I hope you guys enjoyed the first installment of this article. Today I’m serving up Part 2…11) Do More Pushups- Pushups are still one of my top ten favorite exercises and always will be. They are also significantly better for your shoulders than any other form of horizontal pressing with a bar or dumbbells. Pushups are highly underrated because people don’t know how to load them properly or do advanced variations.
For loading you can get a weighted vest, chains, a Power Pushup (which is awesome) or even have a partner hold weight plates on your back. A great loading variation, and one that is very comfortable is to place a sandbag on your back with or without additional weight vests.
12) Do Suspended Pushups- Suspended pushups with rings or the Jungle Gym XT call even more muscles into play and force your stabilizer muscles to fire even harder. This is great for building up injury proof shoulders.
13) Do Kettlebell Turkish Get Ups- If you could only do one rehab/prehab/shoulder stabilization exercise this would probably have to be it, in my opinion. Make them a regular part of your routine and your shoulders will feel better.
14) Practice Handstand Holds- This is very similar to the concept of holding the barbell overhead only in this case you are holding your own bodyweight which increases neuromuscular activation and makes it significantly more effective. I recommend kicking up into a handstand against the wall at the end of each upper body workout and holding it for as long as possible.
When you get good at that try removing the wall. This is great for shoulder stabilization.
15) Walk on Your Hands- Once you get comfortable with handstands start walking laterally along the wall with your feet still in contact with it. Eventually, once you master your handstands you can start walking without the wall. In the meantime, slap a Power Wheel on your feet and walk up and down the gym floor or across a field. A great goal to shoot for is being able to walk 100 yards on your hands.
You can make hand walking even more challenging by doing Alligator pushups with the Power Wheel . Any type of dynamic range of motion exercise like this that has you moving positions on each rep is great for strengthening the shoulders.
