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Shoulder impingement exercises are probably the last thing on your mind when you have a shoulder impingement. Any type ofmovement is painful so why would you subject yourself to further pain.

A shoulder impingement is a debilitating condition. I know because I tore my rotator cuff towards the end of last year and ended up with an impinged shoulder as a result of it. My supraspinatus tendon had become swollen and was getting impinged or pinched each time that I tried lifting my left arm.

The pain was unbearable. At one point I was maxed out on pain killers and carrying a TENS machine around wired up to my shoulder to reduce the pain.

Just in case you do not know what a shoulder impingement is. The supraspinatus is one of the rotator cuff muscles. The rotator cuff is a group of four muscles that surround the shoulder helping to move and stabilise it. together they hold the head of the humerus in place in the socket of the shoulder joint.They all attach to the shoulder blade at one end and the humerus at the other.

They are comparatively small muscles but very important to a healthy shoulder joint. Unfortunately they are also easily injured especially for anyone who uses their shoulders a lot at work or in a sport. Painters who are working above head height are prone to rotator cuff problems as is anyone who throws a ball in sport.

The last group that are vulnerable are the over forties. That is where I fit in!

A rotator cuff injury is a vicious circle. Once the tendon gets inflamed it can get pinched within a channel of bone that it runs through. Because it gets pinched it gets more inflamed, gets pinched more, gets more inflamed….see where I am going?

Untreated the end result is that you could end up snapping the tendon altogether leaving you with a very bad shoulder injury.

Anyway, after several months of pain, I was on a short list for surgery, but having already suffered several months of discomfort, I was reluctant to wait any longer so started researching shoulder impingement treatment on the internet.

I discovered that exercise is the secret to recovery. Not lifting weights but simple exercises aimed at rehabilitating the rotator cuff.

It is important to start off with proper rest. That meant completely avoiding any type ofmovement that causes you pain. The pain tells you that you are damaging the muscle more. This meant some fairly radical changes to my daily routine including giving up driving for a few weeks.

At the same time treat the inflammation. I maxed out on anti inflammatory drugs and used ice packs to bring down the inflammation in the tendon.

As things started to ease up I started some Pilates based exercises to gently stretch the muscles and stabilise the joint, gradually moving on to strengthening exercises. By starting slowly and building up gradually over a few weeks I was able to avoid any pain or further damage to my rotator cuff.

My shoulder got back to normal, pain free and fully mobile without resorting to the surgery!

What do I put this down to?

I believe that the over forties are susceptible to this injury because we change shape as we age. Our posture changes, we carry ourselves differently, sit badly and change the way in which we use some of our joints. We can get a bit lazy even. Our movements are not as fluid as when we were in our twenties and thirties. All this has an impact on the body and leads to problems.

Doing the right sort of exercise gets things working again, sorts out our posture and gets rid of some of the problems that have crept in over time.

This is no revelation. All of us know that we need to exercise to stay young. Sometimes it takes something like a shoulder injury to remind us how important it is.

If you would like to know more about the shoulder impingement exercises that stopped me needing surgery check out my blog at

http://myrotatorcuffcure.blogspot.com

My name is Nick Bryant and I am an older dad to two young children aged seven and five. I am keen on staying fit and active so that I can enjoy an active life with my children as they grow. Having suffered a shoulder injury that put me out of action for several painful months, I ws keen to share my experience and let others know how I managed a full recovery without surgery despite being told that it was necessary.

Article Source:http://www.articlesbase.com/health-articles/shoulder-impingement-exercises-that-that-helped-to-fix-my-shoulder-1470014.html

If only I had found out about exercises for rotator cuff injuries earlier.

Towards the end of last year I managed to tear my left rotator cuff. It is easily done, I am surprised that I have not done it before. Around a third of us of us will manage to injure the rotator cuff at some time in their lives. It is one of the commonest injuries. Eight million Americans will acquire a damaged shoulder this year alone.

What I did was to lift something awkwardly. It was flat packed furniture for my home office and I tried lifting the desk taking all the weight on my left hand and steadying with my right. Because of the weight and shape my left arm was completely straight so all the weight was on my shoulder. I felt a sharp pain in my shoulder, put the furniture down, gave my shoulder a rub where it hurt and didn’t think about it again until the next day.

I had managed to tear, which is one of the rotator cuff muscles. This had resulted in a shoulder impingement that was causing pain each time that I tried lifting my arm above shoulder height, or reaching for anything, or reaching behind me, or lying on it, or…Get the picture?

The pain got worse over the next couple of weeks as I tried to carry on. I now know that this was not the right thing to do. Trying to carry on with a rotator cuff problem will simply lead to a worse injury which is exactly what happened in my case.

By the time that I went to the doctor after two weeks, I had damaged my rotator cuff badly enough to need surgery. To cut a long story short, the doctor tried anti-inflammatory drugs, steroid injections and a few other things to try to bring down the swelling and free up the impinged tendon, all without success. It was after that he decided that surgery would be best.

By now, three months had gone by and I was getting quite bored with being in pain whenever I tried moving my arm, so rather than wait another three months for surgery (UK waiting time on the NHS) I began to look into rotator cuff injuries on line and found out that the majority rotator cuff problems are sorted out without resorting to surgery.

The key is to rest the shoulder properly, which ,if I am honest, I probably hadn’t done. It is hard to completely rest a shoulder because you use them without thinking. What you do need to do is avoid any movement that causes pain as this is an indication that you are doing more damage.

Deal with the swelling at the same time and hopefully the shoulder will start to free up and become less painful.

Once it has you can start exercising the shoulder to strengthen the rotator cuff. These will not be weight bearing exercises but tend to be more Pilates style exercises working on flexibility and control. As the muscle gets stronger you can then start more resistance based exercises, but even then they will not use any great weights because the rotator cuff muscles are small and not load bearing muscles.

If only I had known then what I know now I could have saved myself a lot of time and trouble, not to mention pain.

As it is, my surgery date has come and gone. I cancelled because my shoulder was back to full pain free movement without going under the knife, and I now do about ten minutes of exercises for rotator cuff injuries every day.

If you want to know what exercises for rotator cuff injuries helped me to fix my shoulder without surgery check out my story at

http://www.myrotatorcuffcure.blogspot.com

Article Source:http://www.articlesbase.com/health-articles/exercises-for-rotator-cuff-injuries-that-fixed-my-shoulder-1455913.html