Butterfly training

I'm looking for advice on training butterfly strength. (Why butterfly instead of Azarian? Because I think it looks cooler).

First off, I am at a level of strength where I think it is reasonable to be thinking about training this skill. I can do a straight-body planche on rings, and I am very close to having a cross, maltese and inverted cross. I can do a muscle-up with a 45# weight belt. My shoulders and elbows are prepared for this sort of work.

I've been playing around with different exercises for this motion for a while now, but I've been having trouble finding an exercise that works well. The principle issue seems to be shoulder related. What happens is that when my hands go from being above my shoulders to level with my shoulders, I can distinctly feel a popping sensation in my left shoulder (occasionally on the right, but primarily left.) My intuition is that this could be one of three things: my shoulders are not in the right position, or lacking in flexibility through some range of motion, or the muscles that stabilize my shoulder joint aren't as strong as they need to be.

These are the exercises I've tried:

1. Bufferflies with a heavy counterweight: this seems to work OK, except that the low-rings I work on are too low to start in a hang, and so I feel like my balance/positioning is way off.

2. Lower slowly from a cross with a light counterweight: I think this is a little bit better in terms of letting me start in the right position, but the tendon problem is even more pronounced.

3. Low cross pulls with hands through the straps (e.g. cross pulls but go lower than a cross, to do some strength with hands above the shoulders) - I encounter the least problems with this exercise, but it's still there.

Not wanting to injure my shoulder, I haven't been doing these exercises except occasionally to try to diagnose the problem. If anyone who has worked this skill has some wisdom to lend, or anyone with good knowledge of kinesthesiology thinks they know what might be going on, I would greatly appreciate any help. I can post a video if it would be useful.

Tendon pain tends to equate to insufficient preparation. I'm not going to get involved in this one except to say that there is a thread on this about 12 posts below this one:

viewtopic.php?f=14&t=8761

Never a bad idea to have a quick browse or use the search function before posting new topics.

The tendon is not painful when I just lower to a cross. It becomes irritated when I go between hands-above-shoulders to hands-below-shoulders that it becomes an issue, which is what leads me to believe it's likely an issue with shoulder positioning and/or flexibility.

It's also never a bad idea to read a person's post before assuming their questions have already been answered. I went through that thread before making this post (in fact, I searched the forum for 'butterfly' and read several other threads as well), and it doesn't really help much with my problem. The majority of the posts are merely chastizing the OP for not being at a level of strength where it's appropriate to work the skill, there's one post suggesting a few exercises, and there's a post explaining the kinesthesiology.

Some sort of shoulder impingement?

I hadn't heard of that condition before but it actually looks pretty likely - thanks for the suggestion. I'll do a lot more rotator cuff stretching, and maybe go see a doctor if it doesn't get better.

So you are more conditioned and prepared than myself, congrats on having a planche on rings and +45 lbs MU! Good stuff. However, I wanted to give you my two cents because I've had rings almost three years and consider myself pretty strong, upper body wise. And I've been training both the regular butterfly pull to cross as well as the inverted butterfly pull to inverted cross. (Both with tons of assistance of course) Even though I've taken it slow and carefully with both butterflies, I've managed to give myself a decent strain on my right arm long head biceps tendon at the shoulder.

I primarily blame my training the butterflies for the injury. They are sooo intense on the shoulders! Ever since I started training butterfly pull to cross (and inverted) the tendons in my arms, as well as my overall shoulder girdle area, feel "softer" and more worn down. I don't know if this is directly because of the force the elements put on your body or if I'm just over analyzing...but I'm taking everything very slow now, as connective tissues take a long time to recover compared to muscles. Anyway long story short, use great caution when training the butterfly and listen to your body. I think I personally overlooked my tendon overuse and injured myself pretty decently.

Good luck!

mirroredrain said:

So you are more conditioned and prepared than myself, congrats on having a planche on rings and +45 lbs MU! Good stuff. However, I wanted to give you my two cents because I've had rings almost three years and consider myself pretty strong, upper body wise. And I've been training both the regular butterfly pull to cross as well as the inverted butterfly pull to inverted cross. (Both with tons of assistance of course) Even though I've taken it slow and carefully with both butterflies, I've managed to give myself a decent strain on my right arm long head biceps tendon at the shoulder.

I primarily blame my training the butterflies for the injury. They are sooo intense on the shoulders! Ever since I started training butterfly pull to cross (and inverted) the tendons in my arms, as well as my overall shoulder girdle area, feel "softer" and more worn down. I don't know if this is directly because of the force the elements put on your body or if I'm just over analyzing...but I'm taking everything very slow now, as connective tissues take a long time to recover compared to muscles. Anyway long story short, use great caution when training the butterfly and listen to your body. I think I personally overlooked my tendon overuse and injured myself pretty decently.

Good luck!

Thanks for the advice. My current plan is to halt work on this skill in favor of flexibility work to open up my shoulder more and some work with retracted shoulder movements to help balance out all the protracted work I do.

Thanks for the advice. My current plan is to halt work on this skill in favor of flexibility work to open up my shoulder more and some work with retracted shoulder movements to help balance out all the protracted work I do.

Excellent choice.

Unless someone's Iron Cross is rock solid they are not yet sufficiently prepared to begin serious training on the butterfly.

Yours in Fitness,

Coach Sommer

As an update, here's what I've been doing for the past week:

1. I've halted all cross work, but continued training maltese, planche and inverted cross strength as they don't irritate my shoulder.

2. I've increased the frequency of my manna work.

3. I've incorporated some exercises into my workout that target the rotator cuff and shoulder retractors.

4. I've been doing lots of shoulder stretching. Among other things, wall extensions have been particularly therapeutic.

My shoulder is feeling much better, though it's not yet fully healed. Thanks again to everyone for the help and advice.

What was it that you did that injured your shoulders? Or was it just some symptoms of tendinitis or overuse or something? I only ask because planche and Maltese work still really kill my shoulder, which I hurt a while ago, and i thought it was interesting that your shoulder allows you to do maltese and inv. cross work, but not iron cross....While i cant currently do any forward facing protracted scapula training, any kind of rear leaning such as manna is ok on my shoulders, kinda peculiar.

Anyway, good luck with your pursuits. It sounds like you are doing some very good prep work to help your shoulder, and keep us updated!

There was no point of injury: it developed gradually. I think it was a combination of working it too strenuously and not doing enough to strengthen and stretch my rotator cuff and shoulder retractors.

I don't really know how to help you on this, but could you do a Aguilar-esque wide MU? Coach Sommer said that you can eventually widen the arms as you get stronger and you will eventually be strong enough to do the butterfly. I think that is one of ways he suggests for training the butterfly?

Here was his comment from the thread regarding the wide no-lean MU:

Actually rather than being similar to a triceps extension, the attempted no-lean or wide grip MU will feel more and more more like a bent-arm butterfly (straight arm pullup to iron cross) as your strength increases and the arms move wider and wider out to the sides.

Eventually you will reach the point where a false grip is not necessary and the knuckles of the hands will be facing sideways. Of course by the time you reach this point, the necessity of using a MU for your strength work is something that will be far far behind you.

I don't really know how to help you on this, but could you do a Aguilar-esque wide MU? Coach Sommer said that you can eventually widen the arms as you get stronger and you will eventually be strong enough to do the butterfly. I think that is one of ways he suggests for training the butterfly?

Good research, but that is incorrect. I simply said that eventually the point is reached where the false grip is no longer necessary for the MU.

Yours in Fitness,

Coach Sommer

Good research, but that is incorrect. I simply said that eventually the point is reached where the false grip is no longer necessary for the MU.

Woops... I interpretted "knuckles of the hands will be facing sideways" to mean arms will be straight and pointing out to the sides like in a cross. So Just to make sure, you meant that in normal grip the knuckles will face sideways whereas in false grip the knuckles will be facing downwards?

How would you train the butterfly with your gymnasts then? For the ones that are properly conditioned ofcourse.

Another update: after continuing therapeutic exercises and stretching, I've now gotten to the point where my shoulder doesn't hurt anymore (though it still clicks when I raise my arm above my head so I think more stretching is necessary). I was able to perform an assisted cross on Tuesday with no pain. At the recommendation of my doctor, on Monday I started a regimen of NSAID's+ice after every workout, and that seems to be the final nail in the coffin of this injury.

On Tuesday I did a sequence consisting of: inverted cross(2s), lower to planche (2s), lower to maltese (2s), lower to iron cross(2s) with only 20# counterweight, and encountered no shoulder pain 8)

jfslocum said:

There was no point of injury: it developed gradually. I think it was a combination of working it too strenuously and not doing enough to strengthen and stretch my rotator cuff and shoulder retractors.

This is the key right here. Trying to perform movements that are too difficult for your body at the moment forces bad movements and unfavorable joint alignments, particularly in the shoulder.

To me it sounds like you don't know how to do a butterfly properly, and like Coach said (am paraphrasing here) the main problem here is that it is crazy to train an advanced entry into a position when the basic static position isn't even solid!

That would be like trying to learn a press handstand before you can stand on your hands... how in the world is that ever supposed to happen? You can't press to something you can't hold.

I think you're doing the smart thing by letting everything heal up, and if you just focus on solidifying your cross and getting reasonably strong with cross pulls in the nearer future and forget about butterfly then the butterfly will come much more naturally when you are eventually ready to learn those progressions.

Joshua Naterman said:

This is the key right here. Trying to perform movements that are too difficult for your body at the moment forces bad movements and unfavorable joint alignments, particularly in the shoulder.

To me it sounds like you don't know how to do a butterfly properly, and like Coach said (am paraphrasing here) the main problem here is that it is crazy to train an advanced entry into a position when the basic static position isn't even solid!

That would be like trying to learn a press handstand before you can stand on your hands... how in the world is that ever supposed to happen? You can't press to something you can't hold.

I think you're doing the smart thing by letting everything heal up, and if you just focus on solidifying your cross and getting reasonably strong with cross pulls in the nearer future and forget about butterfly then the butterfly will come much more naturally when you are eventually ready to learn those progressions.

Well, I have a counterweight system: the butterfly training I had been doing was to do the press with a lot of weight helping me (60+ lbs). So that's how it was supposed to happen . My reasoning was that the first 90 degrees of pulling is a different movement than the second 90 degrees, so training both both would be a good source of variation. An analogy might be training a straddle-planche press to handstand while still working on the straight-body planche. But I wasn't taking good care of my shoulder flexibility and rotator cuff strength, so I ended up irritating the tendon. Now I'm doing my best to build better shoulder maintenance habits, and also going light on the tendon to let it heal before I go back to any serious cross training.