Six Simple Rotator Cuff Pain Exercises Using Weights

There's hope for your painful rotator cuff problems. I know from personal experience and from helping my clients overcome their rotator cuff pain. I'm a certified personal trainer and athlete, and thus, have had tendonitis in both rotator cuffs over the years.

Every time I've ever hurt a rotator cuff, I've rehabbed it 100 percent with special exercises. Note: Ability to rehab injury is not related to success at preventing injury; sometimes the rotator cuff will seemingly spontaneously get injured while you perform a routine you've been doing for a long time, despite proper warm-up, even!

I have given my personal training clients the same kind of rehab exercises that have always worked for me, and they had great success.

Following are exercises that will bring substantial improvement to rotator cuff tendonitis, and may even 100 percent resolve the problem. However, if you've been diagnosed with a rotator cuff TEAR, these exercises are not recommended; surgery may be best option..

Shoulder abduction. Stand with legs shoulder-length apart, facing mirror, arms hanging straight at sides. Slowly raise arms out to side, keeping them straight, palms facing down. At some point you will feel pain on the injured rotator cuff side. Note that point. Now, note how high you must raise arms to reach a little bit below that point, right before the discomfort starts. This is the threshold point. It's the point that YOU DO NOT GO HIGHER THAN with this exercise.

The exercise consists of raising arms up and back to starting point at the sides. When you can lift the bad shoulder arm to parallel with floor WITHOUT ANY DISCOMFORT AT ALL, you are ready to add light hand weights, as in two or two and one-half pounds each. (Number of reps, sets, and days per week for all of these rehab routines are at conclusion of this article.)

Repeat the process with the weights, finding that threshold point. Never work into the pain zone, but just below that threshold point. Over time, you'll be able to get the bad side parallel to the floor. At this point, use 5 pound weights. You get the picture. Each incremental weight increase is two and a half to three pounds, depending on what kind of weights your gym has.

If you can't get to the gym every day, buy two and a half and 5 pound weights. Always do this exercise, plus the ones coming up, before your upper body weight routines!

The protocol in italics that you just read also applies to the remaining rotator cuff exercises described in this article.

Shoulder flexion. This is identical to the previously described exercise in every respect except rather than lift arms out sideways, you lift them out in front of yourself, palms facing ceiling, stopping just short of that pain threshold. Keep arms straight. Distance from pinky to pinky is about 8 inches.

Decline dumbbell press. Start with no weights to see if there's pain. If not, use two or two and one-half pound weights, and again repeat the previously mentioned protocol for progression. Face palms towards each other the entire time. Work up to 20-25 pounds in each hand, but once you reach 12 pound dumbbells, perform this routine 2-3x per week.

Decline shoulder flexion. Repeat the shoulder flexion protocol except this is done while seated, chest against a declined bench (decline angle can vary). The starting point is your arms hanging vertically.

Decline shoulder hyperextension. While seated, chest against declined bench, move arms in opposite direction that you did in the decline shoulder flexion exercise. Go back as far as you comfortably can.

Wide-grip lat pull-over. At 10-30 pounds, this is therapeutic, but heavy resistance will further damage the rotator cuff. Even moderate resistance threatens the rotator cuff. Interestingly, I've found that the widest grip possible, at 10-30 pounds, contributes to rehab of the rotator cuff. Keep forearms vertical and pull bar all the way down to chest.

All of these rotator cuff rehab exercises should be done in one session, in any order, three sets each, 20 reps PER set. Completion of these rotator cuff exercises will take about 30 minutes. Do these rotator cuff exercises every day if possible, and always before upper body routines while your rotator cuff is healing (e.g., usually, a bad rotator cuff will not interfere with back and biceps routines, as well as triceps push-downs, shoulder shrugs and dead-lifts.) Once you hit 8-12 pounds with any one of these rotator cuff exercises, you need not do it more than 3x per week.

BE PATIENT. Being able to raise the threshold will take time. While you are on this program, you must AVOID any normal weight routine that provokes the rotator cuff, such as bench press or parallel bar dips.

Full rehab for rotator cuff, using these exercises in addition to other more traditional rotator cuff exercises, may take several months as far as eliminating pain during daily activities, and it may take 12-18 months for very strong people to get back to the very heavy lifting they were doing before their rotator cuff pain developed.

If you rush or won't accept this timeline, then you most likely will face chronic rotator cuff problems that will permanently screw up your weight lifting exercises.

When should you quit these rotator cuff exercises? You may wish to include some or all of these in your permanent weight routines, using heavier weights as you progress, but you can quit any one of them when your rotator cuff pain no longer exists.