing it wrong, which is a really good thing.
Okay? So what I want to talk about as well, in the level 1 course (if you've taken our level 1 course, and if you haven't, you should check it out) we talk about anterior humeral glide or the anterior humeral glide screen, which is a test that we use where we have someone pull on the elastic with very little resistance to see whether that shoulder dumps forward. And we use that as a functional test to see if they can maintain good, scapular control. I don't want you to confuse the terms anterior glide. In the glenohumeral joint it is actually normal that the humerus needs to glide anteriorly. That's an accessory movement. And it needs to do that for you to get extension range of motion. And also for external rotation range of motion that test we use is to see if people can control that movement, okay? So there may be a question that people's shoulders are dumping forward on things, like bench, press, push-ups, and so on because they don't have the scap control. But it could also be because they don’t have the shoulder extension.
So we're going to check out how we look at that restriction. I'm going to get Caro to come over here again. So let's say we looked at Caro whose trunk lowering test, and we've seen her work in the gym and we're seeing that shoulder dump forward, I want to know: Does she have a restriction? I'm going to go and see what her extension range of motion is like, I'm just going to show you guys one side here, but let's get that other arm by your side as well. So, what I'm going to do is I'm actually going to lift her up a little bit because I don't want her to be in this resting position because of gravity, the scapula is already being pulled forward, right? So I'm just going to lift her up to stabilize her and then I'm going to check to see what her extension range of motion is like.
Typically you want to get about like a 45 degree angle, 45 to 50 degrees of that extension, okay? Now she doesn't have a limitation in that extension.
Now, if you're a therapist, you could also get your hands on and check out the articular capsule and see if there's a restriction in the anterior capsule, right? But she doesn't have a restriction in her passive range of motion.
So, if I'm seeing the shoulder dumping forward in her active movements, I know that it's more of a scap control issue, okay? But let's say there was a restriction. What kind of exercises could you give someone?
