What exactly causes SLAP/labral tears?
For the sake of injury prevention, I think it's important that we know what causes a SLAP tear, since it appears to be somewhat common
It is relatively known what movement causes shoulder impingement, mainly flaring out the elbows on the bench press.
However, it seems to be less obvious what causes labral tears. The mainstream wisdom is that overhead athletes are prone to labrum tears. This is probably true for throwing sports, where SLAP tears are very common, and I think this has been extrapolated without evidence to weightlifters because they overhead press, even though the motion is obviously very different from throwing a ball or playing tennis.
When browsing studies, the closest evidence I could find was probably this:
Quote:
In the 1980s and 1990s, it was thought that SLAP lesions resulted from a traction injury to the biceps tendon predominantly as the biceps aided in decelerating the arm late in the throwing motion.1 Later, Burkhart et al theorized that the pathogenesis was a peel back injury mechanism primarily due to adaptive anterior laxity of the shoulder capsule with posterior capsular tightening. Lax anterior tissue allows for the anterior translation of the humeral head during the throwing motion, which impinges the articular portion of the rotator cuff against the posterosuperior glenoid labrum. Chronically, this pushes the biceps-labral complex medially, detaching it from the glenoid rim.21,22 These pathogenic mechanisms have been studied in biomechanical and cadaver models. Many studies show that the biceps-labral complex is under maximal tension during the late cocking phase of throwing, while the arm is abducted and maximally externally rotated
from: Surgical management of superior labral tears in athletes | OAJSM
This does not necessarily sound like anything that occurs during the starting strength lifts, or really any common lift. However, hockey players are also known to get SLAP tears, even though they also do not do the above mentioned movement AFAIK. Labral tears also occur in some weightlifters, the numbers are unknown, but anecdotally they appear to be somewhat more common than in the general population. I'm also considering chinups to perhaps bear some danger as they pull on the bicep tendon, which is connected to the labrum, perhaps especially if you come down into a dead hang with a bit too much velocity, this is just a theory of mine though.
Does anyone perhaps have insight on what might be responsible for SLAP tears (especially in weightlifters)?