Saturday, August 13, 2011

Doing Rotator Cuff Exercises Properly Makes All the Difference!

When you have injured your shoulders, or more precisely the rotator cuff muscles, during your competitions there are a few things that you will need to remember. One of the main things to remember about this is that there is a certain way that you need to go about doing rotator cuff exercises so that you do not make a bad situation even worse! The first thing to know is that the rotator cuff is not just one muscle but rather four of them together. The thing to remember is that these muscles are rather small compared to others in your body.

There are a few notable ways that you can and will end up straining and/or tearing those muscles: a Sudden Fall/Impact, Overusing the muscles, using too much weight when training and using Un-balanced workouts. It is often because of these four things that people often end up having to use rotator cuff exercises to re-train and repair those small yet very important muscles. The main reason that the rotator cuff is so important is that these small muscles are the one that keep you shoulder joint where it belongs and in good shape.


The biggest thing that you need to remember here is that smaller is better when you are doing rotator cuff exercises. The other “buzzword” here is balance! This basically means that you need to use the smaller hand-held weights – preferably a 3, 4 or 5 pound hand-held weight for the ladies and 8 up to 12 pound hand-held weights for the gentlemen. You also need to balance your movements so that you are using slow, controlled moves. This is what you need to do to avoid making the injury worse than it currently is.

When you are starting a series of rotator cuff exercises you would be wise to see your medical doctor and perhaps an exercise rehabilitation specialist for the information you need. The biggest thing that you need to remember is that safety must come first! There is absolutely no point in rushing through these exercises and/or doing them incorrectly. All this is going to do in reality is to not only make the initial injury worse, it will also add to the length of time you will have to take on the sidelines to allow the muscles to heal properly!

It is very important that you limit your range of motion when you are doing any rotator cuff exercises so that you do not make matters worse. It is also important that you remember to so some very simple stretches that are not too strenuous to make sure that you are not overdoing it. Simple warm-up stretches should not make matters any worse if they are done properly at the beginning of your workout. You also need to remember that your thoughts and mental attitude are important here too. The more relaxed you are when doing these exercises and the more you pay attention to instruction and your own body’s messages the better off you are.



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