Are you putting the handcuffs on the results that you should be seeing in the gym?
I'll tell you, if you're overlooking this important upper body muscle, you absolutely
are.
Let me explain to you and show you exactly what I'm talking about today.
What's up, guys?
Jeff Cavaliere, ATHLEANX.COM.
Today, we are going to talk about that overlooked, under-trained muscle in the upper body.
It's the rotator cuff.
I said you're putting the handcuffs on your potential in the gym if you're overlooking
the rotator cuff.
Now, one of the first big mistakes that guys will make is, they sort of refer to the rotator
cuff as a single muscle.
Right?
'I tore my rotator cuff.'
We got to look at that first and foremost and see what it is we are truly talking about.
As we refer to the skeleton, now guys, for everybody that sent in a name suggestion,
he finally has a name, right.
I was definitely partial to the Jeff Cadavaliere.
I thought that was brilliant.
I just didn't think it; it might get confusing.
Especially that I have a tendency to mumble.
It might get confusing between the 2 of us, so we couldn't go with that.
But I did like the X-ray name.
So his official name will be Raymond.
We're going to shorten it, X-ray, because we're going to use this guy,
as I've already referred to, to be able to break down the science behind the strength
and show you guys everything that it is we're trying to understand.
So, to acknowledge those that sent in that name; DF Nightmare, Lars Neilson, Andre Santos,
James McCallum and Avatar Ang926,
Guys, you guys all sent in that name, and you guys are getting recognition here for
that.
So, we look at the rotator cuff again, it's 4 muscles, guys.
And the primary job here of the rotator cuff is to externally rotate the shoulder.
What I mean by that is, it doesn't matter what position you are holding your arm in,
external rotation is to take the arm and basically rotate it behind us.
So if I have it in this classic 90% position, external rotation would be pushing it back
and behind us.
If I'm an athlete, a pitcher, external rotation is moving it back this way.
You can see how important that is, the motion backwards.
Ok.
Even if I have my arm straight in front of me, external rotation is turning it backwards
because the ball and socket, as I'll show you on here, is rotating externally, outward.
Here's the 4 muscles.
We start off with the supraspinatus.
Now, look on the other side first.
This is the scapula, ok.
This is called the spine of the scapula.
Something that sits above, supra-above the spine, would be called supraspinatus.
The one that's below the spine is called the infraspinatus.
So, we have our supraspinatus tendon and muscle that runs here.
We have our infraspinatus here, and we have our teres minor here.
They all insert on the same spot on the outside.
You know, sort of the top portion here, of our upper arm ball.
The main role of those 3 muscles, guys, is to externally rotate the shoulder.
If I turn this guy around, he basically has one more muscle that's in the rotator cuff
group.
It's called the subscapularis.
It's the one inside here, right there, subscapular.
In other words, inside, on the underside of the scapula.
This one's job is to internally rotate the shoulder.
The problem there guys is that we know that we have plenty of muscles that internally
rotate the shoulder.
We have our lat set to help internally rotate our shoulder, right.
We have our chest that helps to internally rotate our shoulder.
They're all pulling everything this way.
We don't need any extra help there.
If you don't train the rotator cuff muscles, though,
these small little guys, the supraspinatus, infraspinatus, teres minor, if you don't train
them, consciously train them,
then you are not externally training the shoulder, and you are going to develop an imbalance
of a fore-rounded shoulder.
I want to point out, guys, this is number 2 most popular injury that keeps guys out
of the gym, and the most injured joint that keeps guys out of the gym,
ie not training at all and not making progress is the shoulder.
The low back is #1.
The shoulder is #2.
The knee is #3.
So, if you're not protecting your shoulders, guys,
it's damn hard to do Bench Presses, Overhead Shoulder Presses, even tricep work without
really hurting yourself.
You need to keep your shoulders healthy.
You need to have a conscious effort on externally rotating your shoulder with an idea of strengthening
them.
Again, I showed you here, it doesn't matter the position, it's going to; these muscles
will contract to externally rotate the head of the shoulder here in the joint.
But what people who refer to a torn rotator cuff, they're usually referring to just one
of those muscles getting torn because of this overuse or impinging inside the shoulder joint.
So let's take one more look at that and then I'll show you some of the exercises that you
can do to help to combat this.
Ok, so, again, we have the head of our humerus here, which is the main bone up here in the
arm that goes and forms the shoulder joint
by having all this ligamentous capsule and again these tendons from these rotator cuffs,
again, cuffing it, creating some sort of stability for the joint.
We've got the deltoid that runs over the top, and then we've got our acromion which is this
bone right here, right.
It forms the roof of this joint.
So, when people talk about tearing the rotator cuff, what happens is usually they'll get
an inflammation of the bursa that's in their shoulder
that will close down the space that's in here, or, they'll start to have a migration of the
head higher into this space.
Why?
Because there's an imbalance of strength between the deltoid and the fact that we never train
our rotator cuffs.
The rotator cuff is going to pull this thing down and maintain that space.
If all you do is deltoid training,
this is going to close more and more and more and more until your head of the humerus is
way up in that joint.
Now, when you try to up and raise your arm up, you get a grinding, and the tendons are
right in that spot.
And you're going to eventually grind it down like a rope over a piece of metal to the point
where that thing just tears and completely tears or partially tears.
And that's when one of the muscles here of the rotator cuff gets torn, alright.
So the focus here guys is, we want to make sure that we are actively working on training.
And just to sort of underscore this point, you can't just be following any training program.
One of my pet peeves is to look at training programs and see how many times they're asking
you to externally rotate versus internally rotate.
And in an upper body workout from one of the most, I'm not going to name names, from one
of the most popular workout programs available,
an upper body workout had 420 repetitions in that workout.
Guess how many of them externally rotated the shoulder?
Zero.
Not a single rep of the 420 in this upper body workout externally rotated the shoulder.
You want to talk about creating imbalances.
That's the fastest way to get there.
At ATHLEANX, we make sure that we build in dedicated external rotation, dedicated shoulder
rotator cuff work because we want to be able to combat that.
We don't want to be just like the other guys.
We want to give you guys smart training, alright.
So, I'm going to show you just a couple of the moves that you can do to combat this in
your training.
Again, light work, yes, but very, very important for the stability and the health of your shoulder.
Well, there you have it, guys.
There's just some options.
Again, what I wanted you to notice is the difference in my position.
It was always external rotation.
It didn't matter if I was laying on my side, if I was standing, if I was crossing my body,
if I was bringing my arm up in more of a thrower's position,
the idea is, it's external rotation.
And we also have to understand, we have to work eccentrically the same muscles that we're
working concentrically.
So, it's a big deal, guys.
These guys are extremely important, as I said, to lending stability to your shoulder joint.
And as you can see, they connect to your shoulder blades and to your upper arm so thinking that
there's no impact of these muscles.
When you're doing even things like Bench Press when your shoulder blades are pinned to the
bench, there's a huge impact on what these muscles can do,
and the stability that they can provide, and therefore unlock and uncuff your ability to
start performing better on those major lifts, alright.
So, just because they're small, don't disregard them, guys.
Important, important, important.
Like I said, for more information, if you want a complete training program that trains
you all over, not just the muscles we see,
but the muscles that we know are important, then get the ATHLEANX Training Program.
You can find that over at ATHLEANX.COM.
If you like these videos, as always, these X-atomy Lab Videos, make sure you leave your
thumb's up below as well.
And finally, again, thank you guys.
Raymond's happy.
He's got a name now.
Raymond, look at the camera.
There he is.
He can look at; he's extremely flexible, this guy.
We thank you, alright.
Thanks, guys, we'll be back here again in just a couple days.