Dr. Squat - Dr. Fred Hatfield

Eric Cressey has some great stuff, i actually went up to see him for an evaluation on a lower back problem and shoulder issue, he helped me out big time, no more pain. I haven't been this pain free since i can't remember. If anyone is in or near the Mass. area i would check him out, make an appointment to see him, he knows his stuff, and hell he can pull 630 at a bodyweight of 165 so he knows about training.

#200 total reps five times a week...Sounds like a recipe for an overuse injury if you ask me. Some good info though.#

No. It isn't. I will explain why.

To begin with the infraspinatus and teres minor are both small muscles. They recover fast and can be worked almost every day. Normally you wouldn't want or need to do that much work on them if they were as strong as they were supposed to be. They should be typically worked well and given just as much attention as the other muscles in your upper body. Generally speaking you should do a set of external rotations for every set you do of rowing or pressing. But if they are lagging it's bad news and you have to specialize. In Charles Poliquin's article about structural balance he mentions about how he had the hockey player train them 5 times per week to play catch up. In one of his books he says that they respond best to sets of 6 to 20 reps. In my case I initially tried doing about 6 total sets of 6 to 20 reps 2 to 3 times per week. I did this for about 4 months and my strength increased, but much more slowly than I wanted. Over the Christmas break I went away for vacation and didn't have gym access at the time. So I figured then would be the time to really focus on my external rotators to try to get them as strong as they needed to be. So I tried to train them almost every day. I would hold books in my hands as weights and do lying side abductions and L-lateral raises. That is when I realized that rather high reps like 20 to 30 or even more worked the best. I would do sets of about 20 on the lying side abductions until I got tired. Then I would do several high rep sets on the L-lateral raises; I would try to do at least 100 total reps and if I had enough time and was feeling up to it I would aim for 200. It worked. It helped me bust through my plateau and get to where I needed to be. I did this for about 3 weeks total. And when I finally got the chance to go to the gym and test my strength on Single-Arm External Rotations I finally got the weight I needed for my new 8 rep max in order to insure proper balance.

Just think of it this way. The external rotators act as stabilizers during all pressing and rowing movements. When you build bigger muscles in your upper body you have to isolate the external rotators separately other wise they won't be strong enough to support your shoulders when you are doing your lifts the way they are supposed to. They will end up lagging way behind! Just think of me for example (similar to the hockey player), I had been training for many years and out of all the years I was lifting and building bigger shoulders, chest, and lats, I didn't spend any time at all working my external rotators because I didn't know how. This is what most lifters do and this is part of the reason why the topic of shoulder problems never fails to keep coming back up. And if you notice the difference in numbers for Single-Arm External Rotations you will see what I mean. The hockey player had to increase his 8RM from 3 lbs to 35 lbs to get things right. My initial 8RM was probably that low and I had to get it up
to 25 lbs and it took me about 5 months. So that's the explanation for all the volume. When it's lagging that bad, you really have to work as hard as
you can to get your strength back and especially because having your shoulders like that is really uncomfortably. Now that I have my strength back I only train my external rotators about 3 times per week.

No. It isn't. I will explain why.

To begin with the infraspinatus and teres minor are both small muscles. They recover fast and can be worked almost every day. Normally you wouldn't want or need to do that much work on them if they were as strong as they were supposed to be. They should be typically worked well and given just as much attention as the other muscles in your upper body. Generally speaking you should do a set of external rotations for every set you do of rowing or pressing. But if they are lagging it's bad news and you have to specialize. In Charles Poliquin's article about structural balance he mentions about how he had the hockey player train them 5 times per week to play catch up. In one of his books he says that they respond best to sets of 6 to 20 reps. In my case I initially tried doing about 6 total sets of 6 to 20 reps 2 to 3 times per week. I did this for about 4 months and my strength increased, but much more slowly than I wanted. Over the Christmas break I went away for vacation and didn't have gym access at the time. So I figured then would be the time to really focus on my external rotators to try to get them as strong as they needed to be. So I tried to train them almost every day. I would hold books in my hands as weights and do lying side abductions and L-lateral raises. That is when I realized that rather high reps like 20 to 30 or even more worked the best. I would do sets of about 20 on the lying side abductions until I got tired. Then I would do several high rep sets on the L-lateral raises; I would try to do at least 100 total reps and if I had enough time and was feeling up to it I would aim for 200. It worked. It helped me bust through my plateau and get to where I needed to be. I did this for about 3 weeks total. And when I finally got the chance to go to the gym and test my strength on Single-Arm External Rotations I finally got the weight I needed for my new 8 rep max in order to insure proper balance.

Just think of it this way. The external rotators act as stabilizers during all pressing and rowing movements. When you build bigger muscles in your upper body you have to isolate the external rotators separately other wise they won't be strong enough to support your shoulders when you are doing your lifts the way they are supposed to. They will end up lagging way behind! Just think of me for example (similar to the hockey player), I had been training for many years and out of all the years I was lifting and building bigger shoulders, chest, and lats, I didn't spend any time at all working my external rotators because I didn't know how. This is what most lifters do and this is part of the reason why the topic of shoulder problems never fails to keep coming back up. And if you notice the difference in numbers for Single-Arm External Rotations you will see what I mean. The hockey player had to increase his 8RM from 3 lbs to 35 lbs to get things right. My initial 8RM was probably that low and I had to get it up
to 25 lbs and it took me about 5 months. So that's the explanation for all the volume. When it's lagging that bad, you really have to work as hard as
you can to get your strength back and especially because having your shoulders like that is really uncomfortably. Now that I have my strength back I only train my external rotators about 3 times per week.

NOw while you may have gotten stronger that doesn't necessarily mean that this is a good thing in the long run. It may be, it may not. First off I was assuming that you were including this while doing other training as well. Second, 3 weeks may have made you stronger. But, I don't know about doing that volume of work for any extended period of time. ESPECIALLY if you already have existing problems. There is a reason why pitchers get shoulder problems. They use them day in and day out with a very high volume. Third, if you are looking at building strength, then why would you be doing 200 reps? Isn't high weight low reps best for strength? If you want to get good at picking up heavy stuff then pick up heavy stuff. If you want to get good at picking up stuff a lot of times then pick it up a lot of times..

#NOw while you may have gotten stronger that doesn't necessarily mean that this is a good thing in the long run. It may be, it may not. First off I was assuming that you were including this while doing other training as well. Second, 3 weeks may have made you stronger. But, I don't know about doing that volume of work for any extended period of time. ESPECIALLY if you already have existing problems. There is a reason why pitchers get shoulder problems. They use them day in and day out with a very high volume. Third, if you are looking at building strength, then why would you be doing 200 reps? Isn't high weight low reps best for strength? If you want to get good at picking up heavy stuff then pick up heavy stuff. If you want to get good at picking up stuff a lot of times then pick it up a lot of times..#

I did not say to do this for an extended period of time. But this is what I had to do for rehabilitation purposes and it worked. In August my shoulders hurt really bad. My muscular imballance (weak external rotators) was so bad that I lacked the strength to even forcfully hold my shoulders into proper posture. They felt like they were folded foward and I couldn't push them back. It sucked and it was painful! When I initially started I could probably only do 5 lbs x 5 reps with external rotations. I had to strive to increase this number from 5 lbs x 5 reps to 25 lbs x 8 reps in order to achieve proper muscular ballance. And I had to do everything I could to make this happen ASAP. Now my shoulders are better and it took me 5 total months to fix it.
The external rotators (infraspinatus and teres minor) are small muscles and they respond best to high reps. They are not power muscles. They are only used to rotate your arm. That's why sets of 20 to 30 worked pretty well.
You asked about overuse, but those muscles lagged behind due to a good 10 years of neglection while I was busy making the other muscles larger. That's wht I needed that much volume, to catch up. And as I mentioned previously, I don't recomend this type of volume all the time. If you are training right and not neglecting your external rotators all you have to do is what ever amount of work is needed to keep them strong so that they don't fall behind. This could mean doing an ordinary amount of sets just like you do with all the rest of your muscles.

Lastly, I don't understand why you continue to question me on these matters. I had shoulder problems and I did this to fix them. I did a lot of research on these matters just to try to figure out everything I could about shoulder health. That meant a lot of articles since last August. Do you really think that I would go and do all that reading over these months looking for good advise on how to get healthy shoulders just to come out with nothing but bad advise that's going to trash your shoulders? I don't think so. I did what
I had to do to fix my shoulders, not ruin them. That's what Charles Poliquin had the hockey player do, it's what Todd Wilson told me to do, and it's also what Eric Cressey, the shoulder expert, told me to do. It was good in the long run, because I'm better now and my shoulder feel fine!

Can agree with both statements.

#I am glad that you did your research. I just take caution with advice on injury rehab (even from someone who has read "the experts" stuff) outside of from an expert themselves. I will just leave it at that#

I can see where you are coming from on that one. It's smart of you. Even if you go and check out some of the writings by Mike Robertson, he explains that some exercises you do in order to help make your shoulders better can actually feed a problem in various circumstances. It can be quite complicated
and in my opinion it's a nightmare trying to get a good understanding of the shoulder joint and what is best, and it takes time. So even though I have done all that reading I'm sure I still have a lot more to learn. That's why I'm going to read some more of Mike Robertsons writings. And that's why I made
this thread, to help people and so we can share some good information.

I looked up cressey. SOme great stuff. WIll have to go search robertson now. Thanks guys.

Folks, check this out; it's cool!

I was browsing through some articles and stumbled upon some good stuff.
Reference to these articles:
http://www.t-nation.com/findArticle.do?article=06-074-training
http://www.t-nation.com/findArticle.do?article=06-022-training
http://drsquat.com/articles/exercisetechniques.html

You can notice from the first two articles that both Eric Cressey and Mike Robertson both agree that it is common for athletes to get too much scapular elevation and protraction while not getting enough scapular retraction and depression. Agreed. But don't let all those fancy terms and exercises you've never heard of confuse you. It's rather simple, a lot more simple than they make it seem out to be and I think there is a few exercises far superior to the exercises noted in the shoulder savers article. Let me explain.

Scapular protraction = moving the scapula forward.
Scapular retraction = moving the scapula backward.
Scapular elevation = moving the scapula upward.
Scapular depression = moving the scapular downward.

The trapezius is responsible for scapular elevation, scapular retraction, and scapular depression. Scapular elevation occurs when you do shrugs, which is a heavy movement. I only figure, if you are working working the traps heavy with shrugs, then why wouldn't you do similar heavy movements for the traps in the other directions that it is responsible for moving? It only seems logical that you would want to choose a heavy movement that will build mass in the desired area and not some petty light weight movement that isn't going to do anything for you.

Note the lat shrugs from Dr. Squats article on exercise techniques. And also note the similar exercise known as shrug rows, which is a similar movement only you do it on the seated rowing pulley machine. Clearly shrug rows count as scapular retraction and lat shrugs count as scapular depression. They are probably the best and most simple exercises you can do for scapular retraction and scapular depression. Problem solved.

I am convinced that these exercises in their simple sense, are the way to go. They can and should be great exercises to add into any strength athletes routine, especially if extra trap work is needed. I say that even for the powerlifter as they can not only help bring you great upper back development, but they can also help you greatly with obtaining structural balance and thus will help with overall shoulder health.

Once you take a look at the big picture, it's easy to see how simple things are. If you do what you have to do to strengthen all of the muscles of the upper back and get them matched up correctly with the strength of the chest and shoulders, then you should have no problems. Do this by using the best mass building exercises that are sure to work the targeted muscle. And if someone can't tell you why they are recommending a particular exercise and you don't know precisely what it does, then don't do it. That's why I'm going to omit face pulls, prone cobras, and prone trap raises. I don't know precisely what muscles they are supposed to work and either way, I'm convinced there are better exercises that can replace them.

There you go folks.
Enjoy!

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