Episode 58: Alignment Dogma - Shoulders

Movement Logic: Strong Opinions, Loosely Held

Welcome to Season 3 and Episode 59 of the Movement Logic podcast! In this episode, Laurel and Sarah discuss dogmatic beliefs and myths around the shoulders from the yoga, Pilates, and strength training worlds. We also discuss how given the fact that shoulder joint is a “complex” of many bones and joints, it’s much more useful that teachers keep their approach to teaching this area as simple as possible (and stop micro-managing their students shoulders!)

You will learn:

• The bones and joints of the shoulder joint complex
• Mant shoulder “fun facts”
• The directions of movement of the shoulder
• What horizontal abduction and adduction are
• What scapular tilt/winging is and why it’s not a problem
• How scapular movement often mirrors where we are reaching our hand to
• What scapulohumeral rhythm is
• That the shoulder blade’s path across the rib cage is curvilinear.
• Simplifying how we talk about shoulder movement and function to either a push or a pull.
• The relationship between shoulder posture and alignment and shoulder pain and injury
• How it’s hard to think scientifically and very human to think un-scientifically
• Why “shoulders back and down” is often (but not always!) an inefficient and counter-productive way to cue the shoulders
• Why micromanaging shoulder posture doesn’t change posture long term.
• Why “fixing” someone’s alignment in chaturanga doesn’t help them acquire the strength they’d need to build to be able to do chaturanga with optimal alignment
• How scapular dyskinesis and scapular winging are different
• The fine line between using movement to solve movement problems (which is inside of a movement teacher’s scope of practice) and then diagnosing problems for students and prescribing movement to fix it (which is outside of a yoga teacher’s scope of practice.)
• How upper and lower cross syndrome is an outdated (but still very influential) model for explaining posture and offering solutions to that posture.

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Check out our Movement Logic Shoulders Tutorial

Shoulder Girdle Video

Note: we cannot source the origin of this video. If you know the origin, please let us know!

Arthroscopic subacromial decompression for subacromial shoulder pain… randomised surgical trial

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Acromiohumeral distance and supraspinatus tendon thickness in people with shoulder impingement syndrome…

Scapular dyskinesis