External Rotation

Shoulders · Dumbbell

How to do it

Lie on your side on a bench with a dumbbell in your top hand and your head resting on the other. Bend the elbow to 90 degrees and pin it to your side, forearm across your belly. Rotate the forearm **upwards** until it points at the ceiling, without the elbow moving; hold a second and lower slowly. This is pure external rotation: the cuff work almost nobody does, and what keeps the shoulder safe in everything else. **Very light.** The classic mistake is lifting the elbow off your side to get higher.

Variants

The drawing shows one way of doing it, and the technique above describes that one. Almost every exercise has variants — standing or seated, the grip, the bench angle — and is still the same exercise: if you do it another way, write it in the exercise note and you will have it every time you train it.

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