Shoulder Pain? Prehab Guys Exercise Library & Program w/ CCA

Shoulder Pain? SHOWUP20 for 20% off Prehab Guys exercise library for training clients in pain w/ the CCA program. 

Shoulder pain is everywhere in fitness, and the fastest way to lose trust is to improvise “rehab” when you should be screening, referring, and coordinating care. We walk through what it looks like to stay in your lane as a personal trainer while still delivering real value for clients dealing with shoulder pain, past shoulder surgery, or limited overhead range of motion. If you want a practical playbook for training around pain without pretending to be a clinician, this conversation is built for you.

We share how we think about shoulder screens, what movement checks help us decide whether training is appropriate, and why a strong relationship with a physical therapist changes everything. You’ll hear a real-world handoff example of an older client with a complicated shoulder history, plus how we communicate so the client is supported instead of bounced between opinions. We also talk candidly about professionalism, pricing, and why skilled training paired with PT collaboration is worth more than generic workouts.

Then we get tactical: how we use a prehab exercise library to choose smart correctives, how we assign simple homework, and how we build a shoulder-friendly circuit template that progresses from easier to harder work. We cover push-up regressions, rowing choices like bands and TRX, a more shoulder-friendly split stance overhead press, and how to swap movements quickly when something flares up. You’ll leave with clearer programming principles for shoulder health, rotator cuff tolerance, scapular control, and strength training that respects pain signals.

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Transcript

Shoulder Pain And Staying In Lane

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Shoulder pain, super common thing to come across as a personal trainer. You need to make sure to stay in your lane, implement shoulder screens, refer out to a team physical therapist. But this is something you can absolutely work with and why you should partner up with a physical therapist. Here we have one of our SUF CPTs, Mr. Paul, working with a therapist. Hope you're doing well and your own personal health journey is coming along. I think I may have a patient for you. He's attended PT at my previous clinic for a long time for a couple of shoulder surgeries that did not go so well. He's in his 70s, has had some cognitive decline, but I feel he is a really great prospective client for you. He lives over here wherever, he's willing to do training out of his home or a gym. I do not believe he can work there, so best to come to you. This is exactly what we're talking about linking up with physical therapists. If he's going to a private therapist, each one of those sessions will be probably between 150 plus, and that's how much you want to be charging. So let's take a look at some of the things we can do as a personal trainer. We highly suggest working with the prehab guys exercise. We have a partnership with them. As you can see, most of their exercises are done in our gym here. So you all you need to do is just type in the client's issue, just type in shoulder right here, and then you're gonna get a humongous library with all these exercises. You, as a competent trainer, can see what's most appropriate, but you can even show this to your therapist and then you can send it to your clients for homework. I love their app, and you're just going to increase your exercise library. So let's say you want to do some shoulder rotations with end range of motion, you want to do some band pull apart, some abductions. There's so many that you can choose from in here. But if you have this on your iPad or you show them on the app, your therapist can say, Oh, let's add this one in there, and let's also add this one, and then you can create this program that they can do at home. But when we look at designing a program, I really like how we can implement this for the CCA. So you're gonna do a warm-up. First, you want to do your screens to make sure that they're okay. Can they get their hand above their head? Can you get your humerus above midline? Can you take your hand off of the back? Not high, not low, low back. Can you take it off? And then do a brake test with the empty beer can test. So if they pass those and you have clearance from the PT, you can incorporate this within the accessories. So, for example, you do some push-ups, do it on a bench press so it's elevated. I don't like wall push-ups because that extension can put a lot of stress on the wrist. So maybe you're doing three sets of anywhere from eight to 12, whatever they're capable of. The higher, the easier, the lower, the more challenging. You'd go into a band row, maybe we get their arm above and we're pulling down like this unilaterally. And then you add in those correctives from the prehab, guys. For this first CCA, you do three rounds, push up, band row, and that corrective, three rounds of that, move into the second CCA. Let's do some TRX rows, which are a great regress version for mid-back into a split stance press. A lot of times military press might cause a little bit of discomfort, especially with the barbell. I like the split stance press where it's going to be contralateral pressing overhead, a lot more shoulder-friendly. Add in another corrective exercise there. Do that for three rounds. In the last circuit, let's incorporate some legs. Let's get some lateral jumps with stabilization. And let's do some goblets and then add in one more corrective. So the CCA template is great because you start with the easier stuff first, progress in the second CCA. In that last one, you can incorporate some legs. You could do this workout easily three times a week. And then you're just changing up the accessories based on the correctives that you and the physical therapist are having conversations about. He may even tell you to do exercise A, B, and C. And then when you get the homework or you see him the next time and say, Oh, it kind of irritated it. You can just take that exercise out, let the therapist know it irritated the shoulder, and then add in a more appropriate one. Definitely want to do some soft tissue mobilizations, upper traps, pec minor, imprispinatus, rhomboids, adductor polysis, all things that we teach within our level two seminars with our partnership with Lifetime. You get to one of those, you're going to learn how to train clients in pain, network with physical therapists so you can charge more and make more as a competent, qualified trainer. Remember, big biceps are better than small ones. Keep showing up.