Rotator Cuff Exercises to Increase Shoulder Stability

The rotator cuff refers to the muscles that help support shoulder stability. The major muscles in this group are infraspinatus and teres minor, which help the arm do a motion called external rotation. This happens when the arm is rotated away from the body. While these muscles are primarily used for rotation, they also play an important role in maintaining shoulder stability and strength.

Increasing the strength of these muscles will help facilitate shoulder health and will decrease the risk of injury during heavy lifting. They will also increase the maximum lifts of all exercises involving the shoulders, including the pull-up, bench press, and military press. This is because it is impossible or at least increasingly difficult to do an exercise after the weakest muscle fails. In the bench press, the rotator cuff muscles are among the weakest and will usually fail before the deltoids or pectorals do, which means the larger muscles aren't being hit as hard as they could be. This can, of course, be prevented with proper training of the rotator cuff. After a month or two of rotator cuff exercise, it is possible to boost your bench by as much as 30%.

For overall shoulder development, for the delts and rotator cuff, you should do an exercise called the cuban press. This is a difficult exercise that requires you to pull the bar up to the bottom of your sternum, then use external rotation to place it at head level, and then press it above your head. The return process is the exact same. This is a very difficult exercise to do, but is arguably the best for building up your rotator cuffs. Be sure not to use too much weight as you can easily strain the muscle or sacrifice form. Your upper arm, when rotating, should remain parallel to the ground while your forearm should be perpendicular to it. I recommend starting with a 15-25lb barbell, depending on how big you are and how much experience you have as a lifter.

Another good exercise is the standing dumbbell external rotation. Again, it's important to keep your forearm perpendicular to the ground and your upper arm parallel to it. This is not a full-shoulder exercise and will primarily work the external rotators. That said, it is still an exercise that should be included in any shoulder-strengthening routine. Since the cuban press uses the same motion, you can interchange the two.

Finally, you can do the lying side external rotation, which is when you lay on your side and place your forearm across your stomach. You then rotate it out to the side. This will work the entirety of your shoulder and increase the strength of your rotator cuff by a significant amount. Since this hits the muscles differently than the standing external rotation and the cuban press, you can use it on the same day as either one.

When working your rotator cuffs be sure to work with a safe weight because it is a small muscle that is prone to injury. While these exercises are designed to strengthen it, too much strain can definitely cause significant injury and tearing of the muscle group or tendon, in which case surgery may be required. So make sure you work up from a low weight.

Source:
Charles Poliquin, "The Poliquin Principles." 1997