Charles Poliquin Was 100% Right About This…

As far back as the 80s, the great Charles Poliquin was touting the benefits of having strong external rotator muscles, and therefore the value in training them.

Yet at the time he was ridiculed and mocked for it, with many naysayers arguing significant gains in external rotation strength ‘wouldn’t make any difference’ to global compound moves like the barbell bench press and so on.

Charles himself always said if he had waited for scientific research to validate and verify what he already knew to be true, he would never have achieved anything.

During his illustrious career in the industry he developed and published a whole host of strength standards – basically levels one ought to get to in order to be considered ‘structurally balanced’. Structural balance in Charles’ mind was not having prime mover muscle strength far beyond stabiliser muscle strength.

A few common examples of this could be….

Very high anterior deltoid strength but non-existent lower trapezius strength. Or very developed chest strength but no rear deltoid strength….

The idea being if you end up so strong somewhere you not only become bottle-necked by your weaknesses, in that your overall strength plateaus until this is addressed, but you also become more vulnerable to injuries.

By aiming for these gold standards or high standards, you not only reduce injury risk but also plateau much less. It’s a win win in theory.

10% of your bodyweight per arm in the single arm external rotation for 10 reps…

Was a well known level Charles advocated and it’s a standard now continued on by Ben Patrick, aka the Knees Over Toes Guy who endorses this standard in his world wide ATG system.

And to clarify, this is in the elbow on knee version using a dumbbell but that’s not to say you couldn’t use a plate as well.

I remember first hearing this stat or target and thinking it was just flat out impossible. I did the maths….10 percent of 84 kg is 8.4kg, for 10 reps, with good form? No chance.

I even tested it. Not even close. And I’ll admit: I didn’t truly understand or appreciate the value & importance of strength in this movement. This remained the case for quite some time after, too, alas.

Three or four years ago now I found myself with a painful bicep tendon that hindered me in elbow extension, and flexion alike. This limited my performance in so many movements. I’ve written about this pretty extensively since, but it’s a dark time with poignant lessons I shall never forget.

At my lowest point in the injury phase I wasn’t even able to eccentrically lower 5kg on my left arm to parallel, let alone go further into internal rotation! It wasn’t just a lack of strength but also a ton of pain. If you do the maths, you’ll realise that’s way below the 10% standard.

Cutting a long story short, as of today I’m delighted to say I’m actually now a member of this club; the 10% of your bodyweight per arm in the single arm external rotation club.

It’s taken a solid 2 years of once weekly training with little top up volume in the form of activation & movement prep over the last 18 months, to get to this point and I will confess it’s still not super easy to hit this standard – I have to be on a ‘good day’.

But the real question is: what are the real world benefits to this mammoth overhaul mission?

Are the Poliquin claims true? Can you see undeniable improvements in general movements as a result of such a strength gain in this area?

I always wondered this myself and all these years later I have an answer….

Yes.

You sure do see an improvement in so many movements as a result of almost doubling your rotator cuff strength (which is what I pretty much have done on all angles now).

As a result, so much has improved! My muscle up transitions are as strong as they have ever been. This is on bar and rings. I can now do comfortable slow bar muscle ups with a false grip, as well as doing super slow negatives without a false grip, and I’m able to lower the elbows to parallel with the floor (right in the middle of the transition) and return to the dip phase at will – sometimes I can get below parallel too!

Yep, the goal this year is a slow non-false grip bar muscle up, among many other things.

Other improvements are pike and handstand push ups; these are much stronger at the bottom now as I can hold my shoulders down nicely, while keeping the elbows tucked in and slightly back, as you should be striving to do. But if the rotator cuff is weak you will have no chance at doing this – your elbows will kick out to the sides and the bottom of the rep will feel painful, weak and unstable.

Your pull ups will also improve. You’ll have much better stability in your pull and you’ll feel like you’re pulling the bar down, as opposed to having to struggle your way up and over the bar. If you’re anything like I was, you can be so messed up in the rotator cuff, you literally feel like you’re pulling lopsidedly, and sometimes the weak side can just hurt. No amount of internal focus on levelling the amount your pulling with each side will fix this. Trust me, I’ve tried. But reasonably balanced rotator cuff strength will make this issue an afterthought, believe me.

Many straight arm movements that are notorious for being hard on the elbows should get easier, too. Back lever, front lever, ring supports, even having nicely locked arms in handstands can be troublesome if the bicep tendon is irritated, and the rotator cuff is weak. Again, I know because I’ve been there.

If you’re reading this and aren’t interested in any of these, maybe the general posture and shoulder health benefits will sell you on it more?

Never more than now do I hear as many complaints about shoulder pain, that can be traced back to some form of shoulder impingement syndrome, where the muscles around the front of the shoulder (front deltoids, pec major/minor, long head of the biceps tendon), become shortened and overused, thus resulting in the shoulder itself or humeral head rather, sitting too far forward in the socket. Then when you try to press or load the shoulder, you get pain and restriction.

Yet when you significantly level up your external rotation strength, your shoulders will sit ‘in the socket’ better, affording you more room to move freely and strongly. This is the injury prevention part we mentioned earlier.

To this day I still haven’t encountered anyone who’s elbows and shoulders didn’t feel better after external rotation work, especially if they had cranky elbows or shoulders to begin with.

The How

Tragically, many people put the work into external rotation and don’t see the benefits I’ve touted here, and the ones Charles promoted. I was in this camp for a while….

‘I’m working external rotation loads but my shoulders still hurt!’

‘My compound movements still feel cranky and painful. How can this be the cure it’s supposed to be?!’

In my experience both personally & professionally, this is down to a few factors.

1. Using too much weight too soon
2. Using less than ideal form (usually coincides with #1)
3. Only training the one angle all the time (leaving the other angles super weak)
4. Only training with either a band or dumbbell all the time (not utilising both which leaves parts of the strength curve weak)

Using too much weight too soon is a common error as progressive overload is always said to be king. I used to try to go up in weight as soon as I hit the high end of the rep bracket (usually 12). But I found even going up a kilo or two for the next session and lowering the reps down to 8 again was often too tough.

Like what the hell?!

The fact is these are small and often dormant muscles, meaning your body isn’t used to using them and contracting them. So the gains will be slow anyway and the muscles themselves aren’t ever going to be massive weight bearing muscles. If you use 5kg and then go to 7.5kg, that’s a 50% increase!

Imagine doing that on your weighted pull up…one session you finally hit 20kg for 5 reps. Would you go to 30kg at the next workout? Never. At least you damn well shouldn’t.

This is where spin-lock dumbbells can be useful where you can use 0.5 kg plates as part of a set, to configure all types of micro jumps in weight. But this is assuming you’ve got access to this. If you haven’t, a better approach is to work on perfecting the form and improving the same weight and rep count for longer than you think you need, striving to control it more, squeeze it more, feel it more, move further into internal rotation and above all make it feel easier.

Using less than ideal form pertains mostly to letting the shoulder slip out of depression and slight retraction. This is usually a result of the weight being heavier than you think you should lift, and the dumbbell pulling the shoulder so far forward. When this is done in quite a severe manner, it can even cause shoulder pain and bring on a shoulder impingement!

The reality is you may well have to use weights well below what you would like to admit, in order to adhere to the form cues previously mentioned. But that’s fine. Nobody really cares and over a longer time frame, you’ll be far stronger and also have all the benefits of a stronger and better working rotator cuff.

A lack of angular variety is another potential banana-skin – and this can be down to a simple lack of knowledge and/or a stubbornness towards a favourite or already stronger plane of movement. The bottom line is you’ll always be stronger naturally at one angle, and this can be different from person to person.

You may find you’re more comfortable with the side lying external rotation but you find the elbow on knee, cross body external rotation feels terrible and you can hardly lift any weight at all.

Or the other way around…

The only way to truly tell is to test them and look for outliers. I like to break external rotation work into the following categories;

1. Side Body External Rotation – Teres Minor focused

2. Elbow On Knee External Rotation (With Elbow Abducted as much as possible)

3. Elbow On Knee External Rotation (With Elbow 90 Degrees to the body & Dumbbell moving cross body)

4. Elbow On Knee External Rotation (With Elbow 45 Degrees to the body – basically a hybrid of the previous two)

Numbers 2-4 are more infraspinatus focused, whereas the side body variation is more teres minor focused. It’s key to train both & assess for any weaknesses.

You may find one angle is weak generally or you may find one side is weak at one angle, and the other side is weak at a different angle. It really can vary from what I’ve seen myself and with clientele.

The Final Part – Attacking The Entire Strength Curve

If I hadn’t already hit you with enough knowledge bombs, here’s another: short vs long range strength is also a key factor to consider when training the rotator cuff.

Using a dumbbell or weight plate in any of the moves shown above would target the external rotators in a mid-slightly longer range position, depending on how far you can internally rotate on the elbow on knee variations.

But the maximally shortened position is still left relatively untrained; where the muscles are maximally contracted.

This range is often the weakest of them all and the one best for developing & enhancing the mind-muscle connection – an all too often lost sensation for this area. Thanks to modern life and the ever increasing time spent in a slumped, head forward posture, these muscles become lengthened and dormant without you knowing.

Then you go and bench press and train your lats and biceps all the time to look buff, and the problem is worsened. Higher rep banded work with pauses in the contraction position is a great starting point to waking up these muscles, and developing an improved mind-muscle connection.

Bands get bashed a lot these days because they’re ‘not hypertrophy friendly’; meaning they don’t tend to overload or stress the muscle(s) in a lengthened position. But does this make them a ‘bad’ tool? Like with any tool, it’s the job that determines the effectiveness of the tool in question, no?

And in this case bands are perfect for stressing the short range/maximally contracted position.

With everyone I coach in person and online, I’m a huge advocate of cycling through various angles and styles of rotator cuff work across a training cycle. Depending on the context, some will have it as warm up work, others will have it as work at the end of their session, some will have slightly higher amounts than others as well but the common theme is: they do it regardless of goals or strength in order to keep the area strong & healthy, across all parts of the strength curve.

I have found this to be INVALUABLE for elbow health, performance, shoulder health and just progressing in a body that feels good.

Don’t believe me? I challenge you to commit to 6-12 months of dedicated rotator cuff work, then come back to me and tell me you haven’t seen any benefits…

If you’re unsure how to program it all into a well-rounded program for skills, strength, mobility etc, email me @straighttalkingfitness@gmail.com for help with coaching. I help dozens of people make sustainable progress each month on a plethora of goals.