Started doing Shoulder Dislocates again

I first learned about the Shoulder Dislocates exercise in the book Super Joints by Pavel Tsatsouline. Olympic weightlifters use this exercise to develop the mobility to hold the bar overhead with locked out arms, while squatting or lunging. The book has photos of Pavel doing it with a bungee cord. For reasons I cannot recall, I did not practice shoulder dislocates for long, and eventually forgot about the exercise.

More recently, I got Kettlebell Strong! by Geoff Neupert. There is a whole section devoted to improving overhead reaching mobility for the double kettlebell jerk. One of the recommended exercises is... the shoulder dislocates, though with a stick. So I attempted to do the exercise with a stick and could not move the arms all the way to the back with the stick touching the back. Heck, my range of motion was so limited, I got the stick barely past my head.

I then tried shoulder dislocates with the light resistance band that was shipped with the IsoMax. I was not able to do the full movement and irritated my shoulders while trying to do the movement. I was lucky to avoid injury.

I then watched the part of this video where one of the recommended variations was to start the movement with the hands in back instead of the front. The person in the video recommended using a resistance band for shoulder dislocates, if you lack the mobility to use a stick.

The video inspired me to try shoulder dislocates with the band again, starting with the hands behind me instead of in front of me. I was able to do the full movement, although I cheated by putting hands inside of the band, instead of gripping the band as shown in the video. I quickly found that to avoid tweaking my shoulders, I had to pull my hands apart and maintain that pressure throughout the movement. Pavel's advice in Super Joints to keep the chest up also helped protect the shoulder. I also found that gripping the band as shown in the video delivers a closer experience to gripping a stick for the same movement. Cheating by allowing the hands to rotate does not help prepare for practicing the movement with the stick.

I read or saw somewhere else that shoulder dislocates can be also be practiced against a wall, one arm at a time. I found this version of the exercise to be the least error prone, as all I have to do to protect the shoulder is keep the chest up and maintain the pressure of the pinky side of my palm against the wall. There is less chance of an accident from suddenly relaxing the tension on the resistance band at the worst possible angle.

My overheard reaching mobility progressed well enough this year to allow me to practice double kettlebell clean and press with both arms locking out to prevent shoulder injury. However there is still an arch to my upper back from tight lats. There may also be some other upper body tightness I'm not fully aware of. Geoff Neupert recommends shoulder dislocates as one of the exercises to improve overhead reaching. Practicing shoulder dislocates should help me continue improving this mobility.