Hey everybody it's Doctor Jo, and today I'm going to show you some exercises and
stretches for shoulder arthritis. Let's get started.
So the first set of exercises are going to
be your pendulum exercises.
These are the ones where you just let your arm hanging straight down. Remember
your arm is not actively moving, you're moving your body to make your arm go.
So if you are doing this,
that's not exactly the exercise. Really just let your arm hang down and you're
going to move the whole body to make the arm swing. So making circles, just do 10
one way, and then reverse it and do ten the other way. They're not to be big
circles because you're not actively moving the arm, you're just kind of
letting it hang there and go around. Then kind of stagger your feet a little bit.
Now your arm is going to go front to back, but again just let it hang there
and then just kind of rock back and forth. And this is just loosening up that
shoulder joint. If you have that information and arthritis in there,
this will kind of help get some of that out of there before you really start
working in. Again ten about ten going that way, and then you're going to do a
side-to-side. So spread your feet out past shoulder width, let it hang down, and then
just side-to-side rocking with your arm going back and forth and again about 10
of those as well. Once you get it nice and loosen up, then you're going to do
some strengthening exercises. You can do this with a resistive band, I'm going to
show you how to do it with a weight you can use a soup a vegetable can,
anything like that a 1 to 2 pound weight. You probably don't want to start off
with anything much heavier than that until you've tried it and see how it
feels. So the first one with the weight is just going to be a shoulder flexion.
You want your thumb to be up on top in the up position. If you had a weight, I
usually have people actually hold their thumb on top of the weight because it's
easier to hold, but just make sure if you're holding a can you can't quite
grab it like that,
make sure your hand is
that upward position, and then just bring it straight up to about 90 degrees. It
doesn't have to be exact and then slowly come back down. So just kind of working
the shoulder flexion muscles and then make sure it's nice and control coming
back down. So just start off with about 10 of those and then if that becomes
easy you can kind of work your way up to 20 - 25, and then that's still easy you can
get to have your weight or a stronger resistance band. Then you're going to do
shoulder extension going back behind you.
So you're still keeping that thumb in the up forward position, and arms still
straight locked out, but you're not going to go back to 90 degrees, that'd be
pretty hard without bending over but maybe about 45 degrees just as far as
you can go comfortably. This is sometimes a little harder for people. So just back
to about there might not even be 45 degrees, and then slowly come back. So
whatever is comfortable for you, but try and keep that arm straight if you can,
and again starting off with 10 of those and then working your way up from there.
And then the next one with the weight is going to be what we call scaption &
scaption is not quite although in the front and not quite all the way out to
the side, but it's about a 45 degree angle in between. And so you know you're
not here, you're not here, you're right at that angle there, but still keeping that
arm nice and straight, keeping that thumb in the upward position, and going about
to that 90 degrees high. And so that's usually the most comfortable position
for people because it's a nice open area in that joint, and again starting with
just 10, and kind of working your way up
from there. Now we're gonna get down on the ground a little bit. So now you're
just going to do some shoulder shrugs. Bringing your shoulders straight up, not
huntching your shoulder down, but bringing those shoulders up. Just like you're like
"I don't know," and just getting the moving, stretching those shoulder and neck
muscles out. So again just start off with about 10 of them, and then you can work
your way up from there.
After that you're going to go into shoulder circles. So now you're actually
getting some movement all the way around. So nice big movements with the shoulders,
really squeeze it around when you go to the back. Do 10 one way and then reverse
it the other way. So you can kind of use your whole arms for this really to get
those those circles and get that movement that that's really nice in
there and that helps kind of loosen everything up. And then after you do
those, then you go into a row with the resistive band if you have one. Just wrap
it around your feet, keep your elbows close to your side with your thumbs up
again, and when you squeeze back, you really want to imagine that someone has
their hand on your spine and you're trying to take those shoulder blades and
squeeze the hand, but make sure you're not up like this squeezing, you're really
keeping your shoulders down while you're squeezing that. Squeeze like you're
trying to squeeze that hand in the middle and nice and controlled as you do it.
Keeping those elbows close, so it's not out this way, but nice and close to your
side, and make sure you're controlling that band while you're doing it. So again
just start off with about 10 of these, and you can work your way up to 20 - 25. If
that becomes easy then you can get a stronger resistance band. Now I'm gonna
show you a stretch with the Swiss ball.
Alright if you don't have a Swiss ball, that's okay, you can use a countertop or
flat surface. I like using the Swiss ball because I feel like you can push it a
little bit more and also gives a little bit of wiggle, so you're working on that stability as
well. Also with these keep the thumb up, I like that because it puts that shoulder
in an open position, and your shoulders not getting impinge while you're doing it.
It's usually just a little more comfortable. So uh hands up top thumbs up
on top, and then just roll out, and again if you've got artiritis in that shoulder, you
might not be able to go that far.
I actually do have some arthritis in my shoulders unfortunately, but I can I got
pretty good motion because i work on it every day. So just kind of a push-out,
hold it about three to five seconds, and come back in. If this isn't quite enough,
you can do one hand at a time, and usually you can stretch a little bit
more with one hand, and then coming back in. And I really like that. And you can
also go at angles as well. So if you wanted to go out into that scaption
stretch you could, or if you want to put it out to the side you could stretch out
that way too. So you can kind of go this way, then and then you're stretching that
as well as your PEC muscles just a little bit. So there you have it,
those were your stretches and exercises for shoulder arthritis. If you have any
questions, leave them the comments section.
If you'd like to check out some other videos go to askdoctorjo.com Remember be safe, have fun,
and I hope you feel better soon.