Greetings. After a bit of a layoff I recently began lifting seriously again. For the past month I’m been working up doing basic lifting, bench, squat, military press, and I’m afraid I have injured my rotator cuff. I’ve lost strength in my bench as well as military presses. I ice my should regualar and but unfortunatly I can’t see a doctor for lack of insurance. I’ve searched the site for a few exercises and have started them, but I was wondering if anyone had any other suggestions.Thanks
You do not want to injure your rotator cuff, trust me. Lay off the heavy weights for awhile and look into warming up those roatator cuffs before you lift/
I injured my rotator cuff a few years ago and the only thing that helped it was physiotherapy and complete rest. They are a bitch! A friend of mine is suffering the same thing now and has been told by doctors to rest it–DO NOTHING! That will be hard to do if you are lifting, but the more you do, the longer it will take to heal. You cannot heal a rotator cuff injury with exercise. Ice is good, but physio is better. If you can possibly get in to see a physiotherapist, even for a few sessions, it would be well worth it. Other than that–let it rest. Mine only recovered after about two months of complete rest.
I to have had rotator cuff problems…after it healed i was introduced about that time to poliquin…i bought his book poliquin principles…great article on rotator cuff…did what he told me too…no more injury…it is loaded with a ton of GREAT information…look into it…its hard for me to tell you how to do the exercises without pics or being there in person this is why i cant give you advice…u will find what you need with his book though…by the way if you did not know poliquin is in my opinion one of the best strength coaches out there…he trains olympic athletes…thats good enough in my book. Good luck
I had rotator cuff problems, too. I saw my ART specialist and he worked on the area, but what I found most useful is that he recommended that I do horizontal rowing to strengthen my lats. I started doing 4 sets of 10 with some sort of horizontal row every workout and soon I was able to bench heavy again. In fact, when I was feeling better, I switched to pullups and pulldowns and my shoulder started hurting again so I went back to horizontal rows and the pain went away.
One other thing, STRETCH the shoulder in several different planes and warm up. PS- my ART Doctor said not to stop benching, to let me be the judge as far as how much weight I can comfortably lift. Good luck.