Why juggling might fix your shoulders (no, really) 🤹

What:

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:

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:

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 activates 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 😘 

Want to go way deeper with me? 👀 ​

• Check out my upcoming​ IRL events​ 
• Sign up to ​my next NeuroYoga TTC​ where I teach YOU how to blend yoga + neurology
• Join me on Move With Adell -- your brain-based yoga hub -- ​Click here​ to start your FREE trial.
• Check out the courses from Z-health, where I started my education in brain-based approaches: ​Click here​ for my discount codes on their first 3 courses!
• Get my book ​"Too Flexible to Feel Good: A Practical Roadmap to Managing Hypermobility"​

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