Need quick advice! rotater cuff injury!

[Tsai li fu]

It's kind of freaky, maybe 2-3 yrs ago i was putting on some lotion and out of no where i dislocate my rotater and end up putting it back in place myself. So i go to this Doc (a quack you could say) and he sees absolutely nothing wrong with it and tells me to just continue doing all the excercise im doing now. This happened before i seriously started doing martial arts. So i do martial arts and everything and had no problems and infact it felt alot better.

Now just yesterday i sneezed (how should i explain this?) on my left side of the same shoulder and it ends up sliding out of location again (3rd time its happend now) so here i am trying to put it back in place and my arm is moving in different a different motion and shacking and i figure it out and....POP! back in place. I talked to sifu over the phone about it and he gives me these excercises and says wait till 2wks to do them. Can't go to a professional unless the (quacks) see anything wrong with it. I'm looking for some professional adivce, anything that you guys could tell me I would really appreciate alot..

[Chief Fox]

Ok, I'm not a doctor so you won't be getting any professional advice but I have a rotator cuff injury so I can speak from experience.

The first thing I would do is go back to the doctor. Not just a regular doctor but an orthepedic surgeon. If he can't do anything try to get him to prescribe some physical therapy at least. In physical therapy you'll learn all the exercises that you need.

Again, I'm not a doctor but it doesn't sound like you have an injury. Maybe just a joint that is prone to dislocation. You should be able to fix this by strengthening the muscles of the rotator cuff.

Rotator cuff exercises are not heavy weight exercises. They are done with light weights (10 to 20lbs).

I did a search on google for "rotator cuff exercises" and got many results back. Here is one of them. http://www.bodyresults.com/E2RotatorCuff.asp

In addition to the rotator cuff exercises I would do some standard exercises that will strengthen the other muscles of the shoulder like: Pushups, military press and lateral raises.

For my shoulder I use some homemade clubbells (plastic bats from WalMart filled with sand). I intend to eventually buy a real clubbell but they do the job for now.

Hope this helps. Good luck.

[Merryprankster]

Go see a doctor. It may not be a rotator cuff problem. The shoulder is extremely complicated, and all kinds of things could be causing your instability.

If one of those things is a labrum tear, then the LAST thing you want to be doing is overhead movements to strengthen your RC's

[Oso]

yep, see a doctor. I'll add that you probably want to find one that specializes in sports med versus a general ortho as they'll have a better insight to what your goals are.

interesting that a sneeze caused a dislocation. I can get tremendous pain in both my shoulders if I sneeze hard (and I have some bad allergies so it happens often) and I thought I was just wierd.

good luck

[Ho Chun]

The Rotater Cuff is a very thin muscle, if something is poping out of place, it's not a rotater cuff problem. You need to get with a doctor and get a MRI done.
I had a slight tear of the rotater cuff some years back, getting a MRI done is the only way to see it.

I hope this helps

[chud]

Sorry to be thread digging, but I just got back from seeing a sports medicine doctor and I have a rotator cuff injury (tear?). If anyone else can expand on what's already here, maybe talk about exercises and how you dealt with it, I'd greatly appreciate it. The doctor kinda ticked me off because he just gave me a shot and told me to come back in two weeks. No meds, no other advice, nothing.

[cjurakpt]

ok, for the record, and pay attention to this:

rotator cuff injuries / tears have almost nothing to do per se with things "popping out"; when the shoulder subluxes/dislocates, almost always it's in an anterior direction, which has to do with lack of anterior support: tears of the anterior ligaments / glenoid labrum or both; of course, you can have issues with RTC at the same time, but etiologically it's not the cause of the anterior dislocation - that's usually trauma based

it sounds like the poster is a chronic anterior dislocator (but I can't be sure because I haven't examined him): to treat this, there are typically two options: train the rotator cuff to help keep from dislocating or get a surgical repair of the torn anterior structures (guess which one chronic dislocators typically end up getting? you guessed it...#2); regardless,

again, you can have a rotator cuff tear and be at no risk for dislocating; RTC tearing is typically due to imbalance of the anterior mnuscles (pecs, biceps), being chronically hypertonic (a typical postural issue in general), and also the RTC also can be stressed over time due to rapid decelleration demands (such as a baseball pitcher) requiring the RTC to eccentrically contract way harder than it ought to;

regardless, the poster should go see a qualified doc ASAP as this probably will not get better on its own (the more it happens, the worse it tends to get)

[cjurakpt]

Sorry to be thread digging, but I just got back from seeing a sports medicine doctor and I have a rotator cuff injury (tear?). If anyone else can expand on what's already here, maybe talk about exercises and how you dealt with it, I'd greatly appreciate it. The doctor kinda ticked me off because he just gave me a shot and told me to come back in two weeks. No meds, no other advice, nothing.

go see a good physio / PT - that will solve your problem usually; if the shot is what I think it was, cortisone (or some similar steroidal anti-inflammatory), it will help with the immediate acute issue, but in the long term won't do much to deal with the cause - as far as dealing with it, typically (and this may not be the case with you), I personally spend time doing several things: mobilizing the rib cage / thoracic spine primarilly, secondarilly the cervicals, them lumbars if needed, occasionally the pelvis; I spend time working on rebalancing the balance of the RTC to the pecs / bicpes / upper traps, and more specifically the external rotators (supraspinatus, infraspinatus, teres minor) to the internal rotators (subscapularis and latissimus), the latter of which are typically hypertonic; again, this is a general approach, so it may not apply in your case - a good PT will know what to do

[cjurakpt]

ok: version 2 (hopefully the non-argumentative one)

1) the exercises linked above are in the post by Chief Fox, are as he stated, one example of and are pretty typical for RTC rehab and there is nothing wrong with them per se; they will be helpful to many people, as was the case with CF above;

2) there is, however, a not insignificant percentage of patients with RTC issues for whom these will be less successful, or not at all, depending on the specifics; therefore, if someone were to use them and not get the results they were hoping for, it would not be out of the realm of possibility, and it doesn't mean that their injury was beyond help - it wold just mean that the typical approach was not appropriate for them

3) some of the potential shortcommings of the standard methods are as follows:
a) doing open chain free weight training of the external rotators does not address their functional in-context roll either posturally or activity wise;
b) the door frame stretch is VERY non-specific and can actually put strain on the anterior sholder ligaments as opposed to doing anything to work on lengthening pecs;
c) the one in standing is not a great idea for some people because of what it can do to the low back, and to acurately isolate lats, requires a more specific position of both the arms and lumbar spine: lats go from the upper arm and attach contractile fibers from T6 down to like about L1 or L2 (and non-contractile down the whole lumbar spine, sacral spine and cocyx), so you have to do simultaneous etension of thoracics and flexion of lumbars, al the while maintaining your arms in external rotation with scapulae roatated upwards, flat on the rib cage - bottom line, you really need someone to show you in a specific step by step sequence to get the full benefit

4) in light of this, developments in the field have come up with alternate methods that are a) more structure specific and b) take into account the in-context functional relationships of the RTC to surrounding structures; decribing them is difficult and lengthy, because they are detailed and more complex, and need to be taught in person for reasons of specificity and safety (although I have describe the one for pectorals later on for illustrative purposes only)

5) my overall point is that if someone were to employ those medthods and didn't have success, they still have options available to them, but would have to seek out someone trained on a more advanced level;

I hope this is a more palatable restatment of my point

[Chief Fox]

I don't mean to be a PITA, but, honestly, in terms of what is considered state of the art approach to exercise for rehabing an injured RTC, are pretty out of date, largely because they lack the degree of specificity to what you are trying to do; for example, doing open chain free weight training of the external rotators does not address their functional in-context roll either posturally or activity wise; the door frame stretch is VERY non-specific and can actually put strain on the anterior sholder ligaments as opposed to doing anything to work on lengthening pecs; the one in standing is not a great idea because of what it can do to the low back, and to acurately isolate lats, requires a more specific position of the arms and lumbar spine: lats go from the upper arm and attach contractile fibers from T6 down to like about L1 or L2 (and non-contractile down the whole lumbar spine, sacral spine and cocyx), so you have to do simultaneous etension of thoracics and flexion of lumbars, al the while maintaining your arms in external rotation with scapulae roatated upwards, flat on the rib cage - bottom line, you really need someone to show you in a specific step by step sequence to get the full benefit

not to say that these won't work for some people, just that if they don't there are plenty of reasons why not...

Dude, if you're going to quote me at least make sure you do it in the correct context.

This is what I wrote "I did a search on google for "rotator cuff exercises" and got many results back. Here is one of them. http://www.bodyresults.com/E2RotatorCuff.asp"

The point of the sentence was not that the exercises in the link where state of the art. The point of the sentence was that there's tons of information about rotator cuff injuries on the web.

[cjurakpt]

Dude, if you're going to quote me at least make sure you do it in the correct context.

This is what I wrote "I did a search on google for "rotator cuff exercises" and got many results back. Here is one of them. http://www.bodyresults.com/E2RotatorCuff.asp"

The point of the sentence was not that the exercises in the link where state of the art. The point of the sentence was that there's tons of information about rotator cuff injuries on the web.

ok, I hope that my repost has satisfied your concerns

[BoulderDawg]

what do you mean out of context? I just posted the link by itself as a reference to your post, which was only a few posts away, so I didn't feel the need to re-quote the whole thing: obviously, anyone reading this thread would not take it out of context - it was quite clear what your intention was - to show an example of some standard RTC exercises you found: in no way does my post contradict what you said, nor does it criticise you for posting it - obviously, anyone who did a google search would come up with the same results; and I didn't say that anyone shoulddn't do them, nor did I suggest you were even recommending that someone try them

however, some people might be inclined to try them; that is why, in my post, I stated that a) while these were typical, they were not optimal and that b) while some people might benefit from them, that if someone didn't, it would not be surpising - that way, if someone tried them, and had no results, they wouldn't think "oh no, I'm screwed, these don't work"; I was also pointing out some of the potential shortcommings of them in case someone tried them, so as to give them a guide to avoiding unecessary secondary complications

yes, there is tons of info out there: I was trying to give some sense to people about how to differentiate between standard and optimal approaches: this would apply to any links that they found not just your

I really don't see why this is problematic...

At it again I see........

This A hole thinks he is the only one that should be allowed to give advice on this board!

[stricker]

I don't mean to be a PITA, but, honestly, in terms of what is considered state of the art approach to exercise for rehabing an injured RTC, are pretty out of date, largely because they lack the degree of specificity to what you are trying to do; for example, doing open chain free weight training of the external rotators does not address their functional in-context roll either posturally or activity wise

cool. trying to engage in constructive dialog:

so i've been given similar exercises by physiotherapists, variants with therabands plus some extra shoulder exercises (eg pulling the shoulder back) but im not concinved there optimal either. so moving on, what is state of the art?

thanks in advance.

[Chief Fox]

what do you mean out of context? I just posted the link by itself as a reference to your post, which was only a few posts away, so I didn't feel the need to re-quote the whole thing: obviously, anyone reading this thread would not take it out of context - it was quite clear what your intention was - to show an example of some standard RTC exercises you found: in no way does my post contradict what you said, nor does it criticise you for posting it - obviously, anyone who did a google search would come up with the same results; and I didn't say that anyone shoulddn't do them, nor did I suggest you were even recommending that someone try them

however, some people might be inclined to try them; that is why, in my post, I stated that a) while these were typical, they were not optimal and that b) while some people might benefit from them, that if someone didn't, it would not be surpising - that way, if someone tried them, and had no results, they wouldn't think "oh no, I'm screwed, these don't work"; I was also pointing out some of the potential shortcommings of them in case someone tried them, so as to give them a guide to avoiding unecessary secondary complications

yes, there is tons of info out there: I was trying to give some sense to people about how to differentiate between standard and optimal approaches: this would apply to any links that they found not just your

I really don't see why this is problematic...

I don't have a problem with it. I gave advice on an injury that I myself have experienced. I did a google search and picked a link at random that had some of the exercises that I was instructed to do by a physical therapist and had worked for me.

You went to the link, stated how the exercises were dated and not "state of the art" and proceeded to pick apart each exercise. At the same time you offered up no alternatives.

I don't find this problematic, just strangely argumentative.

[cjurakpt]

I don't have a problem with it. I gave advice on an injury that I myself have experienced. I did a google search and picked a link at random that had some of the exercises that I was instructed to do by a physical therapist and had worked for me.
You went to the link, stated how the exercises were dated and not "state of the art" and proceeded to pick apart each exercise. At the same time you offered up no alternatives. I don't find this problematic, just strangely argumentative.

again, I hope my repost has addressed this