Is There a Point to Training Your Rotator Cuff

Is There a Point to Training Your Rotator Cuff?

The fitness industry considers most muscles as equals. Certainly, some gurus like to play favorites, yet no one is willing to stand up and say: this is the most important muscle! We do know and recognize by now that muscles work in chains. This concept is many years old in Europe and is widely recognized in America. Without a doubt, the work of Thomas Myers is to be mentioned for this advancement, this side of the ocean.

Still, further categorizing muscles is needed. Based on trends in conditioning circles, it appears that all muscles can be trained equally. I completely disagree. Some muscles are for stability and others are for mobility. Simply put, if you can see a muscle, it is made to move you. If you can’t, it’s made to stabilize you. An example of a muscle made to move you around is the gluteus muscle. The gluteus mobilizes your hip in different directions.

[bctt tweet=”Simply put, if you can see a muscle, it is made to move you. If you can’t, it’s made to stabilize you.” username=”posture_pro”]

The muscles responsible for stabilizing that same hip joint are the pelvic trochanteric muscles. The piriformis is the superstar of this muscle group and it creates compression to stabilize the joint so that the superficial glute can perform its task. One would think that if you want to increase performance, you could train both the glutes and the piriformis. And that’s when things start making a lot less sense.

Some muscles simply cannot be trained because others will always handle the loading that is proposed.
Take the rotator cuff for example. It is typically accepted that specific muscle tests and exercises target the different muscles of the cuff. For example, when testing external rotation of the shoulder, elbow by the waist, we think we are assessing the teres minor. This is wrong. When bringing the arm at 90 degrees of abduction before testing, we assume to be testing the strength of the infraspinatus muscle. This is also wrong.

In these two cases, the reasoning is faulty for two reasons:
Reason #1: the rear deltoid sits further from the axis than the teres minor and the infraspinatus. Therefore, it is mostly the rear deltoid that is tested in the aforementioned tests.

Reason #2: stabilizing muscles such as the rotator cuff, the piriformis and the popliteus are under the dependence of the involuntary motor system. They are in close contact with the joints. They contain a high amount of type I muscle fibers and are built for endurance. Attempting to recruit these muscles via exercise means the superficial muscles will kick in first and take over, as these are located further away from the axis. They have mechanical advantage, always, over stabilizers. Attempting to train stabilizers is a waste of time. We are neither designed for it mechanically, nor are we wired for it.

What makes the most sense is aligning posture prior to movement. By aligning the system, joint by joint, we naturally increase the sensitivity of all muscle spindles in all muscles, at once. Muscles that contain a higher ration of muscle spindles benefit profoundly from this body of work. These muscles are the stabilizers. They are tonic. They are built for endurance. They cannot be trained, yet they can be conditioned.

There is a difference.

That difference is Posturology.