by Thomas Kurz
Information on this Web page is for educational use only, and is not intended as medical advice.
Every attempt has been made for accuracy, but none is guaranteed. If you have any serious health concerns, you should always check with your health care practitioner before treating yourself or others.
Always consult a physician before beginning or changing any fitness program.
Whatever dysfunction of a shoulder, be it caused by contact trauma (an impact injury), repeat injuries (either impact, impingement, or just overload), or poor posture, and no matter which structures are damaged (muscles, tendons, ligaments, joint capsule, articular cartilage), the following course of action is likely to help, and can’t hurt.
1. Stop any activity that causes you pain, during the activity or after it.
2. See a competent physical therapy specialist or at least a sports massage specialist, and have the specialist to test strength of muscles controlling your shoulder and thoroughly palpate your shoulder to feel any abnormalities. Ask for cross-fiber massage, also called cross-friction massage, of those muscles (with their tendons) of the rotator cuff and shoulder blade that test weak. This massage helps the healing fibers of injured muscles and their tendons to align correctly so they are less likely to be reinjured. More info at:
www.physio-pedia.com/Deep_Friction_Massage (includes instruction video Guidelines for Friction Therapy)
superiorspinecare.com/massage/cross-fiber-massage/
3. Do Codman’s Pendulum exercise, but don’t do it like its standard version—that is, with all muscles of the shoulder and shoulder blade fully relaxed—which is done after a surgical repair of the rotator cuff. Instead, while doing the Pendulum with muscles of your arm and shoulder fully relaxed, draw your shoulder blade toward your spine (scapular retraction) and down (scapular depression) by deliberately tensing your rhomboids, trapezius (middle and lower), and latissimus dorsi muscles.
The purpose of the Codman’s Pendulum exercise is to relax the muscles in your shoulder, relieve pain, preserve range of motion, and increase blood flow to the shoulder joint. Adding scapular retraction and depression instills the habit of doing so in all activities, which improves function of the rotator cuff and prevents impingement, i.e., a painful and damaging pinching of the tendons of the rotator cuff between the top of the upper arm bone and the tip of the shoulder.
The Codman’s Pendulum exercise
But remember, when doing the pendulum, draw your shoulder blade toward your spine!
4. Do Turkish Get-up (TGU) because a correctly performed TGU improves function of muscles controlling shoulder and shoulder blade. Do only those phases of the TGU you can do it without a slightest discomfort, and begin with a very light object balanced on your fist, for example, a sponge or a flip-flop—to teach you keeping your raised arm vertical throughout the get-up. TGU exercises the muscles controlling shoulders while shoulder blades are depressed and retracted, the glenohumeral joint of the raised arm is in the close-packed position, and the glenohumeral joint of the supporting arm, when the arm is supporting you, is close to that position. For definition of the close-packed position, see www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803095619958
For fundamentals of the TGU, view the videos below, in the order they are listed.
Karen Smith Master – Turkish Get Up tutorial
For more of in-depth instruction:
5 Mistakes You’re Making with the Turkish Getup
Basics of the Turkish Get-Up with Master RKC, Keira Newton
Recommended reading:
Joints in Trouble: Self-Treatment
“Injury Prevention” in Biomechanical Factors that Contribute to Rotator Cuff Dysfunction and Injury
Dynamic Analysis of Shoulder Dysfunction and Injury
I’ve come back here a few years after buying your streaming stretching program.
I clicked this article because my wife has shoulder problems.
I just wanted to thank you for your many years of high-caliber instruction that is factual and seriously delivered. I very much appreciate what you do and how you do it, especially a few years later.
You are very welcome. I hope your wife’s shoulder problems are solved.