In a number of articles here it’s mentioned that if you use a specific external rotation exercise(referred to as “the poor man’s shoulder horn”) you should use 9-10 % of your bench press 1RM for sets of 8-10 reps. I think Poliquin came up with this guidline. Should this scheme also be used with the Shoulder Horn? If I bench 250, should I be using 25 lb dumbells for 8 reps on the Shoulder Horn, or should the load be less when using this piece of equipment?
I did a few searches already and didn’t come up with anything. I did find this thread where the poster “only” uses 7.5 lbs on his Horn sets:
chicagopowerlifting.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t
=396&start=45&sid=d7ecd87f47403e5be04317a70fc56c10
I did find this little gem from Chad Waterbury in this thread:
http://www.T-Nation.com/readTopic.do?id=447103&pageNo=1
"Here’s my two cents worth of addition to this post. I like to have trainees perform the shoulder horn external rotation exercise while face-down on a 75 degree incline bench. The reason? This position forces the external rotators to maintain constant tension throughout the full range of motion. In other words, while standing, the external rotators have to maintain very little tension to hold your arms/load at the top of the movement. When your torso is slightly shifted forward, the external rotators have to keep firing at the top of the motion (where you still possess a lot of external rotation strength). Try it and see if you like it. "
Which leads to the question “does using the shoulder horn face down on an incline reduce the poundages used(I would think so), and if so, by how much?”