GenInv – Health and Wellness

The phrase rotator cuff injury covers a huge range of potential shoulder problems but they all have one thing in common which is that one of the four muscles in the rotator cuff has become damaged either as the result of good old fashioned wear and tear or through it being overloaded perhaps by lifting something too heavy or in some cases by trauma in an accident.

The rotator cuff muscles hold the ball at the head of the humerus (upper arm bone) into the socket of the shoulder joint that is at

the outer edge of the shoulder blade or scapula.  Unlike the hip joint the ball of the shoulder joint is much larger than the socket in which it sits so this group of muscles all attach onto the arm and the shoulder blade surrounding the shoulder in a cuff of muscle and helping to keep it stable.

Whenever you lift something these four muscles tense up to keep your shoulder in place.  Whenever you move your arm above shoulder height these muscles start working to hold the joint together and

stop it from dislocating.  They are small but very important muscles and they are also muscles that are easily neglected.  If they are neglected they will often let you down especially as we age.  Some sportsmen put these muscles under huge strain by overusing them,  Baseball pitchers is the classic example, lots of snappy movement above shoulder height when these muscles are at their most stressed.

So having worked out that a lot of shoulder injuries happen as a result of neglecting our r

otator cuff, it shouldn’t come as any surprise that the cure nearly always involves exercises to build up and strengthen the exact same set of muscles.  If you have injured this set of muscles the first thing is to rest them.  It is important to let them heal naturally for two or three weeks and to avoid load bearing exercise during this phase.

Once the muscle has rested and healed you then need to start building them up again.  This will always involve exercise with low weights or low resistance as these muscles are small.  Using large weights will exercise the wrong muscles and may well cause further injury.

It is important that you never try to work through a rotator cuff problem.  Taking pain killers and carrying on is a short term fix that is likely to lead to long term problems.  Depending on which one of the muscles or tendons you have damaged you can turn a small tear that is easily treated with the right exercise into a major injury requiring surgery. 

Some injuries will require surgery.  If you have managed to tear the muscle badly surgery may be needed to clean up the tear to better facilitate healing.  Some cuff tears result in a shoulder impingement.  This may go with rest and exercise but if it is stubborn and doesn’t heal you may need surgery to shave away a piece of bone to free up the tendon that is getting pinched.

Most shoulder surgery these days is keyhole surgery with quick recovery times and a very high success rate so don’t soldier on with a bad shoulder.