Play Your Way to Better Shoulders

There is a certain kind of gym culture that insists everything must be optimized — the perfect grip width, the ideal scapular position, the precisely calibrated hang duration. It’s well-meaning. It’s also, quite often, the fastest route to a practice you abandon by February.

This tutorial is not that. This is the other thing: permission to play.

“Give yourself permission to play. Don’t worry about how long you’re up there for.”

All you need is a pull-up bar. Whether your feet stay on the ground or come off it entirely is your call — both are valid, both are useful, and neither makes you more or less serious about your practice.

What the Tutorial Covers

The premise is beautifully simple: grab the bar, and start asking:what if? What if one hand shifts its position? What if you move a little sideways? What if you let yourself drift one direction and see what that reveals about where you’re stiff, where you’re free, where your body has been quietly waiting for attention?

This mirrors the approach we took in the leg tutorial — the idea that curiosity is a better teacher than correction. Your nervous system responds differently when it’s exploring versus when it’s performing. The same shoulder that locks up under a prescribed protocol often opens right up when you’re just … seeing what happens.

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