Pearce Eshenko - A Tale of Evolving Shoulders
About Pearce
SVG-Lungeburg Professional Volleyball Player
Middle
Canadian National Team
AWA and Pearce’s History
Worked with him virtually this past season and when he was done his pro season he made a stop over in Edmonton for a session
He dealt with a bit of hip and back pain this past season.
His goals for the session were to figure out what to do about his nagging hips and see if he has any potential to be more resilient through the rest of his body as he prepares for a big summer with the National Team.
What We Did
As always we started by assessing his movement quality, capacity and ability. We spent some extra time on his shoulder and foot/ankle as these were areas of weakness in the past.
What We Found
Pearce is an extremely mobile and flexible 6’9” middle blocker. He can practically fold right over and put his head through his legs when he does a toe touch. Pretty rare for a guy his size.
So he clearly has plenty of range of motion but what we know about Pearce from our virtual work together is he has troubles controlling this range. It’s great to have range of motion, but it can end of being detrimental to an athlete if they are unable to control their bodies.
Think of Bambi, he was falling into a 4 legged splits when he tried walking. He had the range but lacked the control so his ability to walk suffered. I’m not saying Pearce is Bambi he’s extremely strong and athletic but it summarizes his archetype with a clear picture for me so let’s go with it.
Knowing his control needed focus I challenged him throughout the session to see how different areas of his body organized when challenged.
We started with a simple cobra position to see how his body naturally organizes. One things we clearly see here is a tendency for his shoulders to come in creating the crease you see running down the middle of his neck/upper back. Now this is not ideal for any human but especially an overhead athlete because when his shoulders pinch together his thoracic spine inverts and sags towards the ground. We want our spines to maintain their natural curvature, not “sag” as this compromises the functionality of everything around it.
The other things this shoulder pinched position informs me of is he probably doesn’t have very good control over his scapulas. Scapula control is ESSENTIAL for overhead athletes if they want to be healthy and produce as much velocity as possible.
I wanted to see if I cued Pearce different, if he would be able to stabilize the spine better and create more scapular control.
The result as seen in the picture below is shoulder blades wing while trying to create more stability and his spine stays sagging towards the ground. Now I know there is something worth while here, patterns did not improve with coaching which leads me to believe his body doesn’t actually know and or have the capacity to get into a more evolved scapular position.
Current Findings
Our spine has a small “S” curve throughout it which we want to be able to maintain throughout movement. Our ability to maintain the curvatures reflects our ability to stabilize and protect the spine. Pearce flattens out (or sags) the naturally round curvature of the thoracic spine (mid back).
When we attack, serve, and block in volleyball we are constantly reaching! Now when you reach, your shoulder blades pull away from your spine and if you’re not strong in this position that can limit the actual performance of attacking, serving and blocking or just lead to problems with pain while performing those skills.
Now when I start to see a picture revealing itself, I throw more paint at it to see if more things reveal themselves to create a clearer picture. So I started to challenge his shoulders through different positions to see what happened. We started with a push-up where Pearce was told to keep his shoulder blades away from his spine or “spread wide” throughout the full push-up.
We see at the bottom position he squeezes his shoulders together which means he already strayed away from the instruction to stay “spread wide”.
Then at the top we see his shoulder blades on the sides of the rib cage and winging off with a flat thoracic spine.
Now I wasn’t surprised by these results as these things all showed up in a lower level movement, holding a cobra position. When dysfunctional patterns show up with low intensities they very likely show up when we intensify the demand placed on the pattern.
But let’s dive into this vertical shoulder blade positions quickly. Earlier I mentioned he didn’t have the ability or capacity to get into a more “evolved” scapular position.
The human shoulder evolved by hanging, climbing, and swinging. It took the shoulder blades from the sides of our bodies (when we walked on all fours), and placed them on the back of our rib cage. For whatever reason his Pearce’s shoulder blades did not evolve well and they are stuck on the sides of his rib cage.
The picture is becoming more clear. But there is still more to uncover! Next we put him in a position that evolved our shoulders - a 2-arm and 1-arm hang.
In the hanging positions we are looking for how long he can hang for but also how his body is organizing to stay in this position. His 2-arm hang time was just under a green (60-90 seconds) at 56 seconds. His 1-arm hang on both sides were big red flags as he couldn’t last 1-second. But it wasn’t just the lack of strength/endurance in his hanging showed up, also the shadows or skin creases revealed some valuable information.
The crease on his left shoulder with the green circle around it is what we are looking for. His right shoulder crease I almost non-existent.
What Does This Mean?
These deltoid creases appear clearly when there is a balanced vertical pulling of the humeral head (arm bone) in the socket. How does this occur? When we have a rotator cuff that does it job well!
This is why we train the rotator cuff from various hanging, climbing, and swinging positions, because this is how the rotator cuff evolved. Its primary purpose is not rotation, despite all the rotational band exercises you see. Its primary purpose is to hold the arm bone in the socket while being challenged with hanging, climbing, swinging and even throwing (or attacking a volleyball).
Our Plan
So now we know we have some work to do surrounding his shoulder blades and thoracic spine. Checkout the video montage of a handful of the movements Pearce has been doing over the last month.
The Results
After this session Pearce flew out east to begin his summer with the National team. Pearce is such a cool athlete because his mind is different. He prioritized these movements through his first few weeks with the National Team even though he had long days and team workout plan to follow. He slotted his exercises into the workouts or pre-training prep so that he knew he was getting the work his body needed. And because of this he made some incredibly quick changes.
His shoulders are no longer pinching together to create strength!
The top position his push-up is not perfect but his shoulders are now less vertical and lying flatter on his rib cage. This also appears to have changed the shape of his thoracic spine, reshaping it towards a more natural curve. Funny how changes happen throughout other areas of the body when we create more “evolved” abilities.
Now we are seeing more symmetry through his deltoid creases
And not only is the skin/shadows revealing changes but his 2-arm hang improved by 40 seconds and he went from 0-seconds attempting to 1-arm hang to being able to hang from his right and left arm for 15 seconds each!
These are MASSIVE changes in my books!
Also, most importantly he no longer has discomfort or pain attacking!
What’s Next?
Well first we are going to continue to evolve his shoulders and turn them from good to great through virtual calls and programming on the AWA app.
Secondly, this is only Pearce’s upper body dysfunction. We found something in the lower body, specifically the lower limbs well. He has an awesome physio with the National team that is working with him on this, but we will compliment this work with a little of our own to round out the approach. Stay tuned and I’ll reveal what is happening there, what we are doing and the changes that happen as they do.
Interested in doing a Tune Up or Overhaul session with us?
