Good Shoulder Stretch for Athletes

Well let me begin by saying that I am no expert and I have only been working out for 2 years. I have read most of the information on T-Nation over the past year and have gained a lot of information on how to become stronger. One of the reasons I have been avidly reading T-Nation is to learn how to look good nekkid. The more important reason is I wanted to become better at my sport.

Basketball is a change of direction sport where being able to stop and start is more important then just having straight away speed. Now, let’s cut to the chase. I have seen a lot of people who have forward slumped shoulders and because of this take longer to change directions. I for one have this problem and have never been able to fix this.

What you gotta do is work out the Posterior Shoulder, while stretching the shit out of the Anterior Shoulder ( obviously not at da same time duhh ) . I know you’ve heard this before and I’m not here to reiterate these facts. But I want to go over a certain stretch and just talk about how to correctly stretch to get the most out of it because this stretch has not only made my shoulder roll back, but it also stretched my chest and stretched the anterior shoulder muscle.

This exercise also makes your entire upper body look wider because if you have slumped shoulders the anterior shoulder muscle is tight and it sort of stops your entire chest from fully expanding out and giving you that nice wide chest. I’ve done all the regular chest stretches and not one of them has affected my body more then this certain stretch. Basically, you put your arm behind you against a wall and you bend your arm but not too much. Just a little so that your arm isn’t completely straight.

The stretch is sort of like holding a child’s hand, except you should have you’re hand higher up on the wall near your chest. It’s like stretching your chest where you gotta turn away from that side of the body so that you feel it stretching like crazy.

What should happen if you lean your body away correctly is you should feel it in you’re anterior shoulder AND if you stretch it hard enough ( be careful don’t do anything that hurts too much but also remember no pain no gain it’s like weight lifting you can’t just keep giving your body easy stretches to do because it’s not learning anything you gotta push it more and more every time ) you will feel it in a muscle that is right along the collar bone. Try it and see if you can stretch that area.

I THINK that its like the top of the chest or something because every time I do this exercise my chest gets wider. Anyway, try this stretch and let me know if it has helped you. If my explanation of the exercise was not good enough I am willing to post pictures.

It’s 3 AM right now so I’m not exactly in the mood for photos. This stretch will make you look better and perform better at change of direction sports.

TELL ME WHAT Y’ALL THINK

After wards it feels so freaking good its unbelievable!

Sweet Jesus.

Even I will not read that wall of text, and Ill usually read just about anything.

someone magically made my post readable! thank you

broomstick shoulder dislocates.