If you are experiencing shoulder rotator cuff pain, most likely you are suffering from a rotator cuff injury.

The rotator cuff is a group of four muscles that stabilize and strengthen your shoulder.  Basically, these muscles help keep your shoulder in its socket as your lift, swing, throw, and reach with your arm.  They play crucial roles in most of our daily movements.  Unfortunately these muscles are very prone to injury.

If any of your rotator cuff muscles become weakened or damaged, you will know it.  You’ll experience both sharp and dull aching pain.  You shoulder may become stiff and you’ll lose a lot of flexibility and range of motion.

Rotator cuff injuries are common in sports like baseball, football, swimming, weight lifting, climbing, and kayaking and it is easy to see why.  Any activity that involves repetitive overhead circular movements, throwing motions, or swinging can put a lot of stress and strain on your shoulder muscles.

Click here to learn how to recover from shoulder pain.

You also don’t have to be an athlete to suffer from shoulder rotator cuff pain.  Rotator cuff injuries become increasingly common as we get older. Particularly after the age of 40 and definitely after age 60, it is important to actively stretch and exercise the rotator cuff muscles.

The key to recovering from shoulder rotator cuff pain and preventing shoulder injuries in the first place is to make sure you are stretching and exercising these muscles.  Particularly for injuries, it is not enough to do one or two exercises that you found on youtube.  You really need a targeted regimen of stretches and exercises that will rebuild strength and flexibility in all of your shoulder and rotator cuff muscles.  If you do the wrong exercise, or do the correct exercise improperly, you risk further damaging your shoulder.

The best strategy is to follow a step-by-step rotator cuff recovery program.  There are several good ones available and all were written by physical therapists who have used these same methods to help thousands of their own clients.  For more information, please visit our rotator cuff therapy guides page.

Click here for a detailed plan for shoulder rotator cuff pain relief.

Filed under: Rotator Cuff Exercise • Rotator Cuff Pain • Shoulder Pain Recovery

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