Let’s talk about bicep tears

8.23.19 IG TV Bicept Tears.mp4 from Hybrid Performance Method on Vimeo.

Let’s talk about bicep tears

Bicep tears and elbow flares are feared injuries among lifters. A popular approach to solving and eradicating this issue has been to strengthen the muscles around the elbow.

Under the assumption that this issue is one of over use. While seemingly commonsensical the opposite needs to be argued and taken into account.

The amount of motion required at the elbow is determined by the amount of external rotation that the shoulder allows. 

This means  if you have poor shoulder external rotation, this will increase the demand for supination and pronation required at the elbow.

Most lifters, especially powerlifters and bodybuilders fail to do their due diligence when it comes to maintaining optimal range of motion at every single joint.

Many make the mistake of restricting their focus only to the amount of motion they need to perform a certain moment.

What happens is they accumulate train years and more and more muscle mass, their movement becomes more and more restricted as well.

Now every time they do a squat their grip is going to start getting wider and wider to accommodate for the loss of motion at the shoulder as well as the amount of discomfort experienced at the elbow.

In addition every time they do a deadlift, they fear for their life that their biceps remain fully attached to their arms during the pull.

See if you can pass the supination test that I adopted from the muscle doc seminar. 

Are you able to supernatant from the shoulder or are you need to complete the test by jerking at the thumb?

If the answer is no, one of my favorite ways to improve the shoulder external rotation and strengthen the bicep is the doorway stretch pns. 

You are going to  put your arm at 90°, your elbow needs to be at the same level as your shoulder, and all you're going to do when you're going to rotate your chest towards away from the pole that you're holding onto.

Then what you're going to do from there once you encounter resistance, I want you to press your hand and your elbow against the rack without moving your torso. You will push against it and count down from five. Then you're going to try to move further into the movement. Do it again and count down from five until you can't get anymore motion.

Once you're done with that motion you're going to follow that up with the Wall Angel.

For this one, you want your feet to be against the wall and have your elbows to be against the wall.

You're going to try to move your elbows up the wall without letting them leave, so you want to keep in contact with the wall at all times. Do ten reps and repeat three times.

Moving on to the strength movement, we are going to do an overloaded eccentric bicep movement on cables.

The  reason why we are using cables is because that provides for constant tension on every single point during the movement as opposed to using a free weight where the resistance varies depending on the position of the dumbbell.

So what you're going to do with your other hand, you're going to assist on the way up as much as you need then you're going to hold it at the top and slowly lower it on the way down. Slow as you can go again on the way up and slow back down.

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