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Exercises For Rotator Cuff Injuries Sorted Out My Shoulder Without Surgery

By: Nick Bryant

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If only I had found out about exercises for rotator cuff injuries sooner.

Towards the end of last year I managed to tear my left rotator cuff. It is easily done, that I am surprised that I have never managed to do it before. Around 30% of people will manage to injure the rotator cuff muscles at one time or another. They are one of the most common injuries. Eight million Americans will acquire a damaged shoulder this year.

The way I did it was to lift something awkwardly. It was flat packed office furniture for my home office and I lifted the desk with all the weight in my left hand and steadying it with my right. Because of the weight and shape my left arm was straight so all the weight was on my shoulder. I felt a sudden pain in my shoulder, put the furniture down, gave my shoulder a rub where it hurt and thought little more of it until the next day.

I had torn my supraspinatus, which is one of the rotator cuff muscles. This resulted in an impinged shoulder that was causing pain every time that I tried lifting my arm above shoulder height, or reaching for anything, or reaching behind me, or lying on it, or...Get the picture?

The pain just got worse over the next two weeks as I tried to soldier on. I now know that this is the worst thing that you can possibly do. Working through a rotator cuff problem can lead to a worse injury which is exactly what happened in my case.

By the time that I went to the doctor after two weeks, I had managed to damage my rotator cuff badly enough to be recommended for surgery. To cut a long story short, the doctor had tried anti-inflammatory drugs, steroid injections and a few other things to try to reduce the swelling and free up the trapped tendon, all to no avail. It was then that it was decided that surgery would be best.

By now, three months had gone by and I was getting quite bored with the pain whenever I tried moving my arm, so rather than wait another three months for surgery (UK waiting time on the NHS) I started to research the subject on line and found out that the majority rotator cuff problems are fixed without resorting to surgery.

The key is to rest the shoulder properly, which ,if I am honest, I probably hadn't done. It is hard to completely rest a shoulder simply because you use them without thinking. What you do need to do is avoid any movement that causes pain as this is an indication that you are doing more damage.

Deal with the swelling at the same time and hopefully the shoulder should start to free up and become less painful.

Once it has you can start exercising the shoulder to strengthen the rotator cuff. These will not be weight bearing exercises but tend to be more Pilates style exercises working on control and flexibility. As the tendons get stronger you can then commence more resistance based exercises, but even then they will be low resistance because the rotator cuff muscles are small and not load bearing muscles.

If only I had known then what I know now I could have saved myself a lot of time and trouble, not to mention pain.

As it is, my surgery date has come and gone. I cancelled simply because my shoulder is better without going under the knife, and I now do about ten minutes of exercises for rotator cuff injuries every day.

Article Source: http://depositarticles.com/

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

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