April Showers...but get toned April shoulders (and arms!)

I hope you managed to find time for some shoulder stretches since my last edition, if you haven’t read it yet I discussed sore shoulder niggles, importance of upper posture muscles being strong and balanced and how to get moving to alleviate pain.

It may be fate, or proving my point from article one about going too hard in Jan, but I seem to have had a lot more questions about arm and shoulder pain in the last month. One particular client’s niggle stuck in my mind which I would like to share, in case this is one of you!

This client does a lot of driving for his job, sat in a poorly supported van seat hours every day, his sedentary lifestyle leads him to goI hope you managed to find time for some shoulder stretches since my last edition, if you haven’t read it yet I discussed sore shoulder niggles, importance of upper posture muscles being strong and balanced and how to get moving to alleviate pain.  hard in the gym on weekends to make up for this. Unfortunately he has had bouts of lower back pain over the years which lead him to me for pilates for specific strengthening and lower back mobility exercise. These have helped to give him an awareness of his posture whilst driving and switch on some of the sleeping muscles and luckily he finds time to do a small 5 minute routine every day to maintain his core strength keeping his pain at bay. However this week he came to me with a ‘niggling pain in his bicep’, he showed me pointing to a rough area to the top of his bicep muscle. He  told me he was more stressed due to a personal life issue, his neck and shoulders were feeling tighter than normal but he also told me he had been doing lots more exercises at home to for an upcoming early summer beach holiday! I showed him how to correctly do press ups, how he could use his dumbbells at home to tone his arms safely rather than actually doing too much, further aggravating the muscles on top of a very ‘hunched’ stress posture! I reminded him that in fact it is important for anyone who is sat for prolonged periods of time like him, to be allocating time to working the posture muscles concurrent to the work of the ‘beach body muscles’ because this made for safer but quicker results! That evening in a light bulb moment I remembered that in my last article I mentioned that if you had any niggles… etc, but I didn’t explain that sometimes those niggles don’t appear exactly on the shoulders they can refer down the muscle chain or even end up around the fingers. If you suffer from pins and needles or niggles/ pain anywhere down the arm, forearm or even fingers please don’t ignore it, seek medical advice, but this could also be originated from a nerve passing through a tight muscle around the shoulder and neck area. If this is the case the exercises in my last article may help you.    

With the recent bouts of gorgeous sunshine which we have had and of course the example of my recent client above, it seems about right to bring a few tips to the floor on arms toning.

Press ups – this is a great golden oldy but done badly can be the worst thing for your shoulders. Follow these tips to increase effectiveness and safety: a) elbows narrower by the body when they bend, b) if you can’t do it without ‘straining and dipping’ your lower back then do them on your knees, c) on the push phase breathe out and pull your navel in towards your spine, d) if you find this hard don’t worry this is expected for the untrained arms so do it standing 3 foot from a wall and ‘press up’ into the wall!

Tricep dips – done by sitting on a sturdy chair or edge of sofa, feet out at hip width (feet further away is harder), hands palm down onto the seat right by the side of hips, slide hips off the seat and drop hips towards the floor slowly, then when elbows are 90 degree bent push back up til arms are straight. a) keep elbows narrow, b) try not to hunch shoulders to the ears, c) if you can’t do 10 then bring your feet closer to you. The important part of the move is where you are straightening your arms, this is the tricep (back of upper arm) working.

Flying arms – ideally with a small weight a tin of soup or beans is great if you don’t have hand weights hold arms out wide at shoulder height, keeping arms straight bring arms forward in front of chest til hands touch, then open them wide again. Repeat 20x slowly most importantly at shoulder height throughout.

If you are in need of some help with your upper body toning or would like any other help with exercise, at Hummingbird we can help with 1:1s or small group Pilates and yoga classes. You can view our full list of classes and workshops online   www.hummingbirdpilates.co.uk, or email us at [email protected] or call us 01245 422556.