Why Your Shoulder Training Sucks (And the Real Fix You’ve Been Missing)
Forget bands & face pulls. Train your shoulders the way they were built to move.
If you’re reading this, your shoulders probably hurt, or have at some stage…
Whether it’s the sharp pain when you bench press, the pinch when you reach your arm overhead, your shoulder pain might even prevent you from sleeping on it.
You’ve also probably done the ‘rehab’ band drills, the rotator cuff exercises, face pulls, warm up drills. Maybe you avoid certain lifts all together.
But the second you at them back in your rotation? The pain comes back.
If bodybuilding and injury rehab exercises were the answer, your shoulder pain would be fixed, right?
WHY MOST SHOULDER TRAINING SUCKS
TOO MUCH ISOLATION FOCUS
Most training programs attack the shoulder in parts. Front delt. Side delt. Rear delt. Rehab drills isolate the rotator cuff with bands and two-kilo dumbbells.
The problem is the shoulder doesn’t work in pieces. It’s a joint built for rhythm, rotation, and overhead control. It has to coordinate with the scapula, the ribcage, the core. Training it is made up of individual parts can leave you with capped delts that look good cosmetically, but break under any real life stress.
OVERUSE OF THE SAME EXERCISES
Bench press. Rows. Push-ups. Overhead press. Every rep is forward and back or straight up and down. That’s it. But the shoulder is built to rotate, swing, and stabilise in every direction. If your training doesn’t have this elements, you are missing huge gaps.
PLATEAUING WITH REHAB EXERCISES
Most people wait until the shoulder breaks before they train it or even focus on it. Then it’s band drills and basic scap squeezes until the pain is gone. But “pain-free” isn’t strong. Rehab gets you to functional, not durable. It sure as shit doesn’t allow you to throw a jab cross, throw with violent intent or do anything remotely athletic.
THE SOLUTION? CLIMBING
The human shoulder wasn’t built for barbells.
It was built for climbing, hanging, and swinging. When you remove those patterns, you’re removing one of the most effectively ways to train the shoulder to become durable.
Remember the hours you spent on the monkey bars as a kid? It’s likely you had a stronger shoulder then, than you do right now.
Climbing forces your scapula to move the way it’s meant to. Hanging decompresses the joint. Reaching builds end-range strength. Every move ties your grip, core, and shoulders together so they work as one system.
Climbing fills the gap bodybuilding, rehab, and generic training leave wide open. It doesn’t just build delts or take away pain. It builds shoulders that last.
WHY CLIMBING BUILDS SHOULDER DURABILITY
SHOULDER DECOMPRESSION
Most lifters spend their whole lives pressing, pulling, and grinding their shoulders into tighter and tighter positions. No space, no glide, just compression. That’s why they feel pinchy when they go overhead.
Hanging flips that.
The weight of your body literally pulls the humerus down and creates space in the joint. It’s traction built into the movement. Hanging allows decompression & traction through the shoulder. Over time this not only restores overhead range, but also develops isometric endurance through the rotator cuff.
SHOULDER BLADE REACHING
The scapula is meant to move: upward rotation, protraction, retraction, elevation. But most gym training cues it “back and down” all the time, which locks it in place & impacts your range of motion & mobility.
That’s why bodybuilders have such poor shoulder function.
Climbing forces the scapula to do its full job. Every reach, every hang, every shift across the wall demands it glides over the ribcage and adjusts to load. You stop clamping it into one posture of “shoulders back & down” and start building strength in the way the shoulder was actually designed to move.
HAND, FOREARM & FINGER STRENGTH
Climbers have world class hand & finger strength. Some climbing athlete’s can lift their entire bodyweight with a 3 millimeter rock ledge for grip.
The more effectively you can use your hands, this impacts your ability to use the forearm, elbows, biceps & tricep & most importantly… The shoulder.
The better you can develop your hands, forearms & elbows, the better your shoulder will be able to move. The secret is to take the best tricks from every single sport & combine that into a training system (which is exactly what the Lethal Training Protocol is about).
ISOMETRIC STRENGTH & ENDURANCE
There will be very few of you reading this who train isometric endurance. Think about the gym, most of what you are doing, is lifting the weight up & down. These movements are dynamic in nature.
Climbing forces at times for you to hold your entire bodyweight in a specific position for up to 30 seconds. The level of strength you need to be able to do this is insane.
Not only is this quality valuable for climbers, but also for grapplers who often are resisting against an opponent in a static manner.
HOW TO ADD CLIMBING TO YOUR TRAINING PROCESS
You don’t need a climbing gym to start. You don’t even need to be “a climber.”
You just need to bring back the patterns your shoulders were built for: hanging, reaching, stabilising, gripping.
I am going to give you 2+ exercises for each level & progressively get more climbing specific.
LEVEL 1: BUILDING YOUR BASE
These exercises are purposely to be completed in the gym so you have no excuses that you don’t have a climbing gym nearby…