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…]

Shoulder injuries are one of the most common injuries in martial arts, regardless if you practice MMA or traditional arts. If you’ve been training for a while, chances are high you’ve faced them before. Unfortuntely, so have I. Case in point:

One of the wrestling drills I do in my Sanshou class is “King of the hill”. The concept is very simple and many teachers use it:

• Two students face off and try to throw, sweep or trip each other.
• The first one to fall (or the one at the bottom if both fall) leaves the mat and is replaced by the next student.
• The goal is to stay on the mat as long as possible, fighting fresh opponents every single time.

We do this drill regularly at the end of class as it’s always fun and it really wipes you out if you manage to become “king”. Even if you don’t, it’s good training as you get enough rest to really go at it when it’s your turn again. So everybody gets something out of it.

Last week, we did the drill again, everything went fine and we had a blast. I went home after class, watched some TV to wind down and when I got up, my shoulder ached. I figured, no big deal, been there before. But the next morning, I ached a lot more and I’d lost some mobility and gained some pain whenever I lifted my arm. At that point I went “Damn, again..” and started assessing the damage before beginning on a rehab program. My shoulder’s better now but I’m keeping up the exercises to make sure there’s no lasting damage and I can train at 100% again as soon as possible.

What causes shoulder injuries?

The list of potential causes is long but here are the usual suspects: [Read more…]