"Y" Not?

This weekend I was at a post-race party about 40 minutes outside of Portland and met a PT from Newberg who had read my post about using the overhead KB carry as a treatment for shoulder impingement.  He was a big fan of Pavel’s work and pointed out how even if he can’t get a shoulder patient into full shoulder abduction, as he would need to do for a proper overhead carry, he could still do this:

assuming decent hip and trunk mobility at least

You can see from the above how the athlete or patient would be able to work scapular stability in this position without attaining full shoulder ROM.  Though I’m sure that the merits of this are ripe for debate, what struck me was what he said next, essentially stating that exercises like Y’s, W’s and T’s don’t train the shoulder in the fashion in which it was meant to move.  This is an argument that I’ve heard before and while I don’t completely disagree, I think that it presents a very good question: do exercises like the above?  Often in function (throwing a ball, reaching for a high shelf) the UE’s are engaged in an open-chain fashion.  Kettlebell movements such as this or the Turkish Get-Up where the goal is for the proximal segments to move while keeping the distal part somewhat ‘fixed’, ie with the arm perpendicular to the ground, are almost just unstable closed-chain activities.

Like this

I would say something similar about deadlifts for scapular stability.  While I believe that they are a component of many good shoulder programs, I always keep in mind a few things:

1. If we're working on 'packing' the shoulder, It’s gravity that is helping to keep the scapula depressed, and we're pulling weight without gravity's resistance to retract it.

2. Unless we give up some of that scapular engagement, the muscles being most engaged are the upper traps; not typically a muscle group that people need to be taught to engage.  

3. The rotator cuff's line of pull acts to keep the humeral head appropriately positioned in the glenoid primarily via a depression moment.  In the case of the deadlift, gravity sort of has that covered.

Consider now the following movements, which are sometimes considered outdated and grounded in a poor understanding of function:

Shoulder external rotation

"Y" not?

And the functional applications they are analogous to:

I would suggest that once scapular stability and proper positioning is taught (or perhaps even concurrently), exercises like T’s and Y’s and external rotation are appropriate exercises to consider including as progressions in the programs of certain clients, especially folks at risk for shoulder injuries.  As always, know what outcome you are looking for.