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Shoulder Positioning During Exercise: How to Stop Shrugging Your Shoulders
Many people unknowingly lift or shrug their shoulders towards their ears during exercise, particularly during upper body strengthening movements. Over time, this can contribute to increased tension through the neck and shoulders and may lead to discomfort, stiffness or poor movement mechanics.
A common reason this occurs is reduced activation and control of the lower trapezius muscles — the muscles responsible for helping stabilise and position the shoulder blades correctly during movement. Instead of using these stabilising muscles effectively, people often overuse the upper trapezius muscles, leading to excessive shoulder elevation and tension.
One effective exercise for improving shoulder blade control involves lying face down with the arms positioned out to the side. From this position, the goal is to gently draw the shoulder blades downwards towards the back pockets while opening through the chest and front of the shoulders.
Performing the exercise in a face-down position can help reduce the tendency to shrug the shoulders upwards and allows people to better feel the correct muscles activating around the shoulder blades.
As control improves, the exercise can be progressed by:
- Changing arm positions
- Moving the arms overhead
- Adding controlled arm lifts
- Integrating shoulder blade control into gym and strengthening exercises
Improving shoulder blade control may help:
- Reduce neck and shoulder tension
- Improve posture
- Improve shoulder stability
- Enhance upper body exercise technique
- Reduce overuse of the upper trapezius muscles
- Improve comfort during training and daily activities
Learning to control shoulder blade positioning is an important part of shoulder rehabilitation and upper body strength training, particularly for people experiencing recurring neck or shoulder discomfort.
At Spine & Sports Physiotherapy, our Physiotherapists and Exercise Physiologists can assess shoulder movement patterns, identify muscular imbalances and provide individualised rehabilitation and strengthening programs to help improve posture, movement and exercise technique.