The #1 Thing People Miss in Their Shoulder Pressing Routine
When changing up pressing variations isn't enough, where do you look next?
Many people resort to mobility…
While mobility has its time and place (on rest days or post exercise), we notice most athletes have a lack of rotator cuff strength/shoulder stability.
When we bench, we think about training the pecs and delts. When we do rows or pulling work, we obviously get back muscles.
But do you think about your rotator cuff muscles?
We like to do a stability push up test to see where an athlete is with rotator cuff strength.
If we have to incorporate a chicken wing motion in order to press, this unwinding of the joint and overloading of the glenohumeral joint comes out in bigger movements….like pressing movements!
So we have to make sure our rotator cuff muscles are strong.
Here are a few of our favorites that you can do for 2 sets of 10 repetitions before your next warm up.
Side lying external rotation with a towel
Coaching Cues:
This exercise is made better with the towel because it takes the lats out of the equation a little bit.
Try not to squeeze in too hard and downwardly depress the shoulder. This doesn’t allow us to isolate the external rotators as much.
Weighted L’s
Coaching Cues:
This exercise is one of our favorites because it requires external rotation with an isometric - training those tiny muscles to resist the big pull of the internal rotators. Plus, it adds in great middle trap strengthening as well.
But what about after?
It’s all well and said to isolate these small muscles to help them gain some mechanical advantage back against your primer movers, but now you have to integrate them into stabilization and functional movements.
Once they become stronger, you have to teach them how to maintain that torque and stability in an open chain movement.
Enter…the kettlebell.
Boy is this thing underrated and underutilized.
Throwing some simple stability drills like these before or after your compound pressing can literally create more mobility and more lasting mobility than many shoulder stretches.
In open chain movements, your weaker shoulder CAN’T hide underneath your dominant arm and it must maintain and keep that external rotation by itself.
Here’s a few of our favorite stability movements. Perform 2 sets of 10 repetitions.
KB Half Moon Rolls
Coaching Cues:
This is one of our favorite bench prep stability drills. It trains you to stabilize the shoulder, utilizing horizontal abduction and adduction - something rarely done in standard compound lifts (never really), all while maintaining external rotation torque. This helps with that finicky bicep tendon as well.
IF we can start to stabilize some serious weight in this drill, we can really start to count on our shoulders much more in the bench press or any pressing drill for that matter.
KB Horizontal Circles
Coaching Cues:
Super simple drill - take the KB and do small clockwise and counterclockwise circles to really fire up the reactive stability in the shoulder and pecs.Often non dominant pecs get a little laxed in the bench movement so when doing this, feel that pec really pulling in tight on that shoulder as it tries to pull against the small abduction the circles make.
Remember…
The main job of your rotator cuff muscles is to keep that ball joint approximated tightly in it’s socket while your prime movers like delts, pecs, and lats, move the shoulder through space.
So give those small muscles some TLC and stop making them pale in comparison to your prime movers in strength.
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Garry Dubbs is the Co-Creator of ATH Fitness
His main objective in life is to increase people's physical capabilities to allow them to try and explore more things that are fun. If you can only walk, you’re not going to try many new things. But if you can be totally confident in your body’s capabilities, then you will make the world your playground. That’s why for a limited time, ATH is offering the Rugged Body Mobility Guide for FREE! It is a quick total mobility guide that is designed to make your body ready for anything! Just put your email in below and we will get you started on becoming an All Terrain Human, TODAY!