Someone with a biomechanics background is telling you to internally rotate your shoulders in downward dog. Someone else is telling you to externally rotate while internally rotating your forearms. Oh, one of them has to be wrong, right? Maybe the question itself is the problem. This month’s question is about shoulder rotation in downward dog.
The Question:
Marta wrote in and asked about shoulder rotation in downward dog. One of her instructors, who has extensive biomechanics experience, advocates for internal rotation of the shoulders in the pose. His reasoning is that because the shoulders are in flexion, internal rotation provides a more effective way to engage the push through the hands. He also believes the common cue to externally rotate the shoulders while internally rotating the forearms is simply incorrect.
The Answer:
The push through the hands
Marta, let me take this in pieces, because there are actually three separate things that seem to be tangled up in this one question. First, the push. The push through the hands in downward dog is primarily serratus anterior and triceps. Serratus is protracting and upwardly rotating the scapula. Triceps is extending the elbow. Neither of those is a rotation of the humerus or shoulder rotation in downward dog. So when your instructor connects internal rotation to a more effective push in downward dog, I think he’s describing a sensation and attributing it to the wrong structure. The push isn’t a rotation argument at all.
Rotation at the shoulder joint
Second, we have the rotation itself. I’ve always taught and understood that external rotation at the glenohumeral joint (the shoulder joint) is what creates more space in that position. When the arm goes into full flexion overhead, external rotation is what gives the greater tubercle clearance underneath the acromion. I demonstrate this. I feel it in my own body. I honestly don’t know where the internal rotation argument is coming from here. It’s possible that something was lost in translation between what was said and what you heard. I’m just holding that out as a possibility.
Anatomy versus felt sense
Third, and this is the piece I think matters most, the cue about externally rotating the shoulders while internally rotating the forearm in downward dog is not a literal anatomical instruction. I don’t think it ever was. Your hand is fixed on the floor. That’s what we call a closed chain. What you feel as a spiral is a resistance pattern, not actual joint rotation in the directions being named. It’s felt sense anatomy, not literal anatomy, and that’s fine.
Felt sense cues have real value in a yoga room. The problem comes when we dress them up in anatomical terminology. Then people start hunting for a specific joint action that isn’t actually happening. We end up arguing about whether a cue is correct when it was never a description of literal mechanics in the first place.
This is the same thing happening right now with the shoulders away from the ears, that whole debate. People are arguing that the cue is wrong because you need upward rotation and elevation for proper scapulohumeral rhythm, and there’s a legitimate point buried in there. You do, but like most of these arguments, all the nuance gets stripped out. It turns into a position people defend rather than a thing people actually explore in their own body.
External shoulder rotation in downward dog
So my answer is this: external rotation at the glenohumeral joint makes more space. That part I will stand behind 100% because the spiral cue and the internal shoulder rotation in downward dog cues are both describing what someone feels, not what the joint is literally doing. Pick the cue that produces the result you want in the body in front of you, and be honest about which kind of language you’re using.
If you’ve got a question you want me to answer, go to yogaanatomy.com/myquestion. See you next month.
Originally published at Yoganatomy
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