It surprises some people to find out that I was a Zumba instructor.  You can’t be a serious sports people and like Zumba! It’s just dancing around!

Well HITT and squats aren’t for everyone and anything that gets you moving is great!

This week we did one of my favourite moves at class.  Its one of my favourite because it demonstrates a problem with anatomy education of the public. (You might have guessed that)

The move is the machete move from the Cumbia dance and it mimics the moves involved with cutting down sugar cane.

I’ve linked to a little instructional video here.

(Zumba have a very large legal teams so no videos of me dancing)

The arm comes across in front of the body palm up and then as you step back the arm rotates so that the palm is now facing out.  You hardly notice it at the low speed but as you see when he speeds up he introduces this little circle in the middle of the movement to ensure he gets that rotation.

Try it yourself.  If you add that little circle so that the palm is facing outwards as the arm goes back then you can get that joint a lot further than if you don’t have that little circle.

Why is that?

If you do the circle properly then it actually rotates the whole arm.  It moves the greater tuberosity of the humerus, a lump of bone at the top of your arm bone away from the bones at the top of the shoulder joint.

The reason you don’t get so far if you don’t do the little circle is because the bones obstruct the movement.

Now bear in mind that some of the people who are doing this are doing it at speed and dancing like no one is watching and you have a potential injury waiting to happen.

It takes ten seconds to explain it and you can feel the difference instantly in your own shoulder joint.

If you know someone who does Zumba – pass the message on

Author: Anatomy Fundamentals


Leave a Reply


You are commenting using your account. Log Out /  Change )

Google photo


Twitter picture


Facebook photo


Connecting to %s
