Shoulder Injury Prevention - Shock-loading a Fully Extended Arm

I am looking for training tips that will help me prevent shoulder injury from unexpectedly shock-loading my shoulder.

The scenario that I am concerned about is where my arm is fully extended and my feet pop unexpectedly.  This hasn't been an issue for me when rock climbing.  However, this has been a recurring problem for me, when dry tooling or mixed climbing.  

I have been doing some basic shoulder mobility / "prehab" shoulder strengthening excersizes with light weights (up to 20 lbs), which has reduced shoulder injuries from slow muscle contractions (i.e., moving through an awkward gaston).  These excersizes include flys, reverse flys (I's, Y's, T's, etc.) and rotator cuff excersizes. However, I am not doing any training that mimics the scenario where my feet suddenly and unexpectedly skate off holds, shock loading the shoulder.

So far, I have had a couple ideas on how I might go about trying to prevent injury from this scenario:

(1) Straight arm dead hangs (from ice tools), without biceps or lats engaged.  Start by offsetting body weight with rubber band or counter weights and progressively add weight until I can "comfortably"  hold 1.5x(?) body weight.
(2) Bent elbow dead hangs (from ice tools), with biceps, traps, and lats engaged. Progressively add weight until I can "comfortably"  hold 2x(?) body weight.  Practice climbing with bent arms, whenever footholds are insecure (allows lats, traps, and biceps to act as a shock absorber, if feet slip unexpectedly)

Idea #1seems like it has the best specificity and might eventually allow me to rest on straight arms without risking injury.  However, I am concerned that this training itself might lead to injury.  Biomechanically, it is not clear to me that humans can effectively train the shoulders to resist large loads, while not engaging the biceps, traps, or lats.  Idea #2 seems far less likely to cause injury, but will ultimately result in a climbing style that is much more fatiguing, since it relies on constantly engaging the biceps, traps, and lats.

I would appreciate feedback on the ideas detailed above or other training ideas that I haven't considered.

I don't think dead hangs (isometric exercises) are going to adequately build strength to prevent injury from dynamic movement. The most effective exercise I have found:

Scapular pull-ups which do an excellent job to activate and engage shoulder muscles. Eventually, you would be able to weight these.

Scapular push-ups which are another method to engage the shoulder.

DB shoulder raises and rotations.

Hanging on disengaged, unprotected shoulders just sounds like a recipe for injury.

I agree that since you're training for a total surprise when you don't have time to engage all your shoulder muscles and your weight falls on the connective tissue in your shoulder, this is a hard thing to train. I's Y's and T's have made my shoulders feel a lot more resilient to everything, even if it's not that specific like you say. One article I read suggests consciously pulling your shoulder blades together as you climb, sort of making sure the muscles are already engaged in case your feet blow, but this is tricky to think about in practice.

I mostly worry about my feet blowing when I'm doing long, easy, zoned-out climbing (often in bad shoes) for endurance training, which has given me a few "yikes!" shoulder moments. The most helpful thing has been to train myself to just immediately let go and fall when my feet blow. My instinct is always to tense everything and avoid falling at all costs... but unless I'm going a muerte on a route I actually care about, I'd much rather just drop than hold on and risk injury. Maybe that's not practical because ice tools are pointy.

Richard R wrote: I agree that since you're training for a total surprise when you don't have time to engage all your shoulder muscles and your weight falls on the connective tissue in your shoulder, this is a hard thing to train. I's Y's and T's have made my shoulders feel a lot more resilient to everything, even if it's not that specific like you say. One article I read suggests consciously pulling your shoulder blades together as you climb, sort of making sure the muscles are already engaged in case your feet blow, but this is tricky to think about in practice.

I mostly worry about my feet blowing when I'm doing long, easy, zoned-out climbing (often in bad shoes) for endurance training, which has given me a few "yikes!" shoulder moments. The most helpful thing has been to train myself to just immediately let go and fall when my feet blow. My instinct is always to tense everything and avoid falling at all costs... but unless I'm going a muerte on a route I actually care about, I'd much rather just drop than hold on and risk injury. Maybe that's not practical because ice tools are pointy.

The second part of this. I would just train yourself to have the muscle memory reaction of "just let go". I had a foot pop on a boulder problem yesterday where my left hand was in a two finger pod shaped hold behind a flake with  my thumb down and arm totally over my head and turned in a really injury prone position for the shoulder. If I hadn't immediately let go, I could have for sure injured that shoulder regardless of how strong it was.

Thanks for all the feedback thus far!

Unfortunately, I do enough alpine climbing, where the consequence of a lead fall would be more severe than shock loading my shoulder that I am hesitant to train myself to instinctively let go, when my feet pop.  

That being said, I think I could probably do a better job of doing of anticipating situations where my feet are likely to pop, and either preemptively engage my “shock absorbing” muscles or mentally ready myself to let go.  I will also try adding scapular pull-ups to my shoulder workout routine.  

Look up Eric Cressey. He has a good Youtube channel for videos of his exercises. In general PTs who work with baseball pitchers will know the most regarding shoulder stabilization exercises.

To stabilize the shoulder, I would work a lot of "eccentric" exercises for the rotator cuff muscles and focus on strengthening the serratus anterior and anterior core muscle groups.

https://ericcressey.com/ 

You should strength train your shoulders and whole shoulder girdle in as many angles as possible. Gymnastics rings are highly effective for this and any weakness will be immediately apparent. Also, you should work mobility by doing dislocates and things like that. If you do this effectively your shoulders will be strong at any angle you may encounter climbing and you won't get injured. climbers tend to be strong in only a single plane of motion. Once out of that plane they encounter weakness and thus injury.

training with light weights will do nothing, but can be beneficial if you are recovering from injury. your two training ideas don't look beneficial to me. In fact it looks dangerous for your shoulders.

I do gymnastics specifically for shoulder and core strength. I can assure you these exercises are highly effective. I can launch to any hold and I am never concerned about injuring shoulders because I know my shoulders are strong enough to handle it. As a side benefit this strength will also make you much more proficient at squaring up and doing long pulls when the feet are bad.

FosterK wrote: 
Hanging on disengaged, unprotected shoulders just sounds like a recipe for injury.

This.  I think that no matter what exercises you do to strengthen your shoulder you will be susceptible to injury in the circumstance that you describe.

One of the worst things I've heard in advice on climbing is "rest on your bones". An example of taking a good cue and completely screwing up the message, which resulted in a few shoulder subluxations that set me back months. Yes for brand new beginner climbers the cue of trying to keep your elbows mostly straight is good because most people have a tendency to straighten their legs, bend arms the whole time and over grip locked off.

Even when you are climbing with your elbows straight you should be keeping your shoulder engaged. This doesn't mean at full tension, just avoid the "shrugged" position, you want your ears to not be covered. This is covered well in an article by Esther Smith: blackdiamondequipment.com/e…

For the OP, FosterK's advice on the scapular pulls is very good. I do 8 reps of these at 1.3 times bodyweight during my warm up to this day. Start with no weight, aim to just depress the scapula as far as you can with perfect form. Work toward bringing the chest more toward the bar and allowing the thoracic spine to arch (drop head back slightly). In addition to these work a wide variety of shoulder stablizers, DPM had an amazingly effective routine which is still on the wayback site:  web.archive.org/web/2012121…

Karl -

The exact situation you described above (cutting feet and shock loading shoulder) happened to me a couple years ago. The crazy part was that is happened on an easy 5.9 route that I had climbed 7 times before. I walked away from that day with a sprained/torn rotator cuff. Rotator cuff exercises are now part of my standard workout and I try to warm my shoulders up before I go climbing.

A quick youtube/google search will show you the best rotator cuff exercises if you want to start doing those as injury prevention. Also the IYT shoulder exercise is a good one to do too.

The other take-away I had from my injury experience was to make sure you are actually engaging your shoulders properly when climbing - described here

Kettlebell clean and press and turkish get up. These are tremendous exercises that will also greatly strengthen your core which will also help your climbing. Great functional movements. TGU is really good for all the stabilizing muscles in and around your shoulder. If it is completely unfamiliar watch some videos and just practice with a safe weight. Practicing is part of it.

I second the core training. Feet popping off unexpectedly is a dangerous event for shoulders, fingers, and more. Core work will make them pop off less. Anterior / flexion as well as posterior / extension ( more often neglected).

Everything you could ever want to know about shoulders and how to protect them > Bulletproof Your Shoulder by Jim Johnson .PT
All his text is scientifically tested (and links provided) and his recommendations are soundly based around real results.
I tore my rotator cuff at the climbing gym after an unexpected fall onto my extended arm - after only a few weeks I'm climbing harder than ever thanks to Jim's advice and exercises.