Hi all, I couple months ago i had a neck injury which froze my left shoulder for some time. My range of motion has returned but my external rotator is basically gone. I can’t do lying dumbell external rotations with weight. It is hard just with the weight of my arm alone. Also if I do them standing with a cable set to medium height, I can’t even move it even with the pin out of the rack. So yesterday I started doing negatives on the cable machine with no pin. i was able to control the negative ok but is this a bad idea to do with rotators? Obviously the weight was miniscule but I’m just not sure what I am suposed to do to rehab it when it is soo week. Any advise would be greatly appreciated. I’m dying to start lifting again but I know that will just lead to further injury with my rotator so weak. Especially since most excercises like bench and rows will strenthen my internal rotators and make a ridiculous strength imbalance.
The only thing I’d caution you on would be to avoid any significant hypertrophy of your rotator cuff over and above normal.
The reason I’ve been given by mentors and colleagues is that hypertrophy of the rotator cuff can lead to narrowing of the subacromial space and increase the rate/chance of impingement.
That said, if negatives are all you can manage, try to keep the volume low and the frequency high in order to gain your strength back.
Obviously have the shoulder looked at if you haven’t already. Others may have more specific guidelines, but good luck.
I’m not sure about the effects of doing negatives on your external rotators so I’ll leave that for someone else.
However, the question I might ask is why not just start by doing external rotations with the weight of your arm? You’ve stated that this is challenging in itself. Would this not result in a strength increase? You could also consider resistance tubing.
This isn’t my area of knowledge so these are just thoughts that popped into my head as I read your post. I commend your ability to focus on rehab prior to lifting again.
Eric Cressey is the Rotator Cuff Guru. Hopefully, he’ll reply here!
Thanks for your replies guys. I could do the lying extensions with just my arm. It is chalanging and in fact I was doing them while I was laying on the couch a few times. lol. I just thought the negatives might be faster and I was wondering if they were safe. Not to mention after disclosing my situation i figured someone might give me a better idea.
my friend went through exactly the same thing. just keep up with the rotator work. frequency is key. its really going to suck for awhile, thats just the facts man…
my buddy was so pissed when he finally started benching again. he was doing the bar for reps. what a drag. he was back to his max within 8 months. cool!
time to start working the hell out of your legs ,ehhh?
good luck,
ryan b.
Negatives has been found to be very effective in rehabilitation of many types of injury. i don’t believe it would be neccesary to wory about excessive hypertrophy of your rotators: you can’t even use the lightes weight for external rotations -how big can your external rotators then be?
Good luck with your rehab 
If the weight of your arm is too much, stick with theraband stuff with which you aren’t working against gravity (e.g. standing external rotations with the theraband looped around a doorknob). Remember that the muscles of the RC have a very poor blood supply; your rehab should be as much devoted to improving blood flow as it is to actual strengthening. In other words, getting your reps in is important. Be patient, and they’ll come along nicely. Good luck!
Just a quick question relating back to the original post. I though rows were an external rotation movement as they oppose pressing motions such as bench.
Tom,
Rows stress scapular retraction and glenohumeral extension, and horizontal abduction. As such, they oppose protraction, flexion, and horizontal adduction: all movements implicated in chest exercises. Therefore, you’re right in that rows help to “counteract” benches. However, there is also internal rotation at the GH joint with benching. While one does activate the external rotators to some extent with rows, the activation is much greater with direct external rotator training. For most people, this supplemental direct work is imperative in maintaining shoulder integrity.
Eirc Cressey: Rows stress scapular retraction, GH extension, and horizontal ADDUCTION (not abd).
//Powrman
powermam, eric is right…horizontal abduction, bringing the arms away from the midline of the body (think of doing a reverse fly). What you are thinking about is scapular adduction (retraction).
The Boss is right on the money. Horizontal adduction is a chest fly, horizontal abduction is a reverse fly, and scapular adduction equals scapular retraction.
DJS,
How about mixing it up a little? Say negatives for a few sessions then switch to “empty arm” version, use this version to test progress e.g. a rep max with no weight. As you do progress you could add weight by holding some loose change (coins) in your hand to add very small increments.
Negatives may end up being dangerous if you use weights that are supra-max, of course you can do negatives with lighter weights- but would these be as good? Anyway good luck on your road to recovery- avoid the temptation to go gung-ho.
O.D.
Thanks for all your responses everyone. I actually have some great news. After doing those “just my arm reps” for awhile with not much progress I think the negatives had an impact in one day! A lot of it has to do with waking the muscle up in some respect but when i posted the original message I tried to do a rep on the cable machine with the pin out and I could not budge it. We’ll i did my negatives and posted my thread and the next day i went back to the gym and out of curiousity before I started to do my negatives i tried to bang out a rep and I got it! I could only do one but I was pretty amazed at the progress in one day. I then went on to do my negatives. I took yesterday off, and I can’t go today so we’ll see what happens tommorow. I’d love to get two!
Ok. Sorry Eric. I don`t know what I was thinking. Thanks for correcting me
Dude,
I’d listen to Eric as he appears to be the shoulder guru in this thread.