This Weird Way to Relieve Shoulder Pain and Stiffness Actually Works!

One of the best activities that you can do for your shoulder health is Filipino martial arts. Grab a stick, grab two sticks. I want to share a couple drills with you that you can start doing in your daily warm-up or cool-down or daily practice that's going to help get these shoulders mobile, strong, and flexible. Let's start off with just one stick. We're going to start in this chamber position just like this. I want your stick to touch your back. Try to touch your spine. If you don't have that range of motion, just do the best that you can. Wherever you are right now, if you're kind of right here, just that's your chamber position then for right now. We're going to slowly over time work on really getting this shoulder to extend. It's going to happen over time because all these movements are dynamic. From right here, we're going to strike or swing what's called our angle one. Come all the way up. Notice how my hand comes all the way up by the ear. Then we're going to come down striking what we call an angle two. Then we're going to flip the stick over. Now we're going to come upwards on what we call an angle three. Then we're going to come upward on what's called an angle four. Basically what we're doing is we're going to make a big X coming downward and then a big X coming upward. That's it. It's so simple. You just want to make sure you're working some nice controlled movements in the beginning. You don't have to go fast. You don't have to swing with power here. We're just working on learning these basic motions and getting these basic motions down in the shoulder. Over time, as your coordination is building up, maybe your shoulders feel a little more loose, then you can speed things up. What I like to do in the beginning is just to set a timer for one to two minutes and just work these basic strikes. Don't worry so much about your footwork, where you're going. You can play around with that. You can have your right foot forward. You can switch it and have your left foot forward. You can play around and move around a little bit, back and forth, side to side, circle a little bit. Once that round is up, on your number one right here, we're going to pass the stick to the left hand once it reaches that left hip. Let's do another one to two minute round with the left arm as well. We're just isolating each side of the body, each shoulder. I've had a number of people over the years come to me seeking some Filipino martial arts who had a lot of shoulder problems. What we have found is that the nature of Kali training has helped so many people remedy a lot of these shoulder problems. A lot of the stiffness and pain in the shoulder joint and over consistent practice over time. A lot of students have noticed that these pains have started to go away and the shoulders have started to loosen up. They started getting that mobility back. Then we can switch it back to the right hand. The second drill, we're going to work a horizontal and a vertical strike. We're going to get a couple of different ranges of motion, movements in the shoulder here. We're just going to draw a big plus in front of the body here. Horizontal and then a vertical, horizontal and then a vertical. Look at the movement that we're getting with the shoulders. In Filipino martial arts, sometimes when we're fighting, we will strike full strikes like this. Sometimes it's going to be more compact. Right now, because we're just focusing on waking up those shoulders, working those shoulders, strike large. We're building up our range of motion and that movement within the full arc of these strikes. You can really reach on those vertical strikes. You can keep them small and work that packing of the shoulder or you can extend the strike out and really work on that range of motion. Now again, once your one or two minute round is up, then you want to switch it over to the left side and make sure you work the left side, the left arm as well. Even if you find that you have pain or discomfort or stiffness in one shoulder, you want to make sure you're working both. Plus this helps you out building some coordination in both arms. That way we can get to some double stick stuff as well. Switch it back. You can play around maybe for a third kind of bonus round. You can play around between these patterns. Our X strikes, diagonals, and then our pluses. You can do a whole round of this. You're really working all those different ranges of motion, those different arcs, movement patterns with your shoulders. Again, if you do a round of that, make sure that you do a round on the other arm as well. Don't worry about how many times you do an X or a plus. Just move. Kind of shut the mind off. Get rid of the thinking. I love working Kali like this because it allows you to shut the mind off. Exit all the world problems, the daily problems, the workplace problems. Just kind of go into a place of flow. That is when you're really getting the most benefit out of your training. I'm just staying within these two patterns, but I have no idea necessarily where I'm transitioning. I mean, I do. I'm aware of it, but I'm not worried about, you know, am I completing the repetition? I'm just flowing, having fun, and just working some expression within the limitation of these two drills. Let's grab two sticks this time and work a little bit of what we call the single weave. It's great for coordination, gets the arms, the hands working together. We're going to start off right here in the open chamber position. So we call this one right here. We've got the right stick up, left stick up, and we're going to strike a right hand number one, then a left hand number one. So we're going to end up crossing the arms. Then we're going to uncross the arms by striking a right hand number two, and then a left hand number two. And that's it. It's very nice and simple right here. So we're going to cross our arms and then uncross our arms. It's called a single weave because we're weaving our arms one time. Now look at the emphasis in the rotation of the torso here. That's really important for that shoulder mobility because our shoulders are connected to our torso. So we want to make sure that we are working the whole body there. Now showing from the side, you can see the movements in the shoulders and there's a little restriction right there when your arms are crossed. So you might even get a little bit of a stretch in your shoulders when your arms are crossed if you have a lot of tightness in them. Now we're going to reverse that motion by starting it off with the left hand this time. So same stuff, but we're going to start with the left hand, then the right hand, left hand, then the right hand. So we have to do both sides here. You can practice this if the coordination is a little bit challenging. You can kind of keep your arms a little bit lower. If you have a lot of stiffness in your shoulders, you can keep your arms a little lower. That's totally fine. Over time, you can start getting your arms up higher and get those weapons right in front of your face and work towards those chamber positions. You can even stand with your feet in a natural position if that's easier in the beginning, or you can start exploring some of that footwork. So that's it. Some really simple drills to start off with. Kind of get two birds with one stone here. You get to learn about a really cool martial art like Kali, Filipino martial arts, and you get to work on those shoulders to again get some strength, some flexibility, get that mobility back, wake them up, reduce that pain and inflammation that's going on inside of these things. If you are or have suffered from some tightness, stiffness, pain in your shoulders, maybe some limited mobility, and you have found that these types of drills have helped, hit the thumbs up button and share your story down in the comments. That can really help other people to get on board to try these movements. Sometimes when something is new or maybe unconventional in the quote unquote fitness world, people shy away from that. But you really shouldn't because we've seen a lot of really good results in people's shoulders and other areas of their body, other joints throughout our training in Filipino martial arts. So grab a pair of sticks, doesn't have to be anything special. These are 28 inch long sticks, you can cut an old broomstick in half, you can go to the hardware store and just go buy a couple doll rods. Alright, that's fine. If you want a traditional pair of rattan Kali sticks like this, I got a link down below if you want to go more of the traditional route, but it's not necessary for this. Now if you're training in Kali, like you really want to learn the skills of Kali, then we definitely highly recommend rattan sticks. If you're new to the Longevity Flow Arts channel, be sure to hit the subscribe button and I'll see you back here next time.