Rotator Cuff Injury Exercises -When Should You Be Doing Them?

A rotator cuff injury is one of the most common shoulder injuries. Nearly eight million Americans will suffer from a shoulder injury this year alone and around Sixty percent of them will be rotator cuff injuries. So when should you be starting rotator cuff injury exercises.

I suppose that the most obvious answer is when you have damaged your rotator cuff but if more of us thought about this before we damaged them, there would be much shorter queues at the doctors.

If you do sports that involve overhead movement you are likely to get an injury at some time. Baseball players, javelin throwers and tennis players are all at greater risk simply because this group of muscles is put under most strain when you use your arm above shoulder height. Add in a sporting activity to that and you have a recipe for problems especially if you never exercise the rotator cuff.

Does your work or even a hobby involve working above shoulder height? Rotator cuff injury is a classic injury for painters and decorators or plasterers.

Have you passed forty? If so then you are more at risk. As we age this group of muscles weaken through lack of use and then suddenly we'll put a load on them by doing something daft. Through a ball with the grand kids, start playing sport again as we have a mid life crisis. The muscles just are not ready for it and the shock usually causes problems. Five minuets of feeling youthful again can leave you in agony for weeks.

So if you are in any of these groups then you are already at risk and need to be exercising your rotator cuff muscles on a daily basis. The good news is that it will not take long on a daily basis and you will hardly work up a sweat. These are small muscles that you exercise with little or no weight. A lot of rotator cuff exercises for both damaged and healthy muscles are Pilates based. Slow movement that is focused on control not intensity.

The biggest difference if you have already torn or damaged your rotator cuff is that it needs to heal before you start any type of exercise. If you experience pain when you raise your arm, or reach for something then you probably have a rotator cuff injury. If reaching behind you or lying down causes pain in yoru shoulder then it is probably too late to start preventative exercise and too soon to start therapeutic exercise.

Rotator cuff injuries are painful when you move because the muscles get pinched when they are inflamed and any movement is simply causing more damage. You need to rest the injury, treat the inflammation and manage the pain before you start any type of exercise.

You will probably do the same exercises to repair a shoulder as you will to prevent shoulder problems so if you haven't yet injured your shoulder, there is no better time to start. What have you got to lose, you have a one in three chance of a rotator cuff injury and five or ten minutes a day is all it will take to keep your shoulders healthy and pain free.

If I could turn back the clock to pre-injury, I would be exercising these muscles on a daily basis.