The Best 3 Exercise’s For Shoulder Impingement
Shoulder impingement is a lot more common, considering many of our jobs involve being in a seated position. This is not the only reason, a lot of what we do involves us lifting our arms in front of us, also causing us to elevate the shoulders and round the back. This makes our trapezius muscles or tops of the shoulders become tighter, and our shoulder blade muscles or rotator cuff to become weaker. Repetitive use of this movement can lead to your tendon becoming swollen or inflamed, causing pain and irritation in the shoulder and limited range of motion. Your tendon is rubbing against the bone, and usually needs rest and taking an anti-inflammatory drug can help too. But this tends to occur more than once for most people, and tends to actually be a regular occurrence when under more stress than usual or they have over exerted themselves. So how can we try to avoid this happening altogether rather than fixing it after the fact ?
Exercising can help prevent this area from becoming inflamed because when our posture is correct our tendon will not be rubbing against the bone causing inflammation, and our stabilizer muscles will help us once they have become strengthened. This removes compression on your rotator cuff, and biceps tendon. Strengthening exercises that isolate the rotator cuff and also increase the available space within the shoulder will help avoid these issues.
Shoulder Rotations
Doing this movement combines both rotator cuff and scapula strengthening. The impingement occurs when the arm is raised making this movement above difficult. Actual pressing over the head with weight should be avoided. During this motion, the supraspinatus muscle, the bicep muscle tendon, and/or the bursa can become pinched between the bones of the shoulder. For now lift your arms to what they can handle and when you feel pain stop there, find a threshold you can handle and practise this movement everyday attempting to push it a little bit further each time.
Pull Aparts
Band Pull Aparts are a great way to strengthen the shoulder and rotator cuff muscles, without bringing the arms into an overhead position. They can be done with an underhand grip, this putting the shoulder into external rotation and using more of the rear deltoid. Anything that will strengthen the posterior side of the upper body is beneficial, as the problem causing shoulder impingements mainly being all the movements we do are in front of us.
External Rotations specifically target the rotator cuff muscles and keep the elbow in tight to the body. The shoulder is in a much more stable position during this exercise, allowing a decent range of motion. Ensure elbow is tight to the body the entire time.
Try doing 3 sets of 10 reps of each of these exercises per day or every other day if you can, or do what your body is able to start with and increase accordingly. Now not everyone who is going through shoulder impingement may be able to perform these exercises, these are just a generic recommendation that usually work in most cases. For an individualized program or more specialized training email me at info@trainingbyrobyn.com or visit my connect page at www.trainingbyrobyn.com :)