Preventing Shoulder Injuries Part 2

To continue our conversation of reducing injury risk, we need to start asking sport specific questions. We have already addressed the strength and techniques needed for the sport. Now we have to talk about range of motion and control of that range. Don’t worry this will be substantially shorter than last week. 

First some definitions. Active range of motion is the full range of motion an individual can take a joint through, think lifting your arm up to the side. Passive range of motion is how far someone can move a joint on someone else. Think lying on your bed on your back and someone lifts your arm in the same pattern up to the side then over head. In a properly functioning body we would like these to be equal or close to.  

Now that I have explained that, I am going to greatly muddy the water. You need enough active range for the techniques required of your sport. If you are trying to get into a position that you do not have the range to get, you will twist and contort other things trying to get there and eventually have an injury. If you do not, you probably should start working on drills to help you get there. This comes in two forms and this is where our passive range of motion comes into play. If you do not have the active range to get where you need to go, check to see if you have the passive range. If you do have the passive range, you have a motor control problem and need to train your brain and patterns how to get there. If you do not, you need to first decide if opening up that range would be advantageous to your sport and then work to do so. These are two very different problems and are trained in two very different ways and if you have one say the motor control problem and treat it like a range of motion problem, and stretch until the cows come home, you will be no better, have no more range of motion and you have just wasted a ton of time and effort. 

Next is looking at the sport you are doing. If you do a sport that uses one side more than the other, think baseball or softball, you should be asymmetrical in your motion. It is very common to see more motion in the throwing arm of an individual than their other side, but not too much and not too young. How much and how young is tough to say. On average we start to see asymmetries taking place by late in high school or into college. This is where an athlete has typically started to specialize in a sport and their training load shifts in a way that they start to become asymmetrical. 

So all of this in actionable advice: look at your sport, decide what motions at each joint are required to do the patterns you need. Test those motions in active range, if you can do them, perfect you’re good to go. If you can’t, check the passive range. If they are equal, stretch, if they aren’t, you need joint specific motor control work. 

This is a very simplified version of a large range of nuances, but I hope it provides some directionality for the conversation of range of motion.