 Hey everyone, let's talk about shoulder pain during push-ups. So push-ups are generally like the friendliest shoulder exercise that you can do, but you know, some people still hurt during them, and it's not necessarily that uncommon, especially if you have a particularly stubborn shoulder. So what's going on here? All principles, the way that I would approach this in my mind, if somebody has shoulder pain, generally I'm thinking, all right, well, it could be something bad, there could be something structural going on, but ultimately the thing that I can affect, and I can affect pretty quickly, is the position of the joints. So if the joint is not moving in the right way, or it's not positioned in a way that will allow the other bone to move, then I can place extra pressure on different parts of the joint. So to stop being vague, the shoulder is a ball and socket joint. So the ball, the humerus, the head of the humerus is a ball, and it fits into this socket, which is the glenoid, you may have heard, that's where your labrum is, if you've ever had a labral tear, that is on your shoulder blades, so your shoulder blade is like this little triangle, and on one end there is the socket. So I have my socket, I have the ball, and then the arm moves. If the socket does not move, it's supposed to move, but if it can't move for whatever reason, let's not even get into it yet. If it can't move, then the shoulder, the ball inside it, tries to roll even more than it normally would. When it rolls, it also slides inside this thing, because if it just kept rolling, it would roll right out and you'd dislocate every time you tried to move your arm, right? It doesn't work that way, there's some lubrication in there that allows that joint to stay in place. Part of what keeps the joint in place is the softness of the socket. So my shoulder blade stays flexible, and that allows my arm, my humerus, to move a lot. If the shoulder blade is rigid, the arm has to move even more than it normally would, and that's where we start to see excess mobility. We start to see muscles tighten up because they have to over shorten or they have to overwork. They're working to stabilize and to move something, and we're just asking too much of those things. So all of this stuff is what I'm thinking if someone says, you know, my shoulder's kind of bothering me during a push-up. So first and foremost, we want to emphasize moving the shoulder blade, okay? Now I don't want you to focus too much on the shoulder blade yet, because the shoulder blade has something that's even more proximal to it, and that proximal thing, that thing that's closer to the middle of you, the center of your balance, is the ribcage. So the air turn done. So the ribcage is what allows my shoulder blade to move or disallows it to move. If the ribcage is flat, the shoulder blade cannot rotate around it, because the shoulder blade is curved. The ribcage is supposed to be curved with it, so it should be this like hand-on-hand kind of like nice sliding relationship there. So if I lose that, then I can lock up the shoulder blade, and then my shoulder has to move a lot more, and then maybe my shoulder hurts during push-ups. So what do I do about this? I need to restore the position of the ribcage, and that's what we're talking about in this. You might have other problems going on. You might need to talk to a professional. So try to find a physical therapist who considers every part of your body, who is worried about your work stress, because all of that can play into this. And if you find one who doesn't seem to care about that, who does three 30-minute sessions with you every week, you might want to try to find someone else. Anyways, I'm off my soapbox. So we're doing our push-up, we're a ribcage. That's what we're doing. So we need to restore the rounding. Now when I talk a lot, I straighten out and I flatten out my ribcage. I'm emphasizing it here for you so you can see it, but I lose the pliability of it. What happens is my back extends, and my posterior ribcage gets stiffer, and my anterior ribcage also gets stiffer, but it comes up. That was a bad metaphor. But what I'm trying to do here is restore a normal curvature. Okay? I don't want it to be flat like this during all my push-ups, because then I flatten my ribcage, right? I'm not just flattening the upper back, I'm flattening the ribcage, and then if I'm flattening the ribcage, what class? My shoulder blade can't rotate. That's right class. Good job. So we have to first and foremost make sure that you can do a plank with a good spinal position. So it looks like this, right? And then I'm going to force all of the air out. And as I do that, it becomes harder to talk, but I can feel my abs turn on, and when I say abs, I mean these outer lower abs, I can feel those abs turn on. And then I'm going to try to hang on to that while I breathe in. And then if I'm watching it on video, I can see my upper back expand. It kind of comes up towards the ceiling. Those are all good things. And as I exhale, my stomach draws up towards my back. My back comes up towards the ceiling. I like that. Notice when I take my inhale, I'm not doing this, because that's not going to do it. That doesn't teach my back to relax. I need to inhale into my back, because that's the only way that I can enforce it to be relaxed. Okay, that is really hard for some people. It's really hard for me sometimes, especially if I don't sleep very well. What I want you to do is go through a couple of things, and we're going to have a step-wise way of looking at this. So as you're getting this position, one, I like to teach it with a little bit of a rock back here. So what this does is it uses your legs to help you exhale, help you get all of that air out. And then from there, I got to make sure I'm not doing this, right? It's not a crunch, because that keeps this really flat. And then I don't get that around this so that my what class, my shoulder blade can rotate around everything. So from here, it's not a crunch, it's just a general rounding. So that's the first thing I wanted to say. I use the rock back. I like the rock back. Second thing I want to say is it's more important initial stages just to practice exhaling all the way. So I can, you know, it's a position that you're not used to getting into. So you have to get used to getting into it. So I'm just here and I say, okay, blow all the air out. Good. Do you feel your abs? No, not really. Okay. Try again. Try to blow even more air out this time. And that's what it looks like. Eventually that gets easier and gets easier to blow all the air out. You might notice your voice gets deeper. And from there, after you focus on blowing all the air out, then you can focus on holding your abs as you exhale. So I hold the abs or I hold the exhale and then I find the abs. Yeah. I feel them. Do you feel the inner ones or do you feel the outer lower ones? If you feel the inner ones, I'm guessing you're crunching like this, like we talked about before. If you feel the outer lower ones, then I'm guessing that you're actually getting the ribs down. You see the inner ab muscles here, they pull the sternum down, but they don't pull the ribs down with them. The ribs stay up then. And then the back stays flat. And then the shoulder blades have nowhere to rotate. Okay. So this is very important. This is complicated. It's very easy to cheat on this. So we have to be able to do all that. So I'm rocking back. I'm exhaling all the way. I'm tucking my hips and that helps me find my abs. And there is a good setup right there. If I can do this and if I can hang onto my abs while I inhale, then I can be reasonably certain that I have a good ribcage position and that I'm going to have good shoulder mobility during my pushups. Okay. So that's what I want you to focus on. I want you to focus on getting all the air out. I want you to focus on finding and feeling these things even while you inhale. And once you get that rock back position, once you can do that, then you start to bring your knees away. Do a plank. You can do one on your elbows like this. And then you can try one on your hands like this. And then you can try one on one hand like this. Step by step by step, progressions until you say, you know what, I feel like I really got my abs. I feel like I can do my pushup. Okay. Oh, wow. That feels great. Okay. So sometimes it doesn't work that way. Sometimes that's not enough. Sometimes you need something a little bit more focal, but I think this is a good place for you to start. And that's why I've made this long video about all these details because it's really easy to mess this up. Okay. Good luck. Try to find a physical therapist that we can all respect and that you will thank for the rest of your life. If you need help, leave a comment below. Maybe I know someone.