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A Successful Rotator Cuff Repair is Often Down to the Right Exercise

By: Nick Bryant

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A rotator cuff tear is one of the most frequent shoulder problems. Around 8 million Americans will go to their family doctor about shoulder problems this year and somewhere around two thirds of them will have managed to damage their rotator cuff. Some will need surgery but the vast majority will manage to get their shoulders back to fitness simply by doing specific rotator cuff exercises to strengthen this often neglected group of muscles.

So what do these muscles do and why are they so susceptible to injury? Okay, let's just imagine your shoulder joint as a soccer ball resting on a plate. The shoulder is a shallow ball and socket joint in some ways it is similar to your hip. The main difference between the two joints is that in the shoulder the socket of the joint is very shallow, so the analogy of a ball on a plate is pretty accurate.

This shallow socket gives the joint the wide range of movemement that we enjoy but at a cost. It is relatively easy for the ball to slip out of the socket. So the rotator cuff muscles are there to hold the ball of the upper arm in the socket as we move. Without them it would be incredibly easy to dislocate the shoulder. These are four small muscles that are all attached to the shoulder blade at one end and the head of the humerus at the other surrounding the joint in a cuff of muscle, hence the name . These muscles stabilise the shoulder, holding the arm in place and they only really get used to any great extent when we raise our arms above our shoulders.

As we get older the muscles start to weaken through lack of use, but we tend to be unaware of this until we ask them to do something. Playing golf, throwing a ball with the kids, reaching up for something or lifting something above our heads, all of these movements put a sudden strain on our rotator cuff and can damage them.

Apart from day to day wear and tear we can also damage our cuff muscles with repetitive movements. Baseball pitchers will often wreck their rotator cuff, if your work means constantly reaching up you can do the same, shelf stackers working above shoulder height are putting strain on these muscles every time they lift a can or bottle.

Because we are not aware of our rotator cuff it is not an easy group of muscles to exercise, but as weakness in these muscles is a major cause of shoulder problems, strengthening and exercising them is often the route back to health and flexibility.

But first, you need to let your shoulder rest. Allow the muscles to heal by resting them. Doing any kind of shoulder exercises soon after a shoulder injury is simply going to cause a worse injury. It is not possible to work through a rotator cuff problem, you need to rest it and let it heal, doing passive non weight bearing exercises to keep the joint moving for two or three weeks. Avoid any movement that causes pain. By all means take some anti-inflammatory drugs and pain killers but be careful of using your shoulder if you are masking the pain as you can do more harm than good.

When the muscles have begun to heal you can start specific exercises aimed at strengthening and developing the rotator cuff. These will always be exercises with low weight or low resistance. Try to avoid any pain during exercise as this suggests that you are damaging the muscle not strengthening it.

The majority of rotator cuff problems can be fixed with exercise alone but if you are in the small minority that need surgery you will still need to exercise these muscles after surgery as part of the treatment and to avoid future injuries.

Look after your shoulders, both of them, not just the one that has let you down.

Article Source: http://depositarticles.com/

If you want to know what rotator cuff rehab helped me to fix my shoulder without surgery check out my story at www.myrotatorcuffcure.blogspot.com

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