Questions about Shoulder Dislocations (The exercise, not the injury)

[cianalas]

I'm not sure where this goes. Seeing how it's more of a stretch, I decided to post the questions I have here.

I recently started doing shoulder dislocations as seen here , and I like them as a stretch. But there are two questions I've found that bug me with them.

1) On the stonglifts site, they say that if your hands leave the stick you're too narrow. My question is to what degree? Is some rotation OK so long as I am still able to grip the stick, or should I only work as narrow as my hands are parallel with the stick?

2) Why are they called dislocations?

[This is Seth]

1) To the degree at which they leave the stick. You're to grip the stick at a point where you are able to flap your arms over your head and slap your own backside. If you can't do that, then you're too narrow and are not actually performing the stretch. Find the position that you feel comfortable in and use it until you can move your hands closer together.

2) Because you're dislocating your shoulder... in a very small way.

[cianalas]

1) To the degree at which they leave the stick. You're to grip the stick at a point where you are able to flap your arms over your head and slap your own backside. If you can't do that, then you're too narrow and are not actually performing the stretch. Find the position that you feel comfortable in and use it until you can move your hands closer together.

I guess what I'm asking here is that if the palm under my pinky finger comes up off the stick, am I good working that distance and then moving further in when I can do that spot with a tight grip, or do I need to make sure I do the stretch only where I can do a tight grip? I'm still able to hit my butt with it and have all fingers around the stick, it's just looser than what I started with.

2) Because you're dislocating your shoulder... in a very small way.

Ah. Everything I found was saying "don't worry, you're not going to dislocate your shoulder" and got confused.

Thanks for your reply.

[msuroo]

I just do them to a point where I keep a good grip on the stick, which generally means I start really wide and move in a little bit at a time as I get warmed up. I typically end up right about at snatch grip width.

It's not like you're in a "who can grip the stick the narrowest" competition, so I don't see any reason to push it. You're just trying to get your shoulders loose.

[cianalas]

I see these as helping with getting out of armlocks in jiu-jitsu, so I'm trying to improve the flexibility for that as fast as I safely can.

[Timmy M]

i used to do em a lot (less so now but i do other stuff to keep me at my current level) and would start as wide as the stick would allow and get closer by a finger width with each pass until i started feeling tight, then i'd back off a finger width and keep it at that for a few passes (freaked the hell out of some people when i got really close, managed about a foot from shoulder width i think)