Despite what the name seems like, horizontal abduction has nothing to do with laying all the way down to do crunches or other abdominal work. You almost actually use it each day, whether you understand it or not. For those who open an upper cabinet, flare your elbows out to drag open a stubborn bag of chips, or for the more athletic types, wind up for a giant return hit in tennis. Still not getting it? Don’t worry, we’ll go more into depth on what muscles are used, the advantages of developing your horizontal abduction muscles, our favourite exercises to hit horizontal abduction, and tips on how to incorporate those exercises.
What’s Horizontal Abduction?
Here’s somewhat simpler approach to consider it. Put your arms out in front of you such as you’re doing a Frankenstein’s monster impression, now bring your arms out such as you’re doing a “T” pose. That’s horizontal abduction.
Muscles Involved In Horizontal Abduction
The first movers in horizontal abduction are the posterior aka rear delts. This often ignored and underworked muscle works in tandem with the center and lower trapezius, rhomboids, infraspinatus, teres minor, middle deltoid, supraspinatus, and upper trapezius to bring your arms from the front of your body away out of your midline. Let’s take a take a look at a breakdown of what each muscle does during horizontal abduction.
- Rear Deltoid: The first mover in horizontal abduction. These smaller muscles are positioned on the back of your shoulders.
- Middle and Lower Trapezius: These parts of your traps act as stabilizers together with your scapula (shoulder blade) during abduction.
- Rhomboids: These aptly named muscles also help stabilize the scapula during horizontal abduction.
- Infraspinatus: A part of the rotator cuff, this muscle helps rotate the arm outward and assists in horizontal abduction.
- Teres Minor: One other rotator cuff muscle, the teres minor, works with the infraspinatus to externally rotate the arm and assist in abduction.
- Middle Deltoid: This muscle helps keep the arm elevated during horizontal abduction.
- Supraspinatus: This rotator cuff muscle also helps keep the arm elevated during horizontal abduction.
- Upper Trapezius: The highest of your traps helps hold the scapula up.
As you’ll be able to see, it takes a variety of muscle coordination to perform movements like opening a automotive door or reaching for something behind you.
Advantages of Horizontal Abduction Training
Incorporating horizontal abduction into your routine offers several key advantages:
Improved Shoulder Health
Strengthening the posterior deltoids and rotator cuff muscles helps stabilize the shoulder joint, reducing the chance of injuries reminiscent of rotator cuff tears. For those who discuss with anyone who has had a rotator cuff injury, they’ll let you know how debilitating it might probably be. Having the ability to perform overhead lifts is a luxury you don’t realize you have got until you’ll be able to’t do it anymore.
Improved Posture
Since the vast majority of us spend our day at a pc screen, or looking down at a phone, it’s easy for our posture to suffer. Horizontal abduction exercises will help bring your shoulders back, avoiding the dreaded rounded look. Besides the visual improvement, higher posture means reduced upper back and neck strain.
Balanced Muscle Development
Complete muscular development is incredibly essential for training all parts of the shoulder. While you’re doing an overhead press, yes the front delts are taking the brunt of the work, but your rear delts are also putting in work to assist stabilize the load. From a visible viewpoint, underdeveloped rear delts may give the illusion of hunched forward shoulders, especially if the front and side delts are well trained. From the back, a pair of well developed rear delts may give your shoulders a large 3D look to them.
Our Favorite Exercises for Horizontal Shoulder Abduction
Listed here are a few of the very best exercises to focus on this movement:
1. Reverse Flyes
Muscles Targeted: Posterior deltoids, rhomboids, trapezius.
2. Cable Face Pulls
Muscles Targeted: Posterior deltoids, rhomboids, trapezius, rotator cuff muscles.
3. Band Pull-Aparts
Muscles Targeted: Posterior deltoids, infraspinatus, teres minor, rhomboids.
4. Bent Over One-Arm Rear Delt Cable Fly
Muscles Targeted: Posterior deltoids, rhomboids, trapezius.
Incorporating Horizontal Abduction into Your Routine
We’ve already talked about why you ought to be doing horizontal abduction exercises, now here’s tips on how to work them into your regimen:
Warm-Up
Perhaps an important step, ensuring your shoulders are warmed up goes to assist prevent injuries and prime your muscles for an ideal workout. Use lightweight for band pull aparts, cable external and internal rotation, and every other movement you utilize to get your shoulders loosened up. For those who are still clueless on tips on how to get your shoulders warmed up, you’ll be able to watch this video for some guidance.
Suggestions for training
We all know there are countless ways to structure a workout regimen, but not matter what sort of workout split you utilize: bodybuilding, PPL, Full Body, the recommendation goes to remain the identical.
Include 2 to three sets of your chosen exercise at the top of your workout, post compound lifts. For probably the most part, these are small stabilizer muscles, and might be fatigued (especially after pulling movements), so that they won’t need a ton of direct work to be properly trained.
Ensure you permit at 48 hours in between sessions of coaching them to permit for sufficient recovery.
FAQs
What’s horizontal shoulder abduction movement?
For a direct quote from NIH, shoulder abduction is, “the movement of the humerus in a horizontal or transverse plane away from the chest.”¹ In case you didn’t know, the humerus is the bone between your shoulder and elbow. Stick your arm out in front of you, now move it outward, and that’s horizontal abduction.
What’s horizontal shoulder adduction?
For those who guessed that it’s the other of abduction, you’d be right. It’s the motion of bringing your humerus in a horizontal plane toward the chest. That would include motions like hitting a forehand tennis shot, chest flyes, or throwing a ball.
What muscles horizontally abduct the shoulders?
To summerize:
- Rear delt
- Trapezius
- Rhomboids
- Infraspinatus
- Supraspinatus
- Teres Minor
Wrap-Up
Horizontal abduction is the unsung hero of a balanced upper body. It supports shoulder health, athletic performance, and each day functional activities. Now that you recognize what muscles are involved and tips on how to incorporate these movements into workouts, you will help avoid injury and develop an under appreciated a part of your body.
Whether you’re an athlete seeking to increase performance, or simply someone that desires to correct posture and stop shoulder pain, horizontal abduction exercises must be a mainstay in your workout regimen.
References:
Miniato, Mohammed A., et al. “Anatomy, Shoulder and Upper Limb, Shoulder.” PubMed, StatPearls Publishing, 2023, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK536933/#:~:text=Horizontal%20abduction%20(transverse%20extension)%3A
