5 Exercises to Keep Your Overhead Shoulder Mobility

5 Exercises to help you maintain overhead mobility and shoulder flexion

When is the last time you reached as far as you could overhead?  It just doesn’t happen a lot for most people. If you have to reach too far overhead, you just grab a stool. I have found that losing shoulder range of motion is something that slowly sneaks up on people. We don’t reach overhead very often, but when we need to, we find out we have a hard time doing it and our shoulders are really stiff.  Or, if we can get overhead, we don’t have a lot strength when we get there. We all need overhead mobility and strength for trimming trees, working out, putting luggage in the overhead bin, loading your bike on top of your car, and of course throwing little kids in the air, over and over again, and again!  As as people age, they lose the ability to raise their arms all the way overhead. I see this problem in a lot of may patients, so I want teach you how to maintain your overhead mobility and shoulder flexion.

These 5 exercises will help you stay mobile and strong so you can Keep Reach Overhead.

For demonstrations of the exercises see the Youtube video below.

Dead Hang

One of the best stretches to help you maintain shoulder mobility is to simply hang from a bar, preferably in a pull up position. Make sure that you “dead hang”, meaning you let all your muscles go and let your weight go all the way through the shoulders to help stretch it.

Pull up or Chin up

If you can, do a pull up or a chin up. Both of these exercises are helpful. If you can’t do those, just hanging from the bar is a good way to start stretching and making sure that you keep your overhead flexion. 

Overhead kettlebell carry

The next thing to do to maintain overhead mobility is to build some strength overhead. One of the best exercises for doing this is an overhead kettlebell carry. When you do this overhead kettlebell carry, push your arm as high as you possibly can. To make it a little bit harder, walk around with it. Make sure you do this with proper form, by contracting your stomach muscles to keep your rib cage down. If you flare your rib cage out, you’re not actually getting as much shoulder flexion and you’re cheating yourself. So give yourself a little bit of a stomach contraction to get that arm all the way up. Then walk around for 30 seconds at a time. 

Overhead press in half kneel position

If you don’t like the kettlebell carry, do a simple overhead press with a weight in a half kneel position. Make sure you keep that rib cage depressed and not flaring it out. Then simply press the weight up several times.

Kneeling box stretch

One of my favorite stretches for shoulder flexion and maintaining mobility is a kneeling box stretch. Put your elbows up on the box, and use a pad to kneel on, then sink your butt back towards your heels while controlling that extension and rib flare. Put your head down as far as you can, then bend your elbows and bring your hands to your back. Take a big, deep breath in, and a big, deep breath out, and you should feel some stretch in your thoracic spine and in your lats.

Overhead rubber band stretch

The last exercise is actually one I’ve shown you before, and that’s using a rubber band to stretch your arm overhead.

Loop the rubber band around the wrist and into your hand. Get back into a back lunge position and curve to the side as your leg goes back behind you. Then really relax the muscles here in your lat. Also relax the muscles in your shoulder and let the rubber band pull on your arm to help stretch some of the muscles around your shoulder.

If you want to get a little more out of it, you can contract and relax the muscles. Do 10 or 15 of those. For those of you who like to do clean and jerks, or overhead squats, this exercise is really important to help you keep overhead flection mobility.

If you live in Roswell, Alpharetta, and Johns Creek and do CrossFit, work out on your own, or at your local gym with a trainer, then lifting overhead is important to you.  At Mission Move Physical Therapy we want you to keep working out as much as possible.  If you need help with any of your over head lifts or feel like you are losing some range of motion or strength over head, we would love to help you. Please reach out! Call/Text: 678-400-0300