The Worst Shoulder Exercise Of All Time

Let's talk about one of the worst shoulder exercises of all time. As a physiotherapist, I can't tell you how many times I am working out in the gym minding my own business and see someone doing something that makes me wince.

Today we are focusing on one of the worst culprits: Standing Shoulder Twists with Dumbbells.

So Here Is the Problem

When you are holding dumbbells with your elbows bent at 90 degrees, gravity is acting downwards on the weights — that means it is loading your biceps. Now is this bad in isolation? No. But here is the problem.

Most people are completing this exercise in an attempt to warm up the shoulder or warm up the rotator cuff, when in fact we are barely challenging the rotator cuff at all. The long head of the biceps is one of the most commonly injured structures in the shoulder and is often involved in shoulder impingement. When we load the biceps we are compressing the long head into a groove in the bone — all good stuff. The issue comes when you start to rotate your hands back and forth, in and out. We are now grinding and creating friction on this biceps tendon in this groove and causing pain.

So, What Is the Solution?

If your goal is to activate and strengthen your rotator cuff, the Side Lying Shoulder External Rotation exercise is by far superior.

This has to be one of the best and most often overlooked exercises. In fact, this shoulder strengthening exercise has been found in the research over and over again to be one of the most effective exercises to strengthen and retrain the rotator cuff. The great thing about this exercise is that most of us have weak rotator cuff muscles. At home, using something as simple as a soup can, or even a half-filled water bottle will do the trick as resistance. This can also be a super helpful exercise for correcting and improving your shoulder posture.

We've created a full write up post on this shoulder strengthening exercise if you need a full review.

Now, what if you are struggling with pain?

If you are having issues or trouble with your shoulder we recommend you check out the Ultimate Guide to Shoulder Impingement where we teach all you need to know about what the heck is going on with your shoulder and how to fix it.

Video Transcript

Some people prefer to read — we've got you covered!

Hey, what's up guys, this is Mitch Starkman from The Movement Centre, and welcome to our Don't Do It series. So we're talking about things you should not be doing — and we see people doing this all the time incorrectly at the gym. The first one we want to talk about is this shoulder warm-up where people hold two weights and kind of twist them back and forth. Everyone's seen this. Stop doing it if you're doing it.

The problem is most people think "Oh yeah, I'm warming up my rotator cuff." The issue is that your rotator cuff doesn't run up and down. If I want to load the rotator cuff I need to resist that twisting movement. The problem with this rotation exercise like this is it's loading my arm against gravity — which means I'm only loading my bicep in this exercise, not the rotator cuff at all.

Why that matters is that common injuries in the shoulder, like shoulder impingement or bicep tendonitis — anything where you're getting that pinch overhead — involve the bicep tendon getting stuck or pinched as the shoulder comes up overhead. So if we take these two weights, hold them in this position, and then twist back and forth, we're essentially grinding that bicep tendon along the upper arm bone. And that, my friends, is not a good thing.

What I propose instead: if you want to warm up the shoulders and strengthen the rotator cuff, pop down on your side, give yourself a weight, keep it nice and supported, and twist up and down. This movement is a much more effective way to challenge that rotator cuff in that rotational movement — to stabilize and strengthen it — as opposed to the loaded arm twist we've been doing.

So that's it. Don't do this one. The alternative is the side-lying shoulder external rotation exercise, and of course, remember to move like you mean it.