Desk Jockey Warm-ups Part 2: Shoulders & Spine

Click here for Part 1: Hips & Spine

In the first part of this series, we covered the basic structure of a good warm-up routine as well as how to put one together for the lower body by addressing the muscles and joints around the hips and spine.  Now we can move on to the upper body by bringing in everything surrounding the shoulder joint.  The spine should always be addressed in any good warm-up, because 21st century living has us all spending way too much time staring at phones and computer monitors, leaving our thoracic and cervical spine in a less than optimal state for maintaining good lifting mechanics.

Like we covered in Part 1, there’s a logical workflow to to go through with your warmups:

Self-myofascial release (SMR) –> dynamic warm-up –> planned exercise –> static stretching

Stage 1: Self-Myofascial Release (SMR)

Some of the areas that get locked up the most in the upper body are going to be the chest and the lats – these areas get stiff from a combination of spending too much time working at a desk (as 99% of us do) and putting too much emphasis on the muscles we can see in the mirror (as 99% of us do).

Spend a minute or two working the upper pecs with a tennis ball or lacrosse ball, moving from the inner chest toward the armpit about 2-3″ below the collarbone, and using a foam roller to target the lats from armpit to the bottom of the ribcage.  Keep in mind with the lats that they’re big enough that they can’t be reached completely in one position on a foam roller and you will need to rotate your shoulders slightly after each roll to get at the entire muscle.

Stage 2: Dynamic Warm-up

From a purely postural standpoint, the warmup for the upper body should concentrate on opening up the front of the body while activating and getting blood into the muscles on the back of the body that help hold you into good posture.

We recommend this combination:

Shoulder Dislocate

Band Pull Apart

Seated Wall Slide

Or, if you don’t have the flexibility for the wall slide, we also like the band pulldown:

Band Pulldown

Stage 4: Static Stretching

If you read Part 1 of this series, you’ll remember that Stage 3 is the actual workout, so we’re going to skip over that part and jump into Stage 4.

I picked these up from a John Meadows seminar that I saw a few years ago and they’ve become staples in my upper body training.  These two stretches can be done post-training, but they can also be done before or even during your workout between sets – I like to use them between horizontal pressing and pulling exercises like bench presses and rows.

External Rotation Stretch

Internal Rotation Stretch

It takes a bit of extra time, but take it from somebody who has ignored the advice of others and bypassed these steps just to get into the fun stuff only to end up nursing an injury (or twenty), it’s worth putting in the effort.  As the saying goes, “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”