Nick Bryant

Shoulder Rehabilitation Exercises Should be Mandatory

Don't leave it until you mess up your shoulder, start exercising your shoulder joints before something happens. I'm not talking about pushing 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.

Never mind waiting until you hurt your shoulder joint, you need to start exercising your shoulders before anything goes wrong. I'm not talking about pushing weights and exercising the major muscles, what I'm saying is wake up the rotator cuff muscles before something goes wrong.

I recently damaged one of my rotator cuff muscles, ended up with an impinged shoulder and was told that I needed corrective surgery. It was then that I started to research the subject of shoulder injuries and discovered that most of us ignore the rotator cuff until it is too late, I include myself in that group.  It was shoulder rehabilitation exercises that helped me to recover from my rotator cuff injury without resorting to surgery. 

A lot 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 shoulder health.

The shoulder joint is a shallow ball and socket joint held together by tendons, ligaments, cartiladge and seventeen different muscles.  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.

This group of muscles can become weak, through injury, wear and tear and neglect and when it does, it leaves us at greater risk of several different shoulder injuries. Just a few quick and easy exercises aimed at the rotator cuff can dramatically improve your shoulder health in just ten minutes a day.

Even if the rotator cuff is healthy, building it up will improve the overall performance of your shoulders. If you do lift weights you'll discover that if you strengthen the rotator cuff, you will be able to lift higher weights

Around a third of us will get a rotator cuff injury at some stage. As you get older the risk becomes higher so it is well worth exercising these muscles to help keep your shoulder joint healthy.

Now there is a fair chance that if you are already reading this, it is because my advice has come too late. I didn't even know about these muscles until I damaged my shoulder and started looking into the injury. Nearly all of us take our bodies for granted until something  happens. I am no exception to that rule.

Okay, if you have managed to hurt one of yoru shoulders then shoulder rehabilitation exercises are going to feature somewhere in the treatment.

If you have undergone surgery then the advice you get will almost certainly be to get your shoulder moving as soon as possible to avoid loss of movement or frozen shoulder. Obviously, you need to take your doctor's advice on this, before starting exercsie.

Shoulder exercises will not involve great weights or resistance. They tend if anything to use either no weights or very small weights and will involve very gentle movements to start with that gradually increase in terms of frequency and difficulty until the shoulder is back to normal. If you experience any disconfort at any time then you need to stop as this is usually an indicator 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 it to heal properly. If you ignore shoulder pain you are likely to make the problem 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.

Article Tags: Shoulder Rehabilitation Exercises, Shoulder Rehabilitation, Rehabilitation Exercises, Rotator Cuff

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