Cuban Rotations

HI

I started out doing Cuban Rotations to even out my hollow posture.

Has anyone been doing these consistently for a long period of time?

If anyone has, have you found other advantages?

what should your shoulder position and back position be with these mats?

is it retracted and depressed and hollow?

erichlin said:

what should your shoulder position and back position be with these mats?

is it retracted and depressed and hollow?

I would say neutral and depressed but if someone else has a better answer please tell us

I have found that doing it retracted vs protracted feels better for my shoulder. When doing it protracted my left shoulder starts hurting....

but i'm not sure what is the proper way.

Scaps are retracted, retraction aids in getting the arms to the sides.

I mostly do them fully depressed, but will also do them going from elevated at the bottom, depressing, then completing the rotation.

They are a very good prehab exercise without doubt.

Cole (or anyone),

Have they helped you in other areas of training?

Have you progressed i certain exercises because of the CR?

This is the standing rotator cuff exercise, right? Different name for Cuban Press?

If anything I would expect this might help stabilize wide muscle ups.

Obviously anything that helps train the shoulder stabilizers will have a positive effect on a number of exercises, but I am finding that the benefits are best when you perform external rotation work that is similar to the movements you want it to carry over to.

I have been playing around with some new exercise variations lately, not quite sure how to label them. I am discovering all kinds of ways to work external rotators and integrate excellent recruitment patterning for many of our movements at the same time.

I have a rowing variation, which is great for carryover into horizontal bent arm work. It helps you really feel how to engage the rotators during horizontal work.

I also have a straight arm variation that does something similar for straight arm work and also is excellent for what we would consider a functional mid/lower trapezius strength/hypertrophy purpose. This is helping me a lot personally.

I am also doing one that is specifically for learning the right recruitment for handstands in the shoulder girdle, and that is really helping as well.

These are primarily for my rehab, but I don't believe that isolation work is as effective as integration work even for rehab. So, I have been discovering new ways to really make the muscles burn and to only work the correct muscles in each movement, which is really good for minimizing antagonistic "braking" forces.

I have a much better forward lean in my adv. tuck PL on floor as a result, and it feels fine. This is despite not doing any planche work, and minimal work of what we would consider basic strength.

That's mostly because I have had trouble feeling the correct activation on the right side, and I am seeing initial rapid improvements in this area, which let me do regular pace dips without anything abnormal for the first time in forever yesterday.

I believe that these will eventually be very useful at all levels, but particularly for beginners and intermediates. Being able to quickly learn exactly how to fire the muscles AND building the tissue strength so that you can fairly quickly transition to doing the bodyweight position correctly is very important. Since that has been an issue for me, now that I know what correct form really feels like, I have designed these to fill the void, as it were.

If I continue to see good results, I will probably share these at the September Seminar. For the meantime, I would like to use the time between now and then to really develop this and see what 10 week results are so I won't share them in detail right now. I know that seems odd, but A) I'm kind of tired of seeing so many things that I write about pop up in so many other sites and B) I want to see what the long term effects are. I will probably come up with a lot of refinements between now and then, and I want to minimize any confusion regarding the exercises and how I have implemented them.