Sebastian Brosche · 3 min · 631 words
Previously titled: Shoulder Rotator Cuff Strengthening Part 2
Hey there Joel Kriska, sport physiotherapist. We're back here again to keep on with strengthening the rotator cuff. Now hopefully you started with some of the basic exercises of rotator cuff with your elbow at your side and then up into your elbow at shoulder height. We want to start to challenge the rotator cuff in positions that aren't so linear.
Now what I mean by that is we always start out in rehab trying to control as many things as possible and really isolate the movements. Once you've gotten stronger through these movements, we can now start to progress it into, I don't know, a little more multi-directional movements. Okay, so what we're going to try and do here is we're going to take some tubing. Again, find the appropriate amount of resistance.
It should be a challenge to basically pull the arms apart. Okay, that's all we're doing is we're thinking about pulling the arms apart. And when we pull the arms apart, as I mentioned many times before, I want you to have a nice tall posture with scapula retracted. We're trying to squeeze the shoulder blades together so that we're allowing the rotator cuff to have the best position possible when we're strengthening it.
So the first one we're going to do is we're going to sit nice and tall, scapula retracted, and we're going to pull this band just a little bit apart. And as you do that, we're going to keep pulling as we go all the way overhead and all the way back down. Okay, there's really nothing magical going on above the camera here. I'm still holding that apart as I come up and down.
And as I do that, I need to make sure that I'm nice and tall and scapula retracted throughout the whole movement. Now the second sort of challenge here is rather than just maintaining as I do it, I can start to pulse this out. It's a great way to kind of play with this whole movement, especially when you start to get above shoulder height. This gets really hard to pulse and keep our shoulder blades retracted.
And the third one that I really love doing is I'm going to be nice and tall with my shoulder blades apart. I pull the band apart as I come up to about shoulder height, and I'm going to think about driving a bus. Now you'll notice that my head and torso do not move the whole time. I'm trying to maintain scapula retraction.
And what it does is it starts to go, can I keep my shoulders back, engage the muscles and move into this position that wants to stress the shoulder where the shoulder dumps forward and then we get back into that weak position. So it's a really, really nice functional load here where we are stressing it again, not just in one plane or two planes, but now we start to get into rotational aspects as well. So I really love this one. I hope this gives you some other options to play with strengthening the rotator cuff other than sort of the bread and butter kind of like this, which is great.
But after a while they get boring and they also can be challenged in many, many different ways. We're going to keep on with some of the shoulder stuff eventually where we're getting into some hand planks and getting up into handstands. But for now, make sure your rotator cuff is nice and strong so that when we do stress it, we know that we've got a stable base to be pushing off of. I hope you enjoyed this.
Have a great day and I'll see you on the mat soon. Thanks again.
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