Posted: March 25, 2024 at 7:43 am
Overhead mobility is essentially the ability to lift your arm(s) to a completely vertical position with locked elbows and no noticeable change to the position of any other joints (such as your ribs or lower back). It is critical to your success on exercises like military press, Turkish get ups, pull ups or chin ups, kettlebell snatches, and if you do weightlifting like Mira then your entire sport is about overhead mobility.
From my experience, it is one of the primary areas of mobility that most people struggle with.
In order to get their arm over their head, people who have limited mobility need to include some sort of compensation, such as:
- Bending their elbow
- Pushing their head forward (“chicken necking”)
- Flaring their ribs forward
- Hyperextending their lower back
- Leaning sideways
- Bending their knees
There are a lot of reasons that someone might struggle with their overhead mobility, but if I had to say there is one “most likely” culprit it is their thoracic mobility.
The thoracic region of your spine is the middle area, more or less near your shoulder blades. Speaking in generalities, if you lack thoracic mobility it *usually* means that you are a bit too hunched over in that area of your back. If you’ve spent the better part of the last four years on Zoom then I’m talking to you 😉
Quick bonus for you: You can use the term “thoracic hyperkyphosis” to reference the above if you want to impress people with fancy vocabulary at your next party.
Getting back to the point, there are actually several joints involved in lifting your arm over your head, not just one.
1) Yes, your actual shoulder joint is important. By “actual” shoulder joint I mean your glenohumeral joint, where your upper arm bone (humerus) connects to your shoulder blade (the glenoid fossa of your scapula)
2) Just as important, however, is how your shoulder blade sits on your rib cage (your “scapulothoracic” joint if you want more fancy vocabulary for your next party)
If you were building a house, think about your scapulothoracic joint as the foundation, and your glenohumeral joint as the framing. Both are important, but even the best framing built on top of a crooked or compromised foundation is still super sketchy.
If you lack thoracic mobility – you are too hunched over – then you do not have a good foundation from which to build your overhead mobility.
If you struggle with this I would encourage you to NOT go to YouTube university to figure out how to fix it. You’ll most likely come across suggestions like “just hang from a pull up bar for 60 seconds” which, if you do it, will probably make your shoulders WORSE rather than making them better.
Repeat: hanging from a pull up bar will NOT fix your thoracic mobility, and there is a high probability it will actually make your shoulders more painful / uncomfortable.
Check back later this week for an exercise I like a lot better which you can do safely.
-Tony
