Must Know’s for Rotator Cuff Rehab and Treatment
Here's the rotator cuff pain: pain with you reaching to grab things, but not all the time, it's certain angles, it can even disappear after moving a couple times, and then again it catches you when you least expect.
If it's more progressed, you have trouble sleeping, reaching behind to get dressed, driving, pushing/pulling doing some of the most day-to-day things like closing a door. Let alone working out, which drives you crazy.
You feel, limited.
I love this photo from Canva. It really shows that super mis-matched ball-and-socket joint of the human shoulder. That big rounded circle in this skeleton relies on the rotator cuff muscle group to READ and SENSE what our arms doing and HOW we are pulling/pushing that load with the rest of our head and trunk.
Deep inside, the rotator cuff tendons blend into the joint capsule.
They are, POSITION SENSE muscles.They are NOT, power muscles.
As position-sense muscles, the rotator cuff anchors the ball in its socket and the power muscles, such as deltoids/ triceps/ biceps/ traps move the arm through.
If the rotator cuff muscles are balanced, they keep the ball snug inside the joint capsule. If they are not balanced, the arm bone WON't fall out of place (unless you have external trauma to dislocate it), BUT because the arm bone doesn't sit as snug, it's harder for the rotator cuff muscles to read what's going on and to coordinate what to do.
Over time the tendon/bursa gets jammed between all the bony surfaces (such as subacromial impingement, bursitis, tendonitis, tendonapathies).
When that inflammation is finally happening, I'll tell you, people sense some discomfort but most DON't KNOW their rotator cuff is being compromised. Especially in the case of "normal wear and tear". They often mistake rotator cuff injury as “just a strain”. People that come in to meet me, usually notice that their shoulder is getting worse like months later. Because the early weeks, you could be feeling a bit of something and then not. The pattern doesn't present itself until you can't do something. And that is debilitation.
Solution?
Retrain that coordination. With patience.
Many in-clinic treatments are very effective at relieving the pathological tension-dialing that the brain has adopted over a long period of time. You need to give your rotator cuff a chance to retrain, instead of jumping into strengthening it.
Exercises?
I do have some tidbit exercises that I will share in later posts! But the more you understand the intricacies of your rotator cuff, that their job is really this high level of sensing, fine-tuning of movement, the more you appreciate what they do for you!
