[ read time ~ 2 minutes + VIDEO ]
Living an active life requires strong shoulders. And this strength originates in the muscles and tendons deep inside your shoulders. (Read more about this here.)
The exercise that I previously recommended is a great way to begin strengthening deep inside your shoulders. (Watch it here.) When performing this exercise correctly, you will eventually experience fatigue. Fatigue may be felt, observed, or both.
The feeling of fatigue can be described as warmth or tightness in a particular area that eventually becomes a burning sensation. In this exercise, the feeling of fatigue ideally happens on the back of the shoulder or over the shoulder blade.
The observation of fatigue occurs when the exercise can no longer be completed with good form--the way it was described and demonstrated in the video. (To notice this, observe your reflection in a mirror, or ask someone else to watch you.)
Either type of fatigue-- feeling it or observing it-- signals the need to stop and rest from performing the exercise.
Let’s say you noticed fatigue after performing the exercise 12 times last Monday, after 15 times last Thursday, and after 17 times today. To achieve the same level of fatigue, you will need to continue increasing the number of times you complete the exercise.
Most people don’t have time to keep this up endlessly. And even if you are someone who has lots of extra time, imagine that you eventually need to perform this exercise 119 times… Not very exciting, right?
Rather than continuing to increase the number of consecutive times you perform the exercise, consider making it harder. This video demonstrates 3 ways to make the above exercise more challenging:
As the video demonstrates, there are 3 easy ways to make the original exercise more challenging:
Stretch the tubing more by taking a larger step during the exercise.
Stretch the tubing more by standing farther from the attachment as your start the exercise.
Use tubing with a thicker diameter. (Thicker tubing is harder to stretch.)
For safe, strengthening exercises-- designed specifically for your active life-- work with me. To learn if working together is a good fit for you, schedule a Strategy Session, by clicking here.