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Shoulder Exercises - The Way to a Pain Free Shoulder

By: Nick Bryant

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Having injured my rotator cuff about six months back I have used a lot of my time looking into the subject of shoulder problems and shoulder therapy on the internet and have found out that exercise alone can fix the vast majority of shoulder problems.

At the end of last year I managed to tear my left rotator cuff. It was a nasty tear and I ended up with a shoulder impingement. Basically one of the tendons became inflamed after I lifted something that was too heavy and tore one of the muscles in my rotator cuff. Because it was inflamed it was getting pinched or impinged by my clavicle or collar bone. The pain was bad. Each time I moved my shoulder in a particular direction my tendon was getting worn against the bone.

I tried lots of things including a three month course of Ibuprofen to reduce the inflammation, a steroid injection right into the muscle and cold compresses to reduce the swelling. All of them gave some relief and reduced the symptoms but each time the pain came back and nothing was getting better. In the end I was offered corrective surgery to shave away a small piece of my collar bone to free up the tendon so that it could heal. As I am based in England, with the NHS waiting lists, the surgery was scheduled for three months away and having already suffered three months of discomfort and pain I was reluctant to wait that long.

So I started finding out about shoulder injuries and shoulder exercise and discovered that physical therapy can do a lot for rotator cuff problems.

The key is to rest the arm to start off with and work on the inflammation. What I had been doing wrong was to carry on using the arm as normal which could have damaged my arm even further. Once I rested it properly for a couple of weeks I was able to start basic exercises designed isolate and strengthen my rotator cuff. It was bizarre because only a few weeks earlier the thought of doing shoulder exercises seemed absurd but it worked. It is vital not to experience pain when exercising as pain indicates that you are damaging the muscles further so I started slowly and built up over about six weeks until I found myself with a healthy, pain free shoulder that had its full range of movement restored.

Another four weeks on and I have just played my first round of golf this year. The shoulder therapy has not only sorted out my rotator cuff but they also seem to have improved my swing, or is that just wishful thinking?

Why did it work? I think that as we age our stance changes, we don't stand as straight as we used to, we move slightly differently to when we were younger. What I think is that the shoulder exercises have woken up some lazy muscles and changed my posture, only slightly, but enough to free up the problem tendons. Would I recommend exercise as a therapy for a damaged shoulder?

Definitely! Not every shoulder injury will respond to just exercise. Common sense would say that it must depend on what you have managed to do to yourself but ten weeks after I was told that surgery was the answer I am pain free and feel great. The surgery is postponed indefinitely at the moment.

Article Source: http://depositarticles.com/

If you want to know how i fixed my torn rotator cuff with justrotator cuff exercises without shoulder surgery that I was told I needed, check out my story at www.myrotatorcuffcure.blogspot.com

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