Why juggling might fix your shoulders (no, really) 🤹
"Brainy What-Why-How"
Your weekly nibble of science-backed goodness to help you move better and feel unstoppable.
🧠
What (the TL:DR)
If your shoulders feel stiff, guarded, or generally unenthused about life, the solution might not be more stretching, strengthening, or mobility drills.
It might be play.
Specifically: tossing and catching a ball, juggling, or casually throwing something into the air and reaching up for it like the capable mammal that you are.
Why (the geeky neurology)
We usually treat shoulder issues like mechanical problems:
- tight muscles
- weak stabilisers
- limited range
But your shoulders are largely run by the premotor cortex — pre-motor as in before movement even happens.
This part of your brain is obsessed with visually guided movement. It lights up when:
- you see something moving (a ball, an annoying mosquito),
- it’s within arm’s reach or coming toward you,
- especially by reaching upward into the space above you.
👀 Sound familiar? Yes. That’s the exact arm position we ask for in handstand 🤸🏽♂️
🧠 When researchers electrically stimulated the premotor cortex, people didn’t politely isolate a shoulder muscle.
Their eyes, head, trunk, and arm all turned and lifted together.
The whole body went: “Ah yes. We are doing a thing.”
How (apply it to your life)
This tells us something important.
The premotor cortex doesn’t just allow shoulder movement — it organises the entire body to reach up.
So if this system is under-stimulated, shoulders can feel heavy, disconnected, or weirdly unavailable.
Try this (I did during my one-arm handstand training and…wow):
1. Test your shoulders in an overhead position (handstand, wall, or just reaching up).
2. Toss and catch a small object. Bonus points if you actually look at it — notice colours, edges, shadows.
3. Retest your overhead position.
What’s happening here:
Tossing and catching activate shoulder movement before conscious control steps in, inviting your neck, trunk, and eyes to cooperate like they were designed to.
You’re no longer asking:
“Can my shoulder move like this?”
You’re answering a question your nervous system already knows the answer to:
“Can I reach that?”
Sometimes the fastest path to better movement isn’t more control. It’s more play 🥎
PS: Want to come play with me for 6 weeks and upgrade your handstand?
Yes, we’ll juggle 🤹♀️
And yes, we’ll also drill the most effective handstand work to teach your entire nervous system how to handstand better.
We start Wednesday 7 January. Come play.
Go throw something (on purpose),
Adell 😘
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