Two Evanston Athletic Trainers Show The One Mistake People Always Make When Stretching The Deltoid.
– Hi, it’s Dr. Brett and Denny. We’re athletic trainers and Cornerstone Health. At Cornerstone Health, we like to focus on increasing general mobility and level of function with a lot of patients that have shoulder pain. Now, whether you have difficulty sleeping and you’re getting shoulder pain, or if you have a sedentary job where you’re at a desk or a computer, or let’s say you wanna be more active in overhead activities such as golf, tennis, baseball, or softball. This next exercise we’re gonna go through called the deltoid stretch is gonna be a great way to increase the level of flexibility on the outside and the back of your shoulder joint.
Let’s get started with our deltoid stretch demonstration. For this demonstration, we’re gonna be utilizing Denny’s right arm. So, Denny, I would like you to reach your arm out straight in front of you. His palm is facing in towards the midline of his body or his sternum. From here, he is going to reach his arm across his body, and try to bring the elbow pit in line with his sternum. Then, he’s gonna take his opposite arm and hook under the elbow. From this position, we wanna cue something very important that we like to talk about at our practice here at Cornerstone Health.
The shoulder joint is very high and in towards the neck. We do not wanna increase tension or impingement in the neck. So, we wanna think about keeping the shoulder down and away from the ear, as best as possible. From this position, Denny will pull this elbow, or his right arm, in towards his chest.
From here we are increasing the stretch on the outside and the backside of his shoulder. From here, he’s gonna tilt his thumb down as if he is dumping out a glass of water. As you go down, your thumb is going to cause the stretch to increase on the backside of your shoulder. So, while your thumb is in the up position, we’re targeting the outside, and as you rotate your thumb down and away, you’re targeting the backside of your shoulder joint and your deltoid muscles which are gonna be good at relieving pain with improvement in the stretch and flexibility for overhead activity.
All right, now that we have gone through our demonstration of the deltoid stretch exercise, we’d like to talk about a recommended dosage that we follow at Cornerstone Health. For general health, this deltoid stretch is great to be utilized in the morning and the evening before you go to bed.
The dosage that we like to prescribe is five to six rotations of the shoulder or one to two minutes on each arm. If you want to be more focused on your overhead activities or recreational movements, we can do the same amount of dosage as a part of your active warmup before you get started. This is going to help reduce your level of shoulder pain and improve your level of flexibility and make you feel better when performing your exercises.
