Rounded Shoulders & general bad posture

Bad posture is sometimes associated to people doing the wrong type of strength training or old people.

Not true. Bad posture is everywhere around us. Kettlebell lifters are not spared either. It can be argueed that training specifically is the only way to enhance performance, but then be ready to pay the price…

Playing sports at a high level and developing only those muscles that are used in your activity puts you at risk of developping bad posture, and overuse injuries.

When you’re an athlete seriously training for competition it is not a question of if you’ll get injured but when. High level sport is not the healthiest of activities. So you have to consistantly have to try to minimize the risks of injury. The joint mobilization, the stretching, the restitution all that plays a part so that you feel fresh when training.
And with kettlebells, it is tricky because low repetition sets won’t help you increase your numbers. With high repetitions and training near failure you increase the chance for something going wrong. It can be something so simple as your mind wandering for a fraction of a second, being too tired to properly coordinate when to relax and when to tense up.
And then somethimes you are doing everything right with your training, and might twist your ankle running down some stairs or something else in that style, fall off you bike. No matter how fit you are, accidents happen without discrimination. Nature doesn’t give a rat’s arse about the fact you are a competitive athlete.

My advice is to balance your training! Do not forget to train those antagonists muscle groups! Pay attention to problem areas instead of hoping they’ll disappear…

Round_shoulders Some GS athletes have unbalanced physiques, and heavily rounded shoulders. While it might help them get into the rack position, do you really want to look like this?

Pec major is usually associated with shoulder pain and the rounded shoulder look commonly seen in the streets and the average gym, but in reality, the pec minor is often a bigger culprit. “Have a glance at the attachment points of the pec minor: the coracoid process of the scapula, and the 3rd-5th ribs:As you can tell, if the pec minor is restricted, the entire scapula is pulled forward (anterior tilt). However, what’s hard to appreciate is that the pec minor is also important because it works with the rhomboids and levator scapulae in downwardly rotating the scapula. ” The Right Way to Stretch the Pecs by Eric Cressey

Bad posture not only looks ugly, it creates shoulder problems, especially for athletes who do a lot of overhead lifting.

Try a shoulder impingement test

If some muscles gets short, stiff, or balled up with soft tissue restrictions and trigger points, upward rotation of the scapula becomes impaired. Good upward rotation is absolutely essential for safe and pain-free overhead movements. Logically, it follows that it’s wise to include stretches specifically devoted to pec minor.