Don’t wait until you have a shoulder problem, start working on your shoulder joints before anything goes wrong. I’m not talking about lifting weights and exercising the already dominant muscles, what I’m saying is wake up the muscles of the rotator cuff before they let you down.
I recently damaged one of the muscles in my rotator cuff, ended up with a shoulder impingement and was told that I would need corrective surgery. It was then that I started to take an interest and research the subject and discovered that a lot of us ignore this group of muscles until it is too late, me included. It was shoulder rehabilitation exercises that enabled me to recover from my rotator cuff injury without resorting to surgery.
A large number of shoulder rehabilitation exercises are aimed at strengthening the rotator cuff, an important but often forgotten group of muscles simply because they are so key to a healthy shoulder.
The shoulder is comprised of a shallow ball and socket joint held together by seventeen different muscles as well as tendons, ligaments and cartilage. Its complex make up allows us the wide range of movement that we enjoy but also leaves the shoulder prone to injury. The rotator cuff is a group of four muscles which help to keep the shoulder stable by pulling the arm into the socket and help to prevent dislocation.
The rotator cuff can become weak, through injury, neglect or genereal wear and tear and when it does, it leaves us more susceptible to several different shoulder injuries. A Few quick and easy exercises aimed at this group of muscles can dramatically improve your shoulder health in just ten minutes a day.
Even if the rotator cuff is healthy, strengthening it will dramatically improve the overall performance of your shoulders. If you do lift weights you’ll find that a strong rotator cuff can dramatically increase the weights you can lift
Around thirty percent of us will get a rotator cuff injury at some stage. As you get older the risk increases so it is well worth working on these muscles to prevent a shoulder injury.
Now there is a reasonable chance that if you are reading this article, it is because my advice has come too late. I didn’t even know that these muscles existed until I injured them. Most of us take our good health for granted until something happens. I am no exception to that rule.
Okay, if you have managed to injure one of yoru shoulders then shoulder rehabilitation exercises are going to feature somewhere in the therapy.
If you have already had surgery then the advice will almost certainly be to get your shoulder moving as soon as possible to avoid frozen shoulder or loss of movement. Obviously, if you have had surgery then you need to follow your doctor’s advice on when to start exercise.
Shoulder exercises will not involve great weights or resistance. If anything thet tend to use either small weights or just the natural resistance of yoru arm and will involve very gentle exercise to start with that gradually increase in terms of frequency and difficulty until the shoulder is back to normal. If you experience pain at any time then you need to stop as this is usually an indication of damage being inflicted.
It is important that before you start to exercise a damaged shoulder let it rest, treat any inflammation and pain with pain killers and anti-inflammatory drugs but most important of all is to allow the healing process to take place before you start exercising. If you ignore shoulder pain you are almost certainly going to make the situation worse. A pulled or slightly damaged muscle that is ignored can result in a major injury needing surgery and months of rehab.
Better still, look after your shoulders before they let you down and whatever you do keep up the exercises after your shoulder is fixed.