Anyone have an idea how best to deal with shoulders?
I’m recovering from a rotator cuff tear, and am gettting conflicting advice.
The osteo says that the tear came as a result of an imbalance between chest & back and poor posture/alignment.
The GP suggests it was due to weak rotator cuff muscles and wants to send me to a physio to get specific exercises to strengthen the cuff.
Will strengthening the cuff just maintain the imbalance, or is the point of seeing a physio to get an accurate assessment of which specific muscles need to be worked?
Is it necessary for general training to isolate the rotator cuff? GP says yes, osteo says it should be covered by other lifts.
GP says osteos are useless … osteo says physios are no good. Help!
Without seeing your posture it’s hard to say who is right. Here’s my advice though. Rehab your rotator, working Range of motion and strength. When you are done with rehab and lifting again don’t give it any special attention, other than being careful. Make sure you have balance between your pushing and pulling. Isolating you’re rotator cuff isn’t necassary, but it’s not going to hurt anything either.
I tore one of my rotator cuff muscles doing negative benches (haven’t done them since !). I always avoid the GP as if you don’t just get a telling off you are lucky - as for diagnosing any kind of musculoskeletal disorder most of them are useless I’ve found. I went to a physio who explained how to rehab it, but did not suggest strengthening it.
My advice is to strengthen it, and (like Nick) just keep the chest/back work roughly even. Blaming sudden injuries on posture is a copout I feel - but osteopaths have a tendency to do that. I recently visited one about my back who rambled on about sitting up straight (which I do) - the problem turned out to be tendonitis around the intercostals/obliques !! I think you have to beware of any Quack who deals with ‘normal people’ and go to someone more sympathetic to strength sports for a real diagnosis.
Since I’ve included some stuff like cuban press and DB reverse arm wrestle, my shoulders are good again. It took a while though…
Well, it was probably caused by both. The imbalance made you succeptible to tears of the weak rotator cuff. Do L-flyes to strengthen the rotator cuff (keep the weight LIGHT on these, never go over 10 lb), and make sure you do as much rowing type movements as pushing type movements.
You should take some of both pieces of advice. Perform specific strengthening exercises for the rotator cuff and incorporate more rowing and external rotation work into your current program to balance out the internal rotations, which usually predominate. Work the rhomboids, serratus anterior, mid-traps, and posterior delts specifically.
Join supertraining group in yahoo groups. Lots of information about the cuff. I have tweaked mine in the past, but never a tear. I blame it on poor technique and imbalance in work.