Side-Lying Dumbbell External Rotation
Trains the Shoulders, Infraspinatus and Teres Minor.
- Equipment
- Dumbbell
- Mechanic
- Isolation
- Force
- Pull
- Level
- Beginner
How to do it
- Lie on your side on a bench or the floor, with the arm you are training on top.
- Hold a light dumbbell in the top hand and tuck that elbow against your ribs, bent to ninety degrees, with your forearm resting across your stomach.
- Keeping the elbow pinned to your side, rotate your forearm upward and outward, as though opening a gate. Your upper arm should not move.
- Raise as far as the shoulder allows without the elbow lifting away from your ribs — usually somewhere near vertical.
- Lower back under control until your forearm is across your stomach again.
Common mistakes
- Letting the elbow drift away from the ribs. Once the elbow lifts, the rear deltoid starts doing the work and the movement stops being rotation. Holding a rolled towel between your elbow and your side is a crude but effective way to enforce it.
- Using too much weight. The infraspinatus and teres minor are small muscles with short leverage, and a dumbbell heavy enough to feel substantial is a dumbbell heavy enough to recruit everything else. Two to five kilos is a normal working weight here and that is not a sign of weakness.
- Swinging the arm up rather than rotating it. If the shoulder or the torso moves to start the repetition, momentum has replaced the muscle. Slow it down.
- Assuming that pressing already covers this. External rotation strength is typically a fraction of internal rotation strength, and that gap widens in anyone who presses a lot and pulls a little. Nothing in a normal program rotates the upper arm through a range, which is why this small exercise exists at all.
Muscles worked
Primary
- Shoulders
- InfraspinatusRotator Cuff
- Teres MinorRotator Cuff