Shoulder and Arm Soreness While Running

Audio Transcript

Michael: Hey Runners Connect fans. Today, we have a question about arm and shoulder soreness while running and it’s from Aaron.

Aaron: Hello! My name is Aaron and I have a question about my arms during running.

A couple of things that have happened. During faster workouts, temple runs, VO2 Max et cetera, when I am running at close to near max or all-out effort, is, after a certain period of time, I often have soreness in my shoulders from the arm motion of driving my arms.

I’m wondering if that’s simply an issue with the muscles not being strong enough or having enough endurance, because I don’t spend a large quantity of time running at those speeds, compared to my weekly mileage, and if there’s any recommendations for that.

Then, there’s a second issue here. During my long runs, often approaching the longer end of the long run, such as the 20 miles close to a marathon, I experience cramping in my forearms at times.

Where I’ll be running for long periods of time and will go to pull out my water bottle or straighten my arm, and the forearm cramps up quite tight and painfully.

I’m wondering if there’s anything to do about that as well. Ironically, I don’t really have that problem with legs or anything else, but it’s quite shocking and painful, and can be a little bit hard to shake out during the longer runs.

Any advice on those two issues would be great. Thanks.

Michael: That’s a great question. Your arms and your shoulders are extremely important in running. This is something that not a lot of people know, and most people don’t think about it.

You think about your legs, you think about your posture, but you don’t think about your arms and your shoulders specifically.

Now, this is not to say that you need big muscular arms. Obviously, those are just going to get in the way. That’d be a huge issue, but you definitely need strength; you don’t need mass, you just need strength.

First off, anything that strengthens your core is going to help you with your shoulders and your arms.

We’re talking planks, lower back exercises like back extensions. Your back’s really important. Your back stabilizes and that’s a huge part of your core.

Even squats, stuff like that will help a lot. All of that will make a big difference in keeping your body upright, which is hugely important in preventing shoulder tension. That rolls right into a big one; this is form and posture.

You want to keep your body upright; you really don’t want to let your shoulders slouch forward.

With most runners, their shoulders are slouched, they’re kind of caving in on their chest, AND that’s definitely not what you want.

You want your body to be completely upright. You also want a slight forward lean. Now, that almost sounds weird that I’m talking about a forward lean when we’re trying to talk about shoulders and arms, but it’s really important.

If you don’t have that slight forward lean, that’s what leads to your shoulders slouching. Everything coming forward, caving into your chest, and that’s not what we want. We want you to be upright with a slight forward lean.

Something you can do to work on this is, you can do what’s called “falling strides” Basically what you do is you stand upright, you know feet about shoulder width apart and flat on the ground.

You let yourself lean forward as far as you can until you have to pick yourself up, until you have to prevent yourself from falling.

Then at this point, you do a stride, you lunge your knee forward and begin a stride.

Basically, your first couple of steps there, you’re going to have your optimal forward lean. Now most people are after those first few steps.

They’re going to lean back a little bit, get rid of that forward lean and be almost too upright in a way or even lean back slightly.

Those first few steps, your body is naturally going to find its proper forward lean, so that’s a good exercise you can do every now and then.

Now, you want to avoid elevated shoulders.

We’ve already talked about shoulders being too far forward, but you want to avoid having them elevated too. You want to drive your elbows down as well as back. You make sure they’re down, not just back, but also that you’re driving them down.

Of course, you also want to avoid letting your arms go too far forward during the arm swing, as this is wasted energy and is detrimental to your form, overall.

A way to know that is, you shouldn’t be crossing midline; your hands shouldn’t be crossing your midline. Your midline is the center of your body.

A good way to test this out is to run on a treadmill with a mirror in front of it.

You want to make sure that while you’re running, your hands are not crossing that midline. Great way I’ve heard and it’s also kind of funny too, is that your hands should be going roughly from your hip to your nipple.

Your right hand should be going roughly from your right hip to your right nipple, same with the left, left hip to the left nipple.

Now onto some specific exercises for your shoulders. The first is, rows.

You can do bent over rows with dumbbells, or even a barbell, or you can do machine rows, which are definitely best for beginners.

Now, rows are going to strengthen your shoulders, the muscles in your back and they’re going to keep your shoulders upright rather than slouch forward, so those are very important.

Push-ups, that’s obvious.

These obviously work your chest, but they certainly work your shoulders as well. The nice thing about push-ups and exercises like that is that you can do them anytime.

You don’t need any equipment, you can just drop and do 10 pushups any given time. This is something you can do several times a week to help strengthen your shoulders.

Pull-ups and chin-ups are another very important one. These work a ton of muscles in your back and shoulders, along with your biceps, of course.

You want to do pull-ups and chin-ups. Now pull-ups are when your palms are facing toward you, so you’re using a pull-up bar here.

This is when your palms are facing toward you. Chin-ups are when your palms are facing away. Each of these both work different parts of your back and shoulders, so it’s important to implement both of them if you can.

Now many won’t be able to do a full pull-up and that’s completely fine.

Easy way to do this is to get a pull-up bar and get someone behind you to hold your feet while you do pull-ups.

It’s going to elevate a lot of the weight that’s coming down and make it a ton easier for you to do pull-ups.

Then there’s the overhead press.

Now this one’s a bit more advanced: you can use dumbbells, or you can use a barbell.

I don’t want to describe this one necessarily too in depth as it’s a bit tricky, but what I would highly recommend doing is going and checking out YouTube or Google, and look up how to do an overhead press.

This is a very useful exercise.

There’s a few different ways to do it, in terms of dumbbells.

Some people will use two dumbbells, some people will just use one where they take it behind their back and lift it above their head.

Look up the ways to do it.

Ideally use either, two dumbbells, a barbell and go light. You don’t want to be heavy on this, but look it up, see how to do it and if you think it’s something that’ll help you.

It can straighten your shoulders, but again, it’s a bit more of an advanced exercise so just be careful with it.

I would go with the other things first: the push-ups, the pull-ups and chin-ups, and planks, rows – all of that before you get into the overhead press.

Now with any of these lifts, we’re not going for gains. We’re just going for strength, so you want to make sure you’re not necessarily working to exhaustion.

Like a weight lifter would do squats and so they are completely done; they can’t do a single more.

That’s not what we want to do here. We’re going more for that activation and just lightly strengthening. We don’t want to do it for gains or mass gains.

Now as for the forearms in your question, that’s a tough one. You mentioned that your forearms cramp up later in a run.

My best guess is that you’re probably causing some tension somehow; perhaps you’re clenching your fist while you’re running.

You want to make sure that everything is loose.

A better way to describe is, you want to act like you’re holding a potato chip and you don’t want to break it.

The potato chip is between your thumb and your forefinger, and you don’t want to break that chip. There’s an imaginary potato chip sitting in your hand, and you want to make sure that you don’t break it.

That will keep you from clenching your fist.

Either way, if there’s tension building up, as you’re noticing it late in the run, that will indicate that you’re having some tension throughout a run, so be careful with clenching your fist.

Also, all this strengthening, strengthening your upper body, your core, will definitely make a difference with that as well.

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Don’t forget to submit your questions at runnersconnect.net/daily-running-podcast and we’ll feature your question on the show.

Thanks for tuning in and have a great run today.