Rotator Cuff Exercises for Injury Prevention

[TomSC]

What are the best exercises to strengthen the rotator cuff, and to prevent injury? How much weight should be used.

[Finnegan Bell]

There are 4 muscles in the rotator cuff.
http://www.tmuscle.com/free_online_a...B41CC34A.hydra

I mainly do external rotations.

There is nothing called prevention of injury to certain place. It had to be ur training program ,ur progression,stretching routines.food,warming up..etc to keep u healthy. You may protect ur RC to get lower back problems. You can protect ur knees and get wrist problems..etc,

[HALON]

What are the best exercises to strengthen the rotator cuff, and to prevent injury? How much weight should be used.

For all rotator cuff exercises you should be using a light weight that lets you get around 20 reps per set, for 3 sets not til failure.

Your rotator cuff muscles get strengthened when you do any upper body exercises. The point of rotator cuff exercises is help increase blood flow to the rotator cuff muscles and prevent any imbalances in the shoulder.

You can do many things to prevent rotator cuff injury.

1) Dont do any behind the head barbell presses or pulldowns to behind the head.

2)train your chest and upper back equally

3)dont train till failure. When you train till failure where you have to strain and jerk to lift the weight and lose good form you risk injury. Especially during the bench press where you can place excessive strain on the rotator cuff muscles and cause injury. Many people have dislocated shoulder joints after doing dumbbell shoulder presses to failure and not having enough strength to rack the weights.


4) stretch and do mobility work.

[FryDude]

If my shoulder already feels uncomfortable can I do RC work instead of working out?

[jdmalm123]

To be slightly less dogmatic, I would edit the post above to say...

You can do many things to prevent rotator cuff injury.

1) Dont do any behind the head barbell presses or pulldowns to behind the head beyond your limits (anything can be trained, it's exceeding your limits/recovery that causes injury).

2)train your chest and upper back in a 1:2 or 1:3 ratio

3) train till failure only if you can maintain good form.

4) stretch and do mobility work ().

[HALON]

If my shoulder already feels uncomfortable can I do RC work instead of working out?

Where does it feel uncomfortable?

what symptoms do you have?

[FryDude]

Where does it feel uncomfortable?

what symptoms do you have?

My rom isn't limited but I especially feel it when I move my shoulder laterally if that makes sense.

It doesn't hurt it just feels weird, I thought the feeling would subdue by now but it's still lingering. I first noticed it on Monday after my workout, I can still do most things with my right arm I'm just hesitant about it so I've been home instead of working out.

[HALON]

My rom isn't limited but I especially feel it when I move my shoulder laterally if that makes sense.

It doesn't hurt it just feels weird, I thought the feeling would subdue by now but it's still lingering. I first noticed it on Monday after my workout, I can still do most things with my right arm I'm just hesitant about it so I've been home instead of working out.

The area that you highlighted in the photo and that you get symptoms when you move your shoulder laterally sounds like it could be a problem with your supraspinatus rotator cuff muscle or tendon. Does not sound too serious. But I would get it checked out by physio or sports doc.

They can do a physical assessment to get a correct diagnosis.

This shows the supraspinatus muscle.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_QTCW9XKvkI...supraspnts.gif



Good luck.

[braindx]

Basically, the development of all shoulder injuries besides freak acute injuries boils down to:


How's your scapular mobility?
How about soft tissue quality?
Posture?

The most important things for RC health is maintaing extremely good scapular mobility, soft tissue quality of the shoulders, and proper posture.

As you lose mobility and tighten up that's when you get injury conditions such as impingement, bursitis, etc. Especially as posture degenerates. Improper ability of the shoulder to slide and roll causes all sorts of muscle/connective tissue/etc. dysfunction.

Usually overhead work is limited by poor external rotation of the glenhumeral joint (tight internal rotators -- subscap, lats, pec major, and pec minor to an extent). Stretch all of these out extensively.

In addition, poor posture and lack of scapular mobility especially in retraction is very important to reclaim -- youtube "wall slides" especially.

Thoracic mobility is another one. If there's too much khyphosis in the T-spine, the shoulder has to compensate with greater mobility which it often cannot do thus leading to instability overhead.

Instability coupled with poor mobility, tissue quality, and posture lead to injuries

Dig in with your hands and loosen stuff up. Use foam rollers, tennis/lacrosse/golf balls, etc. Heat for particular tight stuff. Deep tissue massages.

--------------------------

Fry --- does the bones hurt there or the muscles?

If it's the bones it's likely AC joint --- rest, ice if it helps, massage the muscles in the area, anti-inflams like fish oil.

Then after pain starts to decrease add in non-painful ROM + RC exercises (all)

Then after pain totally goes away add in compounds slowly.

If it's muscle then we'll talk later.