<p>Well, pushups and rows will go pretty far in getting the shoulders stronger.</p>
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<p>Well tell us what is weak about it. What movements? I’m sure we can stregthen it up 
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<p>My Workout for Tomorrow
Warm Up
• 5 minutes of cardio
• Monster Walks, 3 trips each direction
• Bear Crawls, 2 trips</p>
<p>For time, start at 28 reps and decrease by 4 each round of:
• Kettlebell swings, 30 pounds
• Push Ups
• Squat Jumps</p>
<p>Fendergirl, swimmers and baseball players use rubber tubing exercises to strengthen their shoulder muscles. I suggest talking to your doctor or PT first to get their ok.</p>
<p>Bunsen- I have never had a dog problem in races. There may be an occasional dog, but not a pack! Is it really an issue up there?</p>
<p>Pieces of birthday cake I have eaten in the past 36 hours - 7.
Times I have gone to the gym this week - 0.</p>
<p>And I don’t even feel guilty.</p>
<p>Fendergirl:</p>
<p>Almost all of us have weak shoulders and/or lack of shoulder flexibility. Assuming you aren’t talking about pain and injury, there are some pretty easy exercises that can be done anywhere. </p>
<p>I would start with the Y-T-W-L sequence. This literally is as simple as forming those letters with your arms and upper body. Like raising your arms to form a Y in YMCA. Or a T. Doesn’t require any weights. Just start with your hands. Or you can add light dumbbells – probably 3 to 5 pounds tops. 10lb dumbbells with these are really, really heavy.</p>
<p>You can do [YTWL’s</a> on a bench](<a href=“Y-T-W-L Exercise Georgetown Fitness Trainer - YouTube”>Y-T-W-L Exercise Georgetown Fitness Trainer - YouTube). Or you can do [YTWL’s</a> on a stability ball](<a href=“A Better way to do the YTWL Shoulder Exercise Circuit - YouTube”>A Better way to do the YTWL Shoulder Exercise Circuit - YouTube). You could even do them standing against a wall or improvise something with furniture in your house – a big cushy footstool, etc.</p>
<p>I do the [Wall</a> Slide](<a href=“- YouTube”>- YouTube) warm up. Takes about 10 seconds and it is just the thing if your shoulders and upper back are tight from driving or sitting at the computer. This little drill feels like a milliion bucks.</p>
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<p>From there, you would probably go to dumbbells. Specially, bench pressing two dumbells from your shoulders while lying on the floor, a bench, or a stability ball and pressing them overhead while seated or standing. I started with two five pound dumbbells on these, although you’ll go up fairly quickly. These were the exercises that made me keep buying bigger dumbbells – although you can use the smaller ones to great effect pressing them overhead at the same time you are stepping up and down on a step (a fantastic exercise!)</p>
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<p>**And, finally pushups and pullups. **Depending on where you are at starting out, you can do pushups with your feet on the ground and your hands on a kitchen counter. If that’s too easy, put your hands on something lower like a sofa arm. If that’s too easy, put them on the fourth step of your stairs. Then, move to the third step. The second step. The first step. And finally to the floor. When pushups on the floor are too easy, just holler. I’ve got some that are guaranteed to kick anyone’s butt!</p>
<p>Pullups or [inverted rows](<a href=“Georgetown, DCs Top Personal Trainer: The Inverted Row The Right Way - YouTube”>Georgetown, DCs Top Personal Trainer: The Inverted Row The Right Way - YouTube) are a little harder to implement. Ideally you want a bar at about head or chest height to start out. You hang from it, feet on the floor, body straight at about a 45 degree angle and pull yourself up. Just like with the pushups, as you get stronger, you lower the bar so your body is closer to parallel with the ground. These pulling exercises are super important for all of us to do, but the inconvenience makes it too easy to ignore them. I got a TRX-style suspension trainer (it can mount to the top of a door), just to do [TRX</a> inverted rows](<a href=“- YouTube”>- YouTube). This is really the ideal way to add pulling exercises to a home gym or travelling gym set-up.</p>
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<p>Good. There’s no reason to feel guilty. You had a little birthday celebration. You ate some cake. Big deal. Now, just move on and get back on track with eating and exercising the way to want to. Rachel Cosgrove only expects her clients (and herself) to follow the plan 90% of the time. Giving yourself permission to enjoy a splurge is an important part of a successful, sustainable eating/fitness strategy.</p>
<p>I just got back from the dentist to discuss some severe jaw pain last week on the bench press. He said: when you bench, you clench. The pain lasted about four days in the upper and lower jaw. We’re going to do an adjustment to a tooth to see if that clears it up but he suggested using a mouthguard for the benchpress.</p>
<p>Dang BC: Now I don’t feel so bad about a little soreness in the upper back from bench pressing! :)</p>
<p>Some people drop the bar on their heads while bench pressing. Now that would be a serious pain in the jaw! Ouch.</p>
<p>Had the weekend off and then back in the gym today. Worked hard doing intervals on the bike for 70 minutes, level 8. My knee really needed some cycling movement! Moved over to the the Smith machine and did 50 pushups on lowest setting. Moved to kettlebells and did 5 sets of 15 swings at 20 lbs. Moved to some planks and side planks…they still are a pain for me. Did the thickest stretchy band for arm exercises and then did tricep exercises using dumbells. I am tired but feeling so much better. Hoping for a good week!</p>
<p>Back pain is worse than tooth pain. With tooth pain, you can take painkillers and avoid the area of the mouth. With back pain, you can do real damage. I can handle a lot of pain overall and can mostly ignore tooth pain - even at the level of an infection. With back pain, lots of little things that you do everyday - hurt.</p>
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<p>I don’t know about that! Tooth pain affects EATING!!! :)</p>
<p>I had pain on one side of the mouth so I just ate with the other.</p>
<p>Besides, you can always stop eating for a while and switch to stuff that doesn’t need chewing. Trader Joes has a rather nice variety of soup in a box offerings.</p>
<p>Yeehaw! Sounds like a great workout, NMINN. Just keep at the plank and side plank. It pays big dividends, even though the immediate progress seems slow. Those kettlebell swings are such a great exercise. That works just about everything, especially the hips.</p>
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<p>Oh trust me, I know. I’m the guy who had to stand up for 36 hours straight because it was the only way to stop the cervical disk pain. I just stood up leaning in a doorway, all night. When I fell asleep and coillapsed, I woke up, stood back up, and leaned against the door in the hall some more.</p>
<p>I am very careful of my back with this weight lifting stuff. Having said that, there’s a bit of a conundrum. The actual muscles in the back protect the spine by resisting forward flexing of the spinal column. Those muscles are pretty weak in most of us and need to be strengthened just like the abs need to be strengthened to protect the spine against reverse flexing/extension. In the process of strenghtening those back muscles, they get sore, just like thigh muscles after squats. The tricky thing is that, if you actually hurt your spine, the same muscles go into spasms/contractions/soreness as a defense mechanism. The only way I can figure is to just avoid exercises that place the spine at risk and then go slowly with the ones that are designed to strengthen those core back muscles.</p>
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<p>I wish I had an answer for a quick-fix for you, but the problem for most people is they do so much for the abs, but neglect the back muscles. Just like any other part of the body, this sets you up for muscle imbalances which can lead to problems…</p>
<p>My back problem is in the lower back and I’ve always found that having strong abs muscles keeps me out of back pain. I do some work on the upper back but generally avoid any lower back exercises. This includes the back machine and exercises like the dead lift.</p>
<p>There are some other exercises that I avoid just because they can cause minor injuries. They probably work fine for other people but not for me - fortunately there are so many muscles to work out that finding something to do is a non-problem.</p>
<p>idad, what weight do you use for Goblet Squats? I’m thinking about adding that into my workout tonight, but not sure what a good weight to start with would be… I’m thinking probably a 30-35# dumbbell would do, but not sure…</p>
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<p>Believe it or not, I haven’t done two-leg goblet squats recently. The last time I did them was in Spartacus and I think I was up to a 30 lb dumbbell, but Spartacus is not the kind of workout where you want to use max weight.</p>
<p>I was doing goblet split squats and worked up to 35 pounds, at which point it was becoming a challenge to simply get the weight in place so I switched to two 20lb dumbbells and went from there: 2x20 > 2x25 > 25+30 > 2x30. For two-leg squats, I’ve been doing this weird asymmetrical load thing that is pure torture. It’s much harder than a split squat with the same combined weight (60 pounds), so there must be something going on with the core challenge of the asymetrical load.</p>
<p>I would think you could easily start with 30 or 35 pounds and you might have to go up quickly from there. Mike Boyle stays with goblet position exclusively with his athletes until they can no longer get the weight into position – usually around 75 pounds for his college hockey players. Then, he goes to two DBs. It’s quite possible that you might already be too strong for goblet. Or…the goblet squat might show that you’ve been “cheating” the barbell squat and have some work to do on form. Goblet squat pretty much forces you to use proper form.</p>
<p>To some degree, I have been “cheating” with the barbell squats. I do them on the Smith Machine which makes it a little bit easier due to the tracking ability. But we don’t have an actual squat rack so I gotta use what I’ve got…</p>
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<p>Hey, you are still lifting the weight!</p>