In part one of “How to avoid shoulder injuries in the martial arts“, I talked a bit about my personal experience with those and how I deal with them today. In this part we’ll look at how to prevent shoulder injuries. But before we do that, please allow me to make a simple yet important point:

Prevention only works if you make a long term commitment to it.

I’ve been a personal trainer for 16 years and have taught all sorts of clients: young and old, men and women, out of shape and in peak condition, healthy and recovering form their second heart attack at age 27. Regardless of these factors, there is only one that really matters in my experience: commitment. The clients who committed to their goals reached them. Those who started training and were in it for the long term are still working out today. Some of the clients I’ve had from day one are still training with me after 16 years. That’s the kind of commitment I’m talking about.

So if you want to prevent shoulder problems, you have to view training for that goal as a long term plan and integrate it into your training schedule. If you only do it sporadically, you’ll get mediocre results at best.

The biggest psychological mistake people make is this: They think they’ll always have to work as hard as they do when they start such an injury prevention program. That’s simply not true. When you start on a prevention program, you do have to take out some time for it, that’s true. But it won’t stay like that forever. In most cases, you can get good results with only 10-15min.  of work every other day. Once you get the desired results, you  go into maintenance mode and reduce the sessions to twice a week. Or you could incorporate them into your regular training (especially the stretching part). Then a month or perhaps two later, you increase the sessions again, back to  three times a week if you feel your shoulders need it. Experiment and see what works best for you but just make it a part of your overall training.

The two pillars of prevention.

To have healthy shoulders, you need two things: strength training and stretching. Your shoulders have to become both strong and flexible at the same time. Just one or the other doesn’t cut it. You need both in the martial arts and combat sports and here’s why: [Read more…]