Learn the three principles behind effective, task-specific shoulder warm-ups.
Basic warm-ups don't adequately prepare your shoulders for the demands of high-intensity lifting. A few minutes of cardio, some lacrosse ball work, and a few arm circles won't resolve deep biomechanical restrictions and compensatory movement patterns that have built up over years of training.
If your shoulders feel tight, unstable, or click during movement, you’re facing a problem that limits your performance and progression. Ignoring this leads to compensations – especially during overhead lifts, increased injury risk, and a ceiling on your gains.
Warm-ups should be task-specific. Exercises are tasks and require coordination, mobility, and stability to execute correctly. Elevating core temperature is part of it, but ensuring an adequate range of motion and stability in the relevant joints and ranges of that day's workout will ensure that you're not just barely avoiding injury while lifting – you'll be building a foundation for consistent progress and long-term resilience.
Three concepts to fix your shoulder warm-up.
To ensure your shoulder warm-up covers all of the bases, focus on three critical elements:
- Resetting internal rotation
- Utilizing reciprocal inhibition
- Implementing gatekeeper drills
Understanding the principles of an effective shoulder warm-up.
${component=BasicCard}Resetting Internal Rotation
The latissimus dorsi and pectoralis major and minor are strong internal rotators that dominate resting shoulder posture by pulling the shoulder into elevation and internal rotation – and this compounds in trained populations with extra-developed pecs/lats, and untrained populations with underdeveloped and underused pecs/lats.
This bias restricts the range of motion needed for upper-body training. This posture isn't inherently bad, but being stuck in it is – the shoulder needs to move from external to internal rotation and vice versa in order to train the surrounding muscles effectively.
${component=BasicCard}Utilizing Reciprocal Inhibition
Reciprocal inhibition means that when a muscle on one side of a joint contracts, the muscle on the opposite side that performs the opposing joint movement must relax in order for the first muscle to perform its action properly (e.g. for shoulder flexion, your front delt versus your lat).
This is useful in warm-up contexts because when you want to train a muscle that is highly concentric (contracted) going into the session, finding its opposing muscle and taking it through a few sets of low-intensity reps allows the targeted muscle to relax, opening up more range of motion for that day's movements.
${component=BasicCard}Implementing Gatekeeper Drills
Increasing mobility and achieving a greater range of motion is part of the battle – but ensuring you have adequate stability in those ranges is just as important before loading up the bar.
This is where gatekeeper drills come in: they test the integration of multiple ranges of motion with an unstable load. These kinds of movements work well as a way to wrap up a warm-up – if you complete them successfully, it's a sign that you're ready for your working sets.
Build a task-specific shoulder warm-up that prepares you for the demands of your session.
Start by preventing excessive shoulder internal rotation and restore the ability to oscillate between external and internal rotation. Use reciprocal inhibition to facilitate the joint movement needed for the session. Finally, use a gatekeeper drill to ensure all boxes are ticked.
${component=Step}Reset internal rotation by releasing the pec and the lat.
Use static or PNF stretches on the pec and lat to release them from their hyper-contracted state and allow the shoulder to move from elevation and internal rotation to depression and external rotation.
Add soft tissue work in as well, like a lacrosse ball to the pec or lying on your side with a roller under your armpit. In all cases, focus on nasal breathing and allowing the muscles to release as you exhale slowly.
${component=Step}Identify the ranges needed for the session, then contract the opposing muscles.
In practice, if you're hitting a push day or doing heavy pressing, the range required is resisted shoulder flexion and humeral adduction. Thus, the muscles that perform the reverse movements (shoulder extension and humeral abduction) should be worked into the warm-up: in this case, primarily the rear delts, so prioritize single-arm cable rear delt flys or a rear delt row and emphasize the contraction.
Conversely, if you're hitting a pull day and require resisted shoulder extension and retraction, hit a few sets of a shortened cable fly or some light dumbbell front raises with an emphasized pause to get the required muscles to relax.
${component=Step}Use gatekeeper drills to confirm stability in the required ranges.
Use movements like a kettlebell bottom-up press or kettlebell windmill to assess stability in the ranges you've increased access in. The kettlebell bottom-up press tests the rotator cuff's ability to stabilize in shoulder flexion and external rotation, and the kettlebell windmill tests the shoulder's ability to safely enter protraction, retraction, upward rotation, and downward rotation.
Once these boxes have been ticked and you perform the gatekeepers without nagging pain or stiffness, enter your working sets with greater confidence that your shoulders will hold up against your most challenging lifts.