Exercises For Rotator Cuff Injuries That Fixed My Shoulder

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

Towards the end of last year I tore my left rotator cuff. It is something that is so easy to do, I am surprised that I have never managed to do it before. Around thirty percent of us will injure the rotator cuff muscles at some time. It is one of the commonest injuries. Eight million Americans will suffer a shoulder injury this year.

What I did was to lift something badly. It was flat packed office furniture for my home office and I tried lifting the desk taking all the weight in my left hand and steadying it with my right. Because of the heavy weight and awkward shape my left arm was completely straight so all the weight was on my shoulder. I felt a sharp pain in my shoulder, put the furniture down, rubbed my shoulder where it hurt and didn't think about it again until the next day.

I had managed to tear, which is one of the rotator cuff muscles. This had resulted in an impinged shoulder that was causing pain each 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 couple of weeks as I tried to carry on. I now know that this was not the right thing to do. Working through a rotator cuff problem will simply lead to a worse injury which is precisely what I did.

By the time that I decided to go to the doctor two weeks later I had managed to damage my rotator cuff badly enough to need surgery. To cut a long story short, the doctor had tried anti-inflammatory drugs, steroid injections and a few other things to try to bring down the inflammation and free up the impinged tendon, all without success. It was after that he decided that surgery was the best option.

By now, three months had gone by and I was getting quite bored with being in pain whenever I tried moving my arm, so rather than wait another three months for surgery (UK waiting time on the NHS) I began to look into the subject on line and found out that most rotator cuff injuries are solved without the need for surgery.

The key is to let the shoulder rest properly, which in all honesty I probably hadn't done. It is hard to rest a shoulder joint completely because you use them without thinking about it. What you do need to do is avoid any movement that causes pain as this shows that you are doing more damage.

Deal with the inflammation simultaneously and hopefully the shoulder should begin to free up and become less painful.

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

I wish I had done more research right at the beginning and saved myself a lot of time and trouble, not to mention pain.

As it is, my surgery date has passed. I cancelled because my shoulder was back to full pain free movement without going under the knife, and I now do about ten minutes of exercises for rotator cuff injuries every day.