Shoulder Training For Wrestlers
Wrestlers in a general sense need a lot of care in their shoulders, more specifically the healthy movement of their scapula. Between all of the pulling, collar ties and other impact on the neck, as well as the angles in which your arms are used in the sport, the shoulders have a real tendency to take a beating.
For that reason, you need to make sure you are preserving every movement the scapula can make: elevation, depression, protraction, and retraction.
After that, a particular focus on the rear delts and pectoral muscles go a long way.
How can we accomplish this?
Low Hanging Fruit: Rear Delts
If there was a simple thing you could add right away to your training, it would be any attention at all to your Rear Delts. The easiest, most accessible exercise to do this with is the Band Pull Apart (see the image to the side of Team Philippines athlete Arian Carpio performing the movement),.
You don’t need much here, the lighter the band the better. In fact, rear delts respond best to high reps in my experience. So take something like a micro mini band from EliteFTS or a similar company and start and end your workouts with this movement.
Shoulder and Scapular Control
The real meat and potatoes of taking care of your shoulders as a wrestler comes from understanding what your scapula (ie: the big bone with your shoulder blades) is meant to do. When you include exercises that address each movement, you’ll likely see your shoulders improving in strength and health.
Elevation
The ability to push the shoulders downwards, as you would find them in a Farmer’s Carry may not only be beneficial to your shoulders as a wrestler, but it also may feel therapeutic if you find yourself stuck in elevation of the traps, or with severe wrestler’s posture. This is also the most accessible exercise for most, and actually addresses more than just your shoulder health: it helps grip strength, core strength and depending on the implement, much more.
Depression
If you are someone whose shoulders have the appearance of slumping, staying low, or you have weak traps, the act of elevation can be very beneficial as well. In this case, you’d use movements like a shrug to train this motion.
In a Zercher Carry, pictured above, you are actively resisting depression heavily by isometrically contracting, while even elevating slightly.
Protraction and Retraction
Protraction can be best described as pushing your arms completely forward or upwards, distending your shoulder and arm. Any grappler will tell you that this is a posture they’ll find themselves in often. There are a number of ways to do this movement, but before I get into what you should do, I’ll instead share what not to do: the bench press is NOT a protraction movement. If you protract your shoulders in a bench press, you’re putting yourself in harm’s way.
The most effective protraction exercises are “Scapular Punch” exercises done supine, Landmine Press, or even a simple Dumbbell or Kettlebell Overhead Press.
Scapular Retraction is perhaps the lowest hanging fruit that’s easiest to correct. This is simply pulling your shoulder blades back first before doing any pulling movement.
Lat Pulldowns, Rows of any kind, Deadlifts and more all require scapular retraction in order to generate power.
External & Internal Rotation
Poor external rotation may mean giving up a position you could have prevented, and strong internal rotation may be the thing that is the difference in how you control someone’s neck. In other words, they’re important.
This topic deserves a lot of attention, so it will be addressed in future articles, but know for now that any external rotation exercise will pay divdends, as will internal rotation.
The thing very few people discuss for improving internal rotation strength increases is that improving lat and pectoral strength will result in stronger internal rotation— provided that you’re not overtraining either and under-training your shoulders and scapular movement more generally.
Training Considerations in Men vs Women
A lot is often made of the differences in training men vs women and I think the most important thing to remember is that the athlete in front of you is an individual. Don’t go looking for gendered reasons to train differently— instead, pay attention to what you actually see. Ask the person questions. This is why assessments done by professionals are so important.
With that said, I do hear of frequent shoulder and neck injuries among women in wrestling and there may be some biological differences there— namely the slightly narrower thorax and shoulder width in women. One of the best coaches I know in women’s wrestling has said to me that all her programs are always paying attention to shoulder “prehab” in her wrestlers.
Post Concussion
This is purely anecdotal, but between being a youth and young adult hockey player myself, working with combat athletes and wrestlers at my gym, I’ve noticed that following a concussion there is almost always residual shoulder tightness. I believe this is largely because trauma to the neck is often manifested in tightness that works downstream to the upper back and through the cervical/thoracic spine. The residual effect is shoulder issues and tightness when unaddressed. If you recently suffered a concussion, you’d be wise to train your shoulders and have them assessed.
In Conclusion
Shoulder pain unaddressed can lead to a lot of issues that were often preventable. In a sport where shoulder mobility and strength are so important to winning and your success, you can’t afford to neglect your shoulders.
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About the Author: Mark DiSalvo, CSCS
Mark is the founder and owner of DiSalvo Performance Training. He brings over a decade of experience training clients and athletes of all backgrounds and is the strength and conditioning coach to grapplers of all levels and disciplines: from youth to professional and Olympic-level. He is currently a purple belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu himself, with 10 years of experience in the sport. You can read more about him here.
A graduate of Northeastern University, he’s an NSCA Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist (CSCS) and Sports Performance Expert with a specialty in combat sports. He’s also a Steve Maxwell Certified Kettlebell Instructor (Levels 1 & 2).