Protracted Shoulders

Bigger Stronger Leaner Competitive Bodybuilding
1

Anyone got any tips on how to bring my shoulders back some? I do started external rotator work and have a healthy volume of chins and pull-ups in my program. I am thinking maybe my internal rotators are tight. Thoughts and feedback are welcome. Thanx T-peeps.

2

Are you stretching your chest and Lats daily? According to Ian King the time you spend stretching should be 25% of the time you spend doing strength work. So my suggestion to you, is to start every one of your upper body session with external rotation works and finish with stretching for your Lats and chest (maybe between sets as well).

3

Do the stretching that Huge suggests. Also, you need to pull in the horizontal plane to get your blades back. This means deadlifts, barbell rows, 1 arm rows, etc. Obviously chins and pull-ups are great exercises but you also need to retract your shoulder blades while you row. I’ve seen many people who actually protract their shoulder blades towards the end of the rep while performing vertical pulling movements. In regard to volume of horizontal pulling movements, you need to take a close look at your program and do more pulling than pushing until you get it sorted out. One last thing. What is your posture for the bulk of the day? Do you sit at a desk with a computer? If so, you may want to think about the ergonomics of your work station.

4

Check out this link for Chad Waterbury’s recommendations from the Guest Forum:

Also, feel free to PM me; I recently completed an article in which you might be interested.

5

Be careful about relying too much on internal and external rotations they are only a part of what is a three phase correction.

  1. Internal and external rotations will help with scapula stabilisation which will address any winging of the scap as well.

  2. You need to train the rhomboids major and minor, levator scapula and even trapezius which all attach to the medial border of the scapula and therefore may aid in pulling it back into place.

  3. Addressing postural faults is probably the biggest part of fixing the problem. Litteraly pull your shoulders backand hold your body in correct posture every time you think of it as much as you can. This will teach your body that this is the correct posture to be in and after a while it will happen naturally especially if you are strenghtening the above muscles as well…

good luck…