Don't count on arm circles to boost strength - Marine Corps Off Duty | health, fitness, gear, gadgets, sports, travel - Marine Corps Times

Don't count on arm circles to boost strength

I may be branded as a heretic for saying this, but it needs to be said: Arm circles are worthless.

Yes, worthless -- and potentially harmful. I'll explain why.

The first question we have to ask is why we're doing this "exercise." Proponents will invariably say it is intended to build shoulder strength. But after 13 years in the special operations community, including multiple combat tours, I have yet to use this movement or anything closely resembling it.

So even before getting into the sports-science relevance of the arm circle, it's clear there is no functional application for this "isolation" drill.

There is nothing you will ever do in life involving the deltoids that will require you to stand at attention, lock down the muscles of your back to immobilize the shoulder, then move your arms in little circles, exercising 1/16th or less of the deltoid range of motion to failure.

Think about it this way: If you lie on your back and imitate the bench press motion with just your hands and arms, moving them only an inch or two up and down for hundreds of reps, would you get any stronger? Of course not. Will it help you with anything in life or in the gym? Of course not. Neither will 1- or 2-inch squats, curls, push-ups, pull-ups or any other exercise. So please, let's put an end to the madness.

Now let's consider science. Performing hundreds of reps does improve local and specific endurance. So doing arm circles will certainly have a training effect of some sort. It will condition you to do ... arm circles. Well, sort of.

As my Russian friends put it, training to failure is, by and large, training yourself to fail. Methods such as training to failure have very short windows of improvement, followed by a plateau and then diminished performance. Thus, the idea of training your delts to failure this way simply does not work.

When we talk about strengthening, we must identify the type of strength we hope to gain.

If we assume that the goal is maximum strength, this can never be achieved by pursuing pure endurance -- that is, endurance with no additional load. Maximum strength is only achieved by working with high weight loads and low reps.

However, if we assume the goal is endurance, then the parameters must be low to moderate loads and moderate to high repetitions. But here, we run into the issue of specificity.

Sure, we can load up the hand weights and crank out the reps, avoiding failure and building killer deltoid strength endurance, but only within 1 to 2 inches of the range of motion.

This is called "specific adaptation to imposed demand." In other words, if you followed the right method to build endurance, you still only have endurance for a specific motion: arm circles.

To build shoulder strength, the best thing to do is pressing movements, period. Forget about lateral raises and circles. Leave that for people dressed in tights.

Grab a kettlebell, dumbbell or barbell and start pressing.

Nate Morrison is an Air Force pararescueman staff sergeant. He is a military fitness expert and founder of an online fitness magazine.