Shoulder Rotator Cuff Strengthening, Injury Prevention and Warm-up

Insync Physiotherapy

Hi, my name is Iyad Salloum; I’m one of the therapists here at INSYNC PHYSIOTHERAPY. Today I’m going to go over an exercise that’s really beneficial for what might appear as a stiff shoulder but usually it’s just a bit of a weak and painful shoulder. The premise of this exercise is really simple. You want to engage some of the rotator cuff muscles through the range of motion. It can act as a range of motion exercise with a bit of a strengthening exercise, which is kind of the beauty of it. And the most important thing is, it’s to modify as well that so that it would take a painful movement and make it painless through the range… and you can actually use it as a home exercise after you’ve seen your therapist in clinic. So it’s very very simple. What you want to do is have a band because you want to have a resistance going outwards. It’s a very simple thing… you just apply a little bit of tension here, keep your elbow slightly bent, and you’re going to slowly move your shoulders upwards while maintaining the angle between your forearm and your shoulder. So if you want to see it here from the side, I just have a slight bend in my elbow and I’m going to be moving upwards and coming back down. And I’ll usually do that ten reps, moving slowing taking two to three seconds through your each rep, and I’ll do that two to three times a day. Now, if you have no problems with your shoulder this could be a very great warm up before doing any overhead activities. So, I would do the same sets and reps, take a minute or two break and you should notice that your lifts overhead will be a lot more stable and a lot more secure.