Rotational Pull Aparts

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Rotational Pull Aparts

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The band pull apart is a great exercise to strengthen the shoulders and upper back in what is called horizontal abduction (the fancy pants way to describe the motion of the shoulder joint in a band pull apart).

I love that exercise. In fact I teach it in a very particular way in The Movement Fix Workshop. But it isn't the end all be all.

You can add some twists to it in order to teach and train different things.

In this video I demonstrate how to use different hand positions, shoulder rotation directions, and hip positions to simulate and train different positions and movements that have translation over to olympic lifts.

English (or any other language for that matter) is NOT the language of movement. Force, tension, vectors (physics really) is the language of movement. Whenever I can use a 'feel' instead of words to teach someone something, I will use that.

The rotational pull apart teaches you how to create both internal and external shoulder joint rotation (you should train both) in a hinged position WHILE keeping upper back tension (due to the initial and sustained pull apart motion). The way you have your hands positioned on the band makes the rotation lengthen the band, hence increasing resistance against a certain shoulder rotation direction.

When you grab the band underhand, you will be working internal rotation.

When you start with the band grabbed overhand, you will work on shoulder joint external rotation.

The magic here is the maintenance of upper back tension with shoulder joint motion.

Lots of great things in this drill and potentially a great drill to use as a segue into barbell specific movements.

You can use a jump stretch band for this as well, but it may be too heavy as the strength into the rotational directions isn't strong.

Get some!

Ryan

Need more hip and low back mobility? Start with Day 1 of our Hip/Low Back Mobility Program for free:

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