Overhead Movements

Oftentimes athletes will use overhead pressing movements to improve shoulder strength.  We also see a lot of coaches using the Overhead Squat Movements for a variety of reasons.  Both are great exercises, when the athlete has the appropriate amount of Thoracic Spine Extension.  Unfortunately, if the Thoracic Spine is locked up and missing some much needed extension, the shoulders won’t be able to do much of the work of keeping the weight overhead.  Something else will have to fill in

As we have said here, many people like to use an overhead pressing movement for the development of shoulder strength.  This usually includes some variation of the Military Press and/or the Behind the Neck Press.  These are used to improve the strength of the deltoids, traps and scapular stability.

Unfortunately, many don’t realize that if the finished position is anterior to the athletes ears, they are likely using the upper pecs and neck muscles to do much of the work, instead of the shoulders.  So, you may be training muscles which are already overactive to start with and reinforcing the cycle to continue to be tight and overactive.  This cycle makes the shoulder more dysfunctional than ever and only increases the likelihood of a tight thoracic spine.  And the cycle continues…

Overhead Squat

There aren’t many exercises which offer more for an athlete than the overhead squat.  It requires the athlete to be mobile and stable, throughout the entire kinetic chain.  It can be used to evaluate an athlete, as a warm up exercise, as a teaching tool or within a training program with variable loads.  When using it as a training exercise, it can be used to promote mobility, stability, strength, or a combination of all of them.

Many clinicians and coaches don’t adequately understand how to “read” the overhead squat to figure out where an athlete’s restriction is.  Because the movement is so complex and involves so many different areas of the body, a faulty overhead squat can come from a variety of causes.  But, as a general rule, a poor overhead squat stems from mobility restrictions in the ankle and/or Thoracic Spine, or a stability issue in the core.  So for the purposes of this discussion, we will focus on the Thoracic Spine restriction.

If an athlete lacks Thoracic Spine Extension, they will bend forward excessively at the chest.  Thus, they will likely struggle to keep a bar above their head.  Some athletes will compensate by lifting their heels (and appearing to have a dorsiflexion restriction).  Other athletes will make up for it as the glenohumeral joint (shoulder)  by throwing their arms back so far that it puts their anterior shoulder stability in jeopardy.  When this happens, not only are the shoulders at risk, but the core isn’t very active, thus part of the reason for using the exercise is now nonexistent.  Many times these compensations are misunderstood and read as “tight lats.”  There is little to support this theory, but there is a great deal to support a thoracic spine restriction.

One other compensation that you will see for poor thoracic spine extension is excessive lumbar extension.  This is because the athlete is needs to gain the range of motion somewhere, so the lumbar spine is next in line in the chain.  The problem is, the lumbar spine is not designed to move very much.  So, this compensation pattern causes low back pain, an anterior tilted pelvis, and a whole host of other issues.