Popping and cracking shoulders sure do suck, don’t they? Luckily, my new article may help you out with some of those problems:

I, and presumably most of the people reading my articles, are big fans of weight training and rigorous calisthenics. And who can blame us? Resistance training increases size and strength, makes you more physically capable, makes you more attractive to the opposite sex, increases production of androgens, and increases confidence and self-esteem.

But, like all physical activities, there is a risk of injury and long-term physical ailments-improper lifting technique can lead to blown out knees, rotator cuff injury, and slipped vertebral discs, but even relatively proper lifting can lead to repetitive stress injuries such as the ailment commonly known as “lifter’s shoulder”

And even if you don’t have pain, the shoulders also bear a risk of getting “gorilla posture”-this occurs when a novice weightlifter focuses too much on the front of his torso (doing bench presses, overhead presses, push-ups, etc.) without properly training his back muscles and/or stretching the muscles of the chest, giving him shoulders that hunch inward despite their breadth.

Many, but certainly not all, lifters will find themselves with cracking and popping shoulders at the very least, and lingering shoulder pain at the worst. Those same lifters will often “Grit through” the pain, a futilely valiant gesture that sometimes leads to long term injury.

I myself have never had any serious injury from weightlifting, but I have suffered from cracking and popping shoulders. And, seeking a way to resolve this problem, I came across a series of stretches (and one calisthenic exercise) that can reduce pain in your shoulders

If cracking shoulders can be considered an inevitability of weight training, lifters around the world should know that they can be overcome (or at the very least reduced). These four exercises can make great inroads in doing so…

You can read it here