Worst shoulder flexibility ever...

Hi everyone

First of all, congratulations for this forum! It looks perfect, with great information and awesome athletes!

About me... I really like gymnastics, conditioning and movement!

The worst thing about me is the shoulder flexibility... it's terrible and I would like to hear about any advices to improve this...I can't even do a proper bridge... :oops:

I also have a recent youtube account with hand balance and conditioning, if you want, feel free to take a look!

http://www.youtube.com/user/SomeoneMovement

Well, I guess that's it!

Good trainings!

(sorry for any english mistakes... :oops: )

Nice BL on your vid you need to start training them with your palms facing towards your feet, this is much harder and puts more pressure on the biceps tendon which will prepare arms for future, harder Rings work.

If changing your grip causes you pain in your elbows then work back up to the BL training German Hang up to 3 sets of 30seconds.

keep up the good work.

Thanks for the comment Breaks ! I don't know if I understood it right but did you tell me to change to a chin up grip? I tried that and it really is harder...but it didn't cause any pain in my elbows Should I train with the two grips or should I train more this one?

Can you give any advice about open my shoulders too please?

Always use this new grip when training German Hang and BL.

As far as opening shoulder angle goes, keep working flexibility and HS, also make sure you incorperate Wall Extentions, which are a sticky in the joint prep and flexibility sub forum:

viewtopic.php?f=17&t=1191

There is a lot of great stuff in that Subforum including some nice videos from Slizzardman, I suggest you get to that subforum and have a browse, more threads than you can shake a stick at about shoulder flexibility.

Nice job on the handstands. More open shoulders and you'll be great.

To do that I'd suggest you follow Blairbob's advice and do bridges with your feet raised. Start with 24 inch boxes and work your way down. Concentrate on exposing your armpits.

To do that I'd suggest you follow Blairbob's advice and do bridges with your feet raised. Start with 24 inch boxes and work your way down. Concentrate on exposing your armpits.

THIS.

Definitively.

Did wonders for me...

Thanks a lot for the tips, I'll definitely try them ! :wink:

I'll update my youtube account while I'll get improvements

Good trainings

Some nice press handstands. For shoulders do wall slides, shoulder dislocates, german hangs as well as shoulder stretches. Do this before every workout and within a few weeks you should see a large improvement.

The only other thing I have to add is this video from slizzardman:

I've been using all the stretches in this video, combined with most of the stretches mentioned already and I've seen a large improvement. Believe it or not, my shoulder flexibility was (and actually still is) worse than yours. If you use these stretches, you'll be better in no time!

Thanks AlexX and rmandawg1!

rmandawg1, worst shoulder flexibility than me? I don't believe that, my shoulders are just blocked, they can't open, look at my bridge...

Just to say I'm already doing some exercises to my shoulders like wall extensions and dislocates and other stretching and I'm already feeling some improvements!

Now I have another question, do I need a lot of back flexibility for the bridge? Or it's much more about the shoulders? I see some people doing like a triangle (more open shoulders I guess), and others do with a more oval form...

Hope you can understand my question... :?

In gymnastics a good bridge puts the emphasis on opening the shoulder to create the triangle or teardrop shape that you have noticed, but having good flexibility throuh your upper, mid, lower back and hip flecked is importnt too (particularly the upper and mid back if you want to make the tear drop shape).

Maybe you could watch these, if not already done...

Thanks Marlon for the answer and learningtofly for the videos ( I already saw them but it's always good to take another look ! )

Now... another question... (I'm very curious and really want to improve ) What exercises can I do to improve back flexibility for the bridge? Not the flexibility for the pike (I can do it) or the straddle but really for the bridge. I'm doing exercises to open the shoulders without doing lot of bridges ( just 2 ou 3 at the end of some exercises ) and I was wondering if I could to the same for my back.

Thanks a lot in advance !

Banzas said:

Thanks AlexX and rmandawg1!

rmandawg1, worst shoulder flexibility than me? I don't believe that, my shoulders are just blocked, they can't open, look at my bridge...

You're tempting me to upload a video for the forum to mock... it's really not pretty. What makes it worse is my wrist flexibility and strength , which is equally as poor.

Just upload it I also hate my bridge, and I think it's horrible! However I uploaded a video (my first of my account) with a "bridge" to motivate myself to improve and make a decent bridge! The motivation stopped really fast but now that I found this forum, I got a lot of motivation and I'm working a lot and I know I'll improve it! In the future I'll upload another video with some improvements!

Now I just need some help with exercises for my back flexibility... :roll:

Hi again! I have 2 more questions now ! (I'm really enjoying this place, learning a lot of new things ! )

1- I'm also training splits, and I've been training them everyday about 20/25 min but I think it's not being good, sometimes I feel some hurt on my legs... maybe overtraining? Shouldn't I train them everyday?

2- As you may know, I'm working a lot on shoulder flexibility for the bridge and I found a "shoulder flexibility test" and I'm trying to do it:

I was doing that test and found out that I'm about 1/2 cm on one side from touching the toes and the other side I was like 20cm :shock: Is this normal? Maybe because I never tried the other side? Or maybe really less flexibility on the other shoulder?

Hope you understand my (sometimes) bad english...

Banzas said:

Hi again! I have 2 more questions now ! (I'm really enjoying this place, learning a lot of new things ! )

1- I'm also training splits, and I've been training them everyday about 20/25 min but I think it's not being good, sometimes I feel some hurt on my legs... maybe overtraining? Shouldn't I train them everyday?

2- As you may know, I'm working a lot on shoulder flexibility for the bridge and I found a "shoulder flexibility test" and I'm trying to do it:

I was doing that test and found out that I'm about 1/2 cm on one side from touching the toes and the other side I was like 20cm :shock: Is this normal? Maybe because I never tried the other side? Or maybe really less flexibility on the other shoulder?

Hope you understand my (sometimes) bad english...

1. Unless you built up to it over a great amount of time (I doubt that you did since you don't have splits) stretching every day for splits won't result in great results because you won't be able to push yourself enough. If you aren't sore after a stretching session the next day you didn't do it right. There is a very large difference between maintaining flexibility and actively pursuing a huge increase. I got my splits by stretching them hard one time per week (towards the end I was able to bump the frequency up to two times but I was already quite close then). I would suggest harder stretching sessions with less frequency to see how it works.

2. Discrepancies from side to side are not uncommon. There have been multiple studies which show that the greater the differences are from limb to limb the higher the chance of injury. So I would really work on bringing your less flexible shoulder up to par.

Thank you very much AlexX! I really feel sore after the split stretching... but yesterday, maybe cause last training, I couldn't push my max of my splits... so I'll do as you said, less frequency and harder stretching!