Slight Shoulder "clicking" With Cuban Press

[Robert Simcox]

So today was my first time doing the cuban press, and everything felt okay, except I noticed a slight "clicking" in my right shoulder in the middle of the transition on both the ascent and decent. It wasn't painful at all but definitely noticeable. My guess is that I'm just not used to this movement, because the whole transition didn't feel particularly smooth...

 

Since this was my first time doing this exercise, i was just using a wooden dowel with no weight, I've never had any shoulder problems before, I'm not missing a whole lot of internal rotation, and I was making sure that my scapula stayed retracted and depressed. I'm not overly concerned, I was just wondering if anyone had experienced this as well, or if anyone had any ideas on what could cause this?

 

Thanks you for your time! 

[Cole Dano]

Most likely the clicking is nothing serious. Shoulders tend to make some odd sounds, particularly when going into new movement territory.  Usually as you do them more the clicking will smooth out. Until then, keep the load low and concentrate on a fairly smooth movement.

[AlexX]

My shoulders are pretty banged up so this might not be a good example but when I do a movement and there is clicking an injury soon follows. To avoid clicking I either reduce the weight, change the movement or get rid of it all together and find a substitute.

[Joshua Naterman]

It is very possible that this clicking will lead to impingement.  Active depression is not a good idea for this movement. You're going to want a more neutral elevation/depression location, not biased towards depression. Shrug up, depress down, find the middle, and try them there.

 

When you depress you also rotate the scapula downwards. This loweris the acromion towards the humerus, reducing the subacromial space and forcing impingement. If you have type 1 acromions this may not present an issue, but if you're like me and have definite type 2 (or worse, 3) then that means they curve down a bit and give your bursa, suprasoinatus tendon, and long head of biceps tendon much less space to move around in.

 

For me, I perform the cuban press with about 70 degrees of horizontal and vertical abduction, perhaos 60 on the vertical at times, and there are zero problems. When I take it higher, there are problems.

 

This does not change the functionality of the movement, in terms of muscles trained.

 

However, you will probably want to calculate the cosine of the angle to know load reduction so that you can increase the weight accordingly.

 

To save you some math:

 

80 degrees vertical abduction it is a 17% reduction from 90 degrees.         Example: 100 lbs becomes 83 lbs.

 

70 degrees is 34%            Example: 100 lbs becomes 66 lbs.

 

60 degrees is 50%            Example: 100 lbs becomes 50 lbs.

 

Those don't tell the whole story, but are reasonable guidelines.

 

You can see that this presents some interesting scaling opportunities, yes?

 

 

Remember: Exercise is performed to improve performance and make you safer. Standard cuban press dogma is not based on the biomechanical reality of the subacromial space. Some people talk a lot about how they know functional anatomy, but if they advocate a single form for everyone, particularly with this kind of exercise (which is rather unique), then they are showing that they do not actually possess in-depth knowledge of functional anatomy, as it is often named.

 

Typically, aside from needing to adjust your level of scapular depression/elevation, what you are feeling is a symptom of one or both of the below:

 

1) You have poor activation of the deltoids, infraspinatus, teres minor, and supraspinatus prior to actually starting rotation.

 

2) You have inherent bony morphology of the acromion that will force you to lower the angle a bit.

 

 

The first is much more influential than the second, but both matter. For me, #1 is what I have to focus on but I still have to stay around 80-85 degrees to avoid impingement.

[Robert Simcox]

Joshua you are awesome, seriously some incredible information. Earlier today I played around with the cuban press a bit more and found that letting my scaps elevate more at the top of the press eliminated the clicking. I still really have to remember to retract though, otherwise it feels like all hell breaks loose. Changing to 80 degrees of vertical abduction seems to make everything feel smoother as well.

 

I think I have some playing around to do, I'm going to keep the weight down below 5 pounds until I find what works best for me, as I'm really not interested in impinging my shoulders.

[Joshua Naterman]

Thanks! I do try to be helpful I am often surprised that this kind of thing isn't talked about on a regular basis, but I guess everyone likes the way their smoke blows.

[Lucas Serur]

I know these aren't the same angles and everything else, but this article came to mind: http://library.crossfit.com/free/pdf/67_08_Overhead_Lifting.pdf (page 4, fig 3).

"Shoulders back and down" can work for the bench press, chin-ups and rows, but they are not a cue for every upper body movement out there. The scapulae are more complex than that. Glenohumeral rhythm and timing should be respected, and this is one of the hardest things to get right.

[Joshua Naterman]

There's no such thing as glenohumeral rhythm. You'd think they'd at least get an under-grad to read their stuff before publishing...

 

There IS such a thing as scapulohumeral rhythm, which is 1 degree of upward rotation for every 3 degrees of shoulder abduction. This is what allows the acromion process to stay out of the way and not impinge everything between itself and the humerus.

 

Observe:

 

 

You can watch the whole video. and this can help you understand a LOT of things if you pay CLOSE attention and understand what you are looking at (not everyone will) but the posterior view will help you see this in action. You can easily see exactly when and where impingement will happen if you don't elevate and upwardly rotate the scapulae sufficiently.

[Lucas Serur]

There's no such thing as glenohumeral rhythm. You'd think they'd at least get an under-grad to read their stuff before publishing...

 

There IS such a thing as scapulohumeral rhythm, which is 1 degree of upward rotation for every 3 degrees of shoulder abduction. This is what allows the acromion process to stay out of the way and not impinge everything between itself and the humerus.

 

Observe:

 

 

You can watch the whole video. and this can help you understand a LOT of things if you pay CLOSE attention and understand what you are looking at (not everyone will) but the posterior view will help you see this in action. You can easily see exactly when and where impingement will happen if you don't elevate and upwardly rotate the scapulae sufficiently.

Yes, scapulohumeral rhythm, thanks. Miswording on my part, not theirs.

 

It is interesting to see that this kind of information is available in most (if not all) anatomy textbooks, but is only now becoming (somewhat) popular among fitness communities. First widespread reference that I know of was the article "Push-ups, facepulls and shrugs" on T-nation.

[Joshua Naterman]

The world of fitness is changing, slowly

 

By the time we're old, the nonsense regarding squatting to 90° and "overhead lifting is bad" will be put into proper perspective. It's already started!

[Robert Simcox]

The world of fitness is changing, slowly

 

By the time we're old, the nonsense regarding squatting to 90° and "overhead lifting is bad" will be put into proper perspective. It's already started!

I sure hope you're right. There's certainly been somewhat of a widespread surge of interest in a more complex-movement oriented approach to fitness over the last couple years, I'm interested to see where it all goes in even 20 years from now.

[Falcon]

There's no such thing as glenohumeral rhythm. You'd think they'd at least get an under-grad to read their stuff before publishing...

 

There IS such a thing as scapulohumeral rhythm, which is 1 degree of upward rotation for every 3 degrees of shoulder abduction. This is what allows the acromion process to stay out of the way and not impinge everything between itself and the humerus.

 

Observe:

 

 

You can watch the whole video. and this can help you understand a LOT of things if you pay CLOSE attention and understand what you are looking at (not everyone will) but the posterior view will help you see this in action. You can easily see exactly when and where impingement will happen if you don't elevate and upwardly rotate the scapulae sufficiently.

I'm sorry for a bump like this, but I would like an explanation

I understand how impingement works now. So basically it's because the humerus moves and scapula doesn't, and, well, inpingement happens, right?

The thing I don't understand is work of external rotators here. I thought that weakness in external rotators was the cause for inpingement in the first place. I'm having serious pain in my shoulder from internal rotation (Hawkins-Kennedy test positive), and handstands seem to relieve the pain a bit. I thought that the inpingement happens because of my weak external rotators, so the head of the humerus is out of it's "natural" position and more internally rotated. Was I wrong?

[Joshua Naterman]

Can be.

 

You may need to stretch the posterior capsule and external rotators. Because of how the external rotators attach to the humerus (at the lesser tuberosity) they can contribute to anterior translation of the humeral head. Weakness, tightness, lack of activation, these can all be issues.

 

Subscapularis actually works AGAINST anterior translation, and is often a hidden weakness.

 

Shoulders are quite complex, and I can't get into any more detail right now. Every shoulder is unique.

 

Just know that impingement is the humerus pinching tissue against the acromion. How the scapula moves is just as important to this process as how the humerus moves.

 

I'm going to try and build a small model to explain this, but I probably won't have time until the end of the semester. This is my most important semester, and things are getting busy, so you won't see me around more than twice a week (most likely) until May.

 

If someone makes a post regarding how this works, don't think I am agreeing OR disagreeing with it just because I'm not commenting on it. I will get to everything when I have time, sorry about the unavoidable delays in that!

[Cody Hahn]

Joshua,

 

Can't wait for the model/explanation. I too am having issues with my shoulders and it frustrates me to no end. I just can't figure out yet how everything is supposed to work/move/function; and even when I do, I will have to learn how to correct it and myself. Hope you finish out the semester strong.