Thoughts on shoulder health

[jtorres3]

Hey Rip,
I was reading a previous post in wich you said:

"You also seem to be under the impression that your degree of humeral rotation is involuntary/chronic/remediated with silly exercises. Get your press up to 200 lbs. and these problems will no longer keep you awake all night."

Now I have seen some people with pretty severe internal rotation of the humerus, is that primarily genetically infuenced? Do you believe that the situation can be remedied? I am very interested in your opinion because I train a lot of middle aged and older people that tend to have issues such as that and the general mainstram consensus is to just do those "silly exercises" such as external rotations, etc.
I also tend to have some shoulder mobility issues (I dislocated my right shoulder last summer) and as my bench press gets nearer the 365 lb mark I have to take special care to not injure myself.

Thanks for all of your time and thought!

[Mark Rippetoe]

I think that an overemphasis on the bench press, and exercise in which the humerus is trained in internal rotation, produces a chronically internally rotated shoulder, and more importantly poor external rotation strength. I think that a 1:1 ratio of pressing to bench pressing fixes this situation and all the problems associated with it. I think that silly exercises do not, despite conventional wisdom to the contrary.

[rocko]

Hey Mark:
Pardon my ignorance, but is the humerus trained in internal rotation while doing dips as well?

[Mark Rippetoe]

Not nearly as much, if the bars are parallel.