Anterior Humeral Glide: A Common Mistake During Pulling Exercises

I am sure all of you have read about the importance of balancing out pushing exercises with pulling exercises.  There are a lot of trainees out there who sit at a desk all day and then decide it is okay to go to the gym and perform every variation of the bench press imaginable (got to hit that chest from all angles... am I right?!) and then call it a day.  These people will usually end up with shoulder pain and terrible posture.  Unless you think the guy below has a sexy posture then you better start doing some pulling!

However, there is a catch - you cannot just perform a pulling exercise to receive the benefits.  You also have to perform the exercise correctly by engaging the right muscles.  In this post, the muscles I want to talk about are your scapular retractors.   These are the muscles that will help pull your shoulders back and give you a more optimal posture.

 I think Lee Haney knows how to retract

One goal of pulling exercises is to retract the scapula.  However, it is very common for people to have difficulty with this.  Common mistakes you will see are:

1) Shrugging because of upper trap dominance

2) Using too much bicep to “pull” the weight up

3) Extending at the low back to substitute for retraction

4) Flexing the wrist to gain extra range of motion and/or

              5) Anterior humeral glide

I am sure I am forgetting others, but as you can see, there are a lot of ways to “cheat”.  

In this post, I am only going to cover number 5 above - anterior humeral glide.  It is a very common problem, which is why I want to discuss it.  If people are interested I can cover some of the others as well.

Anterior humeral glide can occur for multiple reasons, but the important thing is to recognize it and try to fix it.  This glide is problematic because it can cause or further aggravate anterior laxity of the shoulder capsule, which can lead to shoulder pain and dysfunction.  Also, it can lead to poor posture.  Your shoulders will tend to fall forward making you look as though you are slouching. 

I have provided a video below that details this mistake in regards to pulling exercises.  I also give some tips for how to cue your clients out of this and into a good position.

NOTE: This problem can also occur during pushing exercises at the end of the eccentric phase (eg. when a person is at the bottom of a push-up or a bench press).  If you do not squeeze your shoulder blades together in either of these positions, then you will often see an anterior glide.

Also, do not be afraid to lighten the load to get them to effectively use their scapular retractors - if they cannot hold for a second at the top, then the load is probably too heavy. 

 

If these cueing and loading strategies do not work, then you may need to resort to other corrective strategies such as soft tissue treatment and/or rotator cuff exercises.  For soft tissue treatment, I would first examine the posterior shoulder capsule as it can often be stiff and restricted, which will not allow the humerus to glide posteriorly as it is flexed.  Next, examine the pecs as they can become dominant and pull the humeral head anterior.

For the rotator cuff, I would examine the subscapularis.  The subscap should work to pull the humeral head inferior as well as posterior.  If this muscle is weak, then its pull will be offset by other strong muscles such as the pec major that pull the humeral head anterior.

Summary:

Learn to retract properly by squeezing the scapula back without allowing the humeral head to glide anteriorly.

   CUES:

        1) Put hand back by shoulder blade and tell person to squeeze shoulder blade 

            back to touch hand.

        2) Point to anterior part of humerus and tell person to pull it back.

        3) If performing a unilateral pulling exercise try to pull with the other arm at  

            the same time, which may allow for better proprioception.

        4) Lighten the load.   

        5) Make sure the problem is not due to soft tissue restrictions and/or a weak 

            cuff.   

Hope this helps!  If anyone has any other tips or suggestions, leave them in the comments.  It is always great to hear other cues!


***Sorry about the crazy font types and sizes.  I am not sure why blogger keeps doing that.  I will try to get it fixed for future posts.