I’ve offered this shoulder routine through emails before, but with the new site up I figured I’d take advantage of some of the new functionality and put it up as an attachment for everyone to download. I originally got the “RTC Workout” from Bill Gillespie at the University of Washington all the way back around 2002 and have used it on a daily basis ever since.
[hidepost]The routine serves as a great shoulder warm-up and have all my athletes do it before any upper body strength or explosive work and often before/after striking sessions as well. It will really get the blood flowing to the entire shoulder joint and strengthen the muscles that make up the rotator cuff. I’ll also often have athletes perform it once at the end of a workout that heavily involved the shoulder joint as well.
Because the shoulder has the greatest range of motion of any joint in the body, it is particularly susceptible to injury. The shoulders, hips, and knees tend to be the most likely to suffer accumulative injuries that are seen later in life as an athletes get older. Obviously with all the striking and grappling that involves a lot of demand on the shoulder joint, combat sport athletes are definitely prone to this.
Using the RTC workout on a daily basis as a warm up is a good idea simply for preventative purposes and if there is a shoulder injury, then I’ll have the athlete perform it the routine with very little weight simply to stimulate blood flow (as long as it’s appropriate for whatever the injury may be.) The routine only takes a couple of minutes and all you need are a couple of light dumbbells.
You’ll want to do 10 reps of everything and go straight through the entire program with no rest between exercises if possible. Most people will need to start with 5-10lb dumbbells, which feels very light but once you get halfway through you’ll see that it’s not.
Please keep in mind this is NOT meant to be an athlete’s entire shoulder training program, it’s simply a warm-up that can be used on a daily basis to help keep the joint healthy and prepare it for the training to come. There’s a lot of other things that I’ll do for shoulders with my athletes, many of which are specific to the athlete and to their sport, but this simple little routine is a good tool and the 3 or 4 minutes you or your athletes will spend doing it is time well spent.
If you like these types of free downloads, please help spread the word about 8WeeksOut by sharing this post on Facebook and Twitter and let everyone know to come grab the RTC routine. If I see that a lot of people like the free downloads, I’ll be sure to keep posting them![/hidepost]
I use Joe Defranco’s Simple six for my upper body warm-up, but I will now include the RTC workout on my upper body days. Even though I don’t have any problems with my shoulders, I’m sure that as I get older, pre-hab will be even more important.
If you have any warm-up workouts focus on the lower body (especially the hips), I would be more than happy to try it also.
Downloaded!!! Thanks
Best download- shoulder injuring suck and any amount of extra time in the gym is better than paying for physical therapy/surgery to fix a torn/stretched joint capsule.
Interesting movements – I’ve never seen the rotation across the body/midline like that before. Is this from a baseball/thrower’s workout? Looks like some good conditioning; I’ll try them out soon.