Rotate!

OK,

I have been a slacker. And certain clients are hounding me, so I am vowing to be more proactive again and getting back to this blogging business.

It's time to talk about the world's least sexy body movement, external rotation. Many of you may have heard of the "rotator cuff" and some of you may have had the unfortunate honor of injuring this "area". The rotator cuff is actually four seperate muscles that support the glenohumeral joint (the shoulder joint!). I am a huge fan of functional movements and my clients spend most of their time doing multi-joint compound movements. I hate doing assistance exercises during my sessions, but I need to stress that you all do these on your own!!!

As much as I loath isolation exercises, there are some that are very beneficial as assistance exercises and if you are not doing rotator cuff work, including external rotation, on your "off" days, then you are playing with fire. Teres Minor and Infraspinatus are the two muscles that are most responsible for external rotation and there are many different ways to work these muscles. One of the simplest is side lying external rotation. A video of this exercise is here:
http://www.bodybuilding.com/exercises/detail/view/name/external-rotation

Pick a LIGHT weight and do 3 sets of 20 on each side. Most of you will want to start with those tiny pink one pound weights. Women won't mind, but I'm sure the men will roll their eyes at this. And while you men might feel like a goofball lying on your side and knocking out reps with a pink weight, you'll look much dumber when you shred one of your rotator cuff muscles because you spent of your off days doing bicep curls instead of an exercise that can actually help you.

In addition to help preventing an injury, rotator cuff exercises like side lying external rotation can actually increase your strength on lifts like the bench press. So just check your ego, pick up the pink weight, and then you can impress your friends with a bigger bench!