Shoulder Rehabilitation Exercises Should Be Compulsory For Everyone over 40



Posted: Friday, October 30, 2009

by Nick Bryant

Never mind waiting until you mess up your shoulder, you need to start exercising your shoulders before you injure one of them. I'm not talking about pushing weights and exercising the major muscles, what I'm saying is wake up the muscles of the rotator cuff before they let you down.

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 take an interest and research the subject of shoulder injuries and discovered that a lot of us ignore the rotator cuff until it is too late, I include myself in that group. It was shoulder rehabilitation exercises that enabled me to recover from my rotator cuff injury without surgery.

A large number of shoulder rehabilitation exercises are aimed at strengthening the rotator cuff, an important but often forgotten group of muscles simply because they are so vital 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 nature allows us the range of movement that we have but can also leave us prone to injury. The rotator cuff is a group of four muscles which pull the arm into the shoulder and help to prevent dislocation.

The rotator cuff can become weak, through injury, wear and tear and neglect and when it does, it leaves us more susceptible to several different shoulder injuries. A Few simple exercises aimed at the rotator cuff can dramatically improve your shoulder health in as little as ten minutes a day.

Even if you have a healthy rotator cuff, strengthening it will dramatically improve your shoulder strength and performance. If you do lift weights you'll find that a strong rotator cuff can dramatically increase the weights you can lift

Around thirty percent of us will get a rotator cuff injury at some point in our lives. 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 reasonable chance that if you are already reading this article, it is because my advice has come too late. I didn't even know about these muscles until I injured them. Most of us take our bodies for granted until something goes wrong. I am no exception to that rule.

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

If you have undergone surgery then the advice is likely to be to get your shoulder moving again just as soon as possible to avoid loss of movement or frozen shoulder. Obviously, if you have had surgery then you need to follow your doctor's advice on when to start exercise.

Shoulder exercises don't use great weights or resistance. If anything thet tend to use either small weights or just the natural resistance of yoru arm and will involve very gentle movements to start with that gradually build up in terms of difficulty and frequency until the shoulder is back to normal. If you experience pain at any time then you need to stop as this is usually an indication of damage being inflicted.

But 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 situation 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.

Remember; Shoulder rehab is simple, shoulder surgery is not!
Nick Bryant lives in Shropshire in the UK with his wife and two young children where he is a director in their family recruitment business. His hobbies and interests tend to be family orientated and focussed on the outdoors and sporting activities. He is the proud owner of a vintage VW camper and he and his family spend a great deal of their spare time at the coast camping, body-boarding and surfing in the summer months. He is also a keen golfer. He writes on a number of subjects around personal health and well being and has recently started a blog at http://www.strongershoulders.com.
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