If you have shoulder pain from a rotator cuff injury, from subacromial impingement syndrome,
from perhaps a SLAP tear, a labrum tear, a frozen shoulder, or maybe just creaky, crunchy shoulders
and you'd like to fix it, you've come to the right place. My name is Lucas, i'm a yoga teacher and in
this video i'll walk you through the anatomy and the physiology of your shoulder and i'll share
with you a seven minute routine that can help you to do self-care at home for your shoulders.
I often have students come to class and they have long-term chronic problems in their shoulders, and
they are taking things like ibuprofen. Sometimes they're getting cortisone shots. I've even had
many students who've had surgeries. If those things worked that would be amazing, unfortunately
they rarely do work long-term. Usually you have to take the healing process into your own hands
to get long-term results. If you have shoulder problems it can really screw up your life,
it can impede upon your quality of life and keep you from doing the things that you love.
So, it's definitely worth investing time in self-care. Before we jump into this, just a quick disclaimer.
I'm a yoga teacher, please always trust your medical provider, especially if you're dealing
with an injury. Err on the side of caution, this is for educational purposes only.
OK, let's start off by looking at the anatomy of our shoulder to understand why it's so problematic.
This is your glenohumeral joint. This is where your humerus, your arm bone meets your scapula,
your shoulder blade. It's a ball and socket joint, but check it out, it's very very shallow.
What that means is that on the plus side, we get a ton of range of motion in our shoulder.
In fact it's the most mobile joint in our entire body. That's the good news. The bad news is
the stability, or lack thereof, of this shoulder joint is determined by the muscles and connective
tissues that support it. Let me quickly just show you the motions, the movements that your
shoulder is capable of, then you'll start to get an idea about why we have so many problems.
So my shoulder joint, where my arm meets my shoulder, it can abduct this is where I go out to the side,
it can adduct - this is where I come back in. It can medially rotate towards the inside,
it can laterally rotate towards the outside, I can also flex my shoulder joint - that's
where my arms go above my head, I can extend my shoulder joint, I can even hyperextend
my shoulder joint. Those are all the things you're capable of. But here's what most of us do.
We work on a computer, we drive a car, we play with a mouse, we chop some carrots. That's it.
Very rarely do we take our arms above our head, almost never do we take load into our arms, very rarely
do we hyperextend our shoulders and what that means is this incredibly capable mobile joint has atrophied.
The soft tissues have been neglected and because of that it's really prone to injury.
You go out and you play a game of tennis, you come home with a screwed up shoulder,
you start to do a new workout routine and two weeks into it your shoulder is trashed. It's no wonder.
Let's take a little bit of a closer look at these soft tissues so you can understand what's going on.
This model will give you a little bit of a better idea about what's happening in this
glenohumeral joint. Let's first take a look at the muscles of the joint, the rotator cuff muscles.
On the back side here there are two muscles that are really important for
lateral rotation. Imagine i'm winding up to hit a tennis ball. Here we have infraspinatus and
down here on the bottom its assistant is teres minor. These muscles contract to open my shoulder
to the outside, it's called lateral rotation. Up here on top we have supraspinatus and this is
one of the more problematic muscles. It's a small one and it's involved in what's called abduction.
As my arm opens to the side as I get higher up, my delts and my traps come online as well,
but this little supraspinatus muscle is largely responsible for this movement.
It's a small one and it butts right up against here in the roof of my shoulder joint. We'll
talk more about this in just a moment. The fourth muscle of the cuff is right here on the inside and
this is called subscapularis. This is the biggest one, it's the strongest one, and creates the least
amount of problems. This is the one that helps us turn our shoulder inwards like this. Let's come
back to our supraspinatus on the top here. Here's the problem, on the roof of our shoulder there is
a ligament here, this is a physiological joint where my humerus, my arm bone, articulates with this
piece of soft tissue, this coracoacromial ligament right here up on top. Very often, like an old
leather belt, the arch can start to collapse, the arch can start to lose its elasticity.
It's a very common source of impingement. The joint literally can start to collapse,
create compression on that supraspinatus, but also the entire joint. So, when we look at this
seven minute routine which i'll share with you in just a moment what we'll be working on is very
very gently creating strength in these four cuff muscles and a little more aggressively, creating
more space on the top of this joint, applying Wolff's law where we apply a little bit of stress
to create more space and to re-establish the arch of this ligament here on top.
Now before we get into these exercises, I just want to emphasize that this video assumes that
you have pain and maybe even an injury. So everything that we're doing is very very gentle
and very accessible, knowing full well that within a couple of weeks or a couple of months it's very
likely that you will graduate from this and move on to something a little bit stronger.
But always when you have joint pain, it's better to start off simple, better to err on the side
of caution and move forward with baby steps. Let's start off by looking at hang therapy.
Let me show you our seven minute daily routine. There are three purposes for this routine.
Number one we'd like to apply Wolff's law to create more space on the roof of that shoulder joint,
just to decompress everything. Number two we'd like to articulate our joint fully and
lubricate. You've probably heard that motion is lotion. This is true for your shoulder joint,
we need to move everything. Number three we'll be establishing some really basic strength for
our rotator cuff muscles to apply more stability to the joint. Let's start off with a passive hang
and i'll show you how to do this using a door frame. If you have a pull-up bar, gymnastics
rings, or a yoga trapeze those work even better, but i'll assume you have none of those and i'll
show you how to do this using just a strap and a door frame. I've got a basic belt, a yoga strap,
but you could use anything around the house including like a robe belt, for example. Let
me show you what I'll do, I'll open up the door, I'll hook my belt or my strap in the top corner
and then I'll slam the door closed so that I have something to hang from. Face my back to the strap,
I'll start a timer for 30 seconds to begin with, I'll wrap my wrists around the strap so that I
don't have to use as much grip strength, step my feet about as wide as my hips and I'll squat down,
down, down, and I'll hang here for 30 seconds from the strap in full shoulder flexion.
Good. Now in that pose use your legs as little or as much as you need to. You don't want to
feel any sharp shooting pain, a little bit of discomfort is okay but no pain at all,
and when you're doing this you use your legs more to reduce the pressure, and less to increase the
pressure on the roof of your shoulder. Now what if hanging from the strap is impossible? In fact,
what if full shoulder flexion is impossible? What you do in that case is you stand next to something
like I have here these shelves, and you place your arms at whatever height you can and you do a hang
here, using the wall, using a bookshelf, using the edge of a countertop. You do the exact same
routine but instead of full flexion and hang you simply place your hands at the level that you can.
If you have a frozen shoulder, maybe you only get to here. If you have a major rotator cuff injury,
maybe you get to here. That's your hold, that's your first pose. Let me show you the next one.
These next poses involve articulating our joints and also strengthening our rotator cuff
muscles. The names of these poses suggest the shape that we're making with our arms, so we'll do
I, we'll do Y, we'll do a T shape where our arms come out to the side, and finally we'll do
butterfly arms. So I, Y, T and butterflies. Again we're trying to leverage that 'motion is lotion'
phenomenon for our joint. We're also trying to strengthen those rotator cuff muscles. Now you can
see I'm holding on to two yoga blocks. These weigh nothing, 200 grams something like this. You'll be
tempted to grab a heavier weight, don't do it if you have pain. If you have a problem start off
light, you can always go heavier. You're going to be surprised how quickly your shoulders fatigue.
Many of us haven't used these muscles, it takes a while to build them up. Stand with your feet
as wide as your hips, your outer edges of your feet are parallel when you're practicing this
there's no swinging or swaying. Your shoulders stay over your hips and your torso stays braced
throughout. We'll start off with I. The palms of my hands face each other and I'll inhale
my arms up, exhale my arms down. If you can't make it all the way, you go to the place where
you feel no more than five out of ten intensity. That was one round. I'll do 10 rounds in total.
Great. The next pose is a Y shape. When you look down at your hands you want your hands to make a V
shape out from your body. I'll be holding the blocks, you might be holding two soup cans
but I like the palms of my hands facing in at about a 45 degree angle
and I'll inhale my arms up in a Y shape, exhaling back down. I'll do 10 in total
again. If, for whatever reason, you're unable to fully flex your shoulders, work in the range
where you feel comfortable. Let's define comfortable as five out of 10 intensity,
no more and absolutely no sharp shooting pain. Next we'll work on T position. In a T position
the palms of my hands face down towards my sides. I'll inhale my arms out to 90 degrees
and i'll exhale, lower them back down, my shoulders stay over my hips. I'll do 10 in total.
For the final pose we'll do butterflies. Your arms extend out at 90 degrees,
inhale open your arms out to the side, exhale arms back together again. You work in the
range that works for you. If 90 degrees is too high, lower them down to 30. If 30 is too high,
start at 20 degrees. Wherever you can work from, that's where you work from. We inhale open,
we exhale close. My shoulders stay over my hips. Let's begin together.
Great. So we did 10 Is 10 Ys 10 Ts and then 10 butterflies
and now we loop back and we do the whole routine again, 30 second passive hold 10,
10, 10, 10, with our rotator cuff exercises. You do the routine four times in total, it should
take you around seven minutes. If you do this every day very quickly you should start to feel
quite a bit more space, freedom, flexibility and slowly but surely strength
in your shoulder joint as well. Hope you find that seven minute routine helpful. If you'd like to
learn more about the shoulder joint I'd very much recommend Dr John Kirsch's work on shoulder pain,
and if you look into the Wolff phenomenon, in terms of changing both hard and soft structures
of your shoulders, it's very interesting. I'll link up in the notes down below as well.
If you'd like more science-based yoga information please hit subscribe. If you have questions about
anything that we've covered I answer all my comments, you can post down below. Lastly, to find
my teaching schedule go to yogabody.com. Thanks for joining me, i'll see you in the next one.