We’re back with another edition of recommended reading, although this week will be much more about listening!

EC on the Stacked Podcast – I joined old friend Joe DiStefano for a podcast where we went into great detail on the unique nature of the shoulder joint – and how to keep it healthy in your training programs. You can listen to it right here, if you want:

EC on The Darren Woodson Show – Retired NFL player Darren Woodson and his crew have a great podcast that interviews successful folks from a variety of industries. It was an honor to join them:

Naval Ravikant on Happiness, Reducing Anxiety, and Much More – I really enjoyed this Tim Ferriss podcast; while it delved into topics like cryptocurrency, it shared lessons that are wildly applicable across other industries.

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It goes without saying that scapular control – or the ability to position the shoulder blades appropriately – is absolutely essential to safe and effective upper extremity movement. In order for that to occur, though, the shoulder blades have to start in the right position. With respect to scapular rotation, “neutral” posture has the shoulder blades sitting at 5 degrees of upward rotation at rest. In the picture below, the black line represents where he should be in terms of upward rotation, but instead, you’ll see that he sits in about 20-25 degrees of downward rotation (for the record, there are a number of other things wrong with this posture, so this is only a start!). The problem with starting in this much downward rotation (or any downward rotation, at all) is that it’s like beginning a race from 20 yards behind the starting line. When the arm starts to move up, the shoulder blade needs to rotate up to maintain the ball and socket congruency. If it starts too low, it can’t possibly be expected to catch up – so the ball will ride up relative to the socket, regardless of how strong the rotator cuff is to try to prevent that superior migration. You’ll wind up seeing irritation of the rotator cuff, biceps tendon, labrum, or bursa if it’s left unchecked. Step 1 is to simply educate people on where the scapula actually should sit, and step 2 is to work on training from that correct new starting position.

A post shared by Eric Cressey (@ericcressey) on Oct 12, 2020 at 1:28pm PDT