♪ Bob and Brad, ♪
♪ The two most famous, ♪
♪ Physical therapists, ♪
♪ On the internet. ♪
- Hello folks. I'm Bob Schrupp, physical therapist.
- Brad Heineck, physical therapist.
- Together we are the most famous
physical therapists on the internet.
- In our own opinion, of course Bob.
- 10 best rotator cuff home exercise program.
- Exactly Bob.
Because I get a lot of questions on
how can I strengthen my rotator cuff?
We got some good videos,
but we need some more options,
and we need it from the beginning when it's really sore,
to when it's stronger.
And for those people who even want to
throw a ball more aggressively.
- So we're going all the way from easy to,
- Yeah. We're taking you through the full gamet.
Yep.
- And by the way, I see a few new people out there.
- I see more than a few Bob.
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- Excellent. Rotator cuff.
You know, you got a rotator cuff injury.
It's very sore.
It's not strong.
It's not well enough to heal.
What are you going to do with it?
- One of four muscles.
- Right. - Make up the rotator cuff.
- Yep.
- And it's not cup. It's cuff.
And these muscles you know, in order to strengthen these
again we want to start off very,
we don't want to irritate it.
- Right. We don't want to make the pain worse.
- They need to be ready. One thing that almost, even
when a patient goes to the doctor,
this is one of the exercises a doctor
will give the person upon leaving.
Do the pendulum exercise or the Codmans.
If this is my sore shoulder,
they'll say just lean forward,
- Lean forward on a surface.
- Yep. So this hand is my good one.
This is a sore one.
And just leave it, relax there
and get it moving forward and backwards.
I have people I say, just think of it like this tie.
And if you're going to get your tie moving,
you have to move your body first.
So same thing with your arm. It's completely relaxed,
and just get it moving.
You can go right to left. Forward and backwards.
Try to make some circles with it.
And when you do that, it should feel good.
- Right.
- It feel like, oh, that really makes it feel better.
If it hurts, it's not the thing to do.
But I rarely have that hurt.
- Now for our therapist friends out there,
PTAs or physical therapists, you know,
you may want to invest in a device like this.
This is the upper extremity ranger.
- Sure.
It's it's available at O P T P.
Again, I'll put that down below.
- Sure.
- But this is a pretty neat device for shoulders.
If you go through their program,
I think they have continued education.
Or they have a very pretty thick book
that comes along with this.
- Sure.
- You can do a lot of things with it.
But you can almost do, you know
simulate the pendulum here a little bit in that,
just you know, easily to go back and forth like this.
You can put another hand on top of it and work it like this.
- Right.
- And you can often go off into one direction
and off into another direction here.
- Yeah.
Again, these are things that you would do early
when it's really sore yet.
You could use cold packs on it.
Rest. Use pillows on it when you sleep.
So you're laying down, you're going to put a pillow
between here and your body to support it.
- Keep it supported, right.
- Yeah. Do not sleep on an irritated rotator cuff.
If you sleep on that side,
you may wake up in a lot of pain,
or wake up in the morning and it's all irritated
and is back to where it was. One of those things.
Let's go past that point.
We get to the strengthening aspect of this.
And there, I want to do these in groups of three Bob.
Because these are pretty much the core go to
rotator cuff strengthening exercise.
I think any therapist would agree.
And that's what we're going to do is.
I usually have people use theraband, or resistance band.
- Or tubing.
- Or tubing, right.
The first one I'm going to do
is start out with
scapular, retraction like this.
- So he's squeezing his shoulder blades together.
- Exactly Bob.
- Here, when he when he is actually pulling the,
the theraband band back.
- Right.
- So.
- Bob's showing you from the back,
I'll show it from the side.
Shoulders are going back and down.
- So we're trying to stabilize the scapula here.
And so then it's going to help support the,
the muscles and and some of the muscles that
that are involved are actually working right now too.
- And I'll even have people do this
without the theraband early, in early phases.
- Sure. Shoulder squeezes.
- Yeah.
And then it'll make it stronger and start doing this.
And we talk about putting your shoulder blades
into your back pockets back and down,
back and down. It's not this.
Back and down 10 to 15 of those.
- So yeah, if I'm pointing to the direction
that's the direction that we're trying to make the
the scapulas go or the shoulder blades.
- Right.
Then it's going to be 90 degrees here
along the body, take a towel,
fold it up and put it right here.
Now, if I do this, this is the exercise,
and that towel falls out,
my elbow has come too far away from my body.
So that's why you keep it there.
It forces you to have good proper body mechanics.
- The elbow was winging out.
- Yep. So it's like this.
This sometimes you'll find when
you get out to here, oh, it starts to hurt.
You feel some sharp pain, then you only shorten it up,
and you do a pain free range of motion.
As it improves,
and you can start going out farther, then you go that.
One thing I have people do is I say,
well do the other side.
And I'll have, them do this with the other arm.
And I'll say, you want to get this arm
to feel like this arm. The healthy one.
Then the next one is,
- That's a good comparison. Yeah.
- Sure. Is internal rotation.
This was out-ies we talked about,
and this one's the in-ies.
- Out-ies tend to be a lot more difficult.
Wouldn't you say Brad?
Because this is a bigger muscle
that's bigger muscles that are helping you.
- And a lot of times I'll skip this one
because the other one is to go to go to one.
So we're doing scapular retraction.
We're doing the out-ies.
And it's always good to do the in-ies.
Same thing, if it's painful,
you're not going to go through the full range.
And usually it's going to be painful going out this way,
as opposed to this way.
Okay. Three sets at 10 on those and continue on.
If you do not have theraband,
- Total of 30.
- Total of 30. Yep.
And the first time you do it,
you might just do a set of 10
and it's going to be fatigued and you had enough.
So it might take a couple weeks
before you build up to that three sets of 10.
Now, if you don't have theraband,
but you do have some dumbbells.
And we've had people who don't have dumbbells
you simply could take a soup can.
- A soup can, or later on, if they want to add weight
they could actually take a a gallon of milk and,
and just put it half full of water.
- Right. Drink the milk first.
- Drink the milk first.
- Yeah. I am.
- Pretty heavy.
- Yeah. Whatever, some kind of container
where you can vary the weight and still hold onto it.
All right.
- Are you going to lay down and show that?
- Yep.
- Oh, I got dirt on my pants, Bob.
Now this would be the sore arm right here.
Elbow again. It's the exact same mechanics.
- You could use a towel there, I suppose. Huh?
- Sure. Yep.
It's not going to fall out.
So right there, 90 degree bend here.
And you can do this without weight. - Yep.
- Early phases.
This might be difficult. - Yep.
- When you get way up here it might be painful.
- That's the out-y .
And, and we can go to the in-y then too.
- Yeah. So then when you get stronger,
and actually now I've got a five pound weight, but
- That's a lot.
- You're never going to use a five pound weight
on an injury.
- What you want to remember is these are small muscles.
I always try to tell people this.
These are small muscles working, a large lever arm.
- Yeah.
- You know, so they can very easily
get overworked or overstrained.
- Yeah. I got a healthy shoulder
and I'm getting pretty tired.
- You're feeling that already aren't you Brad?
- Right.
- Yeah. Even if you're a big weight lifter,
I don't want you using huge weights on these.
- Exactly.
- I mean it's.
- Now to do this to in-ies is a little more difficult
because you don't want to lay on your shoulder
and irritate it. So you have to shift a little bit.
- Lay more on the, on the shoulder blade itself.
- Yep. So you're going to go shift this way.
- Yeah.
- And then go in like this.
- Yeah.
- Again, this one is not so important.
If you have problems with it,
I wouldn't even worry about it.
I would just go to the out-ies.
And now for the scapular motion.
- Can I make one just quick point Brad?
- Yep.
- You know, people think that they can do it like this.
You can't.
- No.
- That's not working.
- It has to be done laying down
- You have to be laid down. - Right.
- To get against gravity.
- Now. The all important scapular retraction
we talked about earlier about going back like that.
- Right. Yeah. - When I use a theraband.
You can do that nicely and this works good.
And we're just going to do it laying down.
- Yep.
And if you, if you want to make this more difficult,
you can put some weights.
Oh, there we go.
We can put some weights in your arms
and this is pretty aggressive.
- Yeah.
- If I had one pound in each hand.
Are you going to give me some weights Bob?
- Yeah. This one alone is going to,
- This is, - Well I got only five pound.
You don't want that on there do you?
- Oh give it to me Bob. I can take it.
- Oh yeah. We'll see.
- Doing those He-man.
Yeah. This would be way too much.
I could tell you if you have one pound in your arm,
even for a big He-man, it's probably going to be adequate
to strengthen those rotator cuff muscles in that manner.
Okay. What about the empty can Bob?
- I thought a lot of times, do they still want that or not?
- I don't use anymore.
There has been some discrepancy
or some indication that you about it and strengthening that
supraspinatus muscle like that.
I think most people have worked, worked away from that.
- Right.
So if you hear about that one it's controversy.
We don't like to do it.
Now for the throwers.
- Now we're getting to the advanced stuff.
- Right. If you're a thrower, whatever,
whether you're a throwing a javelin or baseball,
you're going to need theraband for this.
There's no other way around it. As far as I'm concerned.
And what we're going to do, if this is my throwing arm,
the first thing we're going to do is
we were doing this facing this way.
The resistance is at we're going to turn 90 degrees.
And at the same time, 45 degrees on this arm,
turned 90 degrees like this, the elbow.
Bob, can you put your finger right there by the electro non?
That point is not going to move.
Everything rotates like that.
- Yep. - I'm going to do 10 of those.
And then I'm going to do the Codmans,
let it rest a little bit.
Then I'm going to do 10 more.
This is hard.
- Sure.
- I'm kind of getting tired already at the healthy arm.
And then rest it and do three sets of 10.
Then when that goes good, you're going to advance it
from 45 degrees to 90,
because that's the throwing motion.
- Originally again. So just to, so we're clear here, Brad.
- Yep.
- Here's a 90 right degree angle.
- Yeah.
- The first time he was halfway in between
- Right.
- Upright and right, right in here.
- Right. That was the first one he was doing.
Now he's up here.
- Exactly. Good point.
So now I'm up here. I'm going to keep
- The same thing.
- That's still.
And we're going to do three sets of 10 of that.
Again, we're going to need rest time in between
- Yeah very aggressive.
- Yep.
- Now you gotta think about this.
We're not throwing this way.
We're throwing this way.
So going this way is important.
So we start out down here at 45.
- So 45. Yep.
- And then when that feels comfortable three sets of 10.
Then the 90 degree.
- All these need to be pain free.
- Right. Exactly. Good point Bob.
- Don't be progressing these if you're, if you're
if it's still painful.
- Right.
- You go back to the step before you.
- Exactly. Yeah.
And for you throwers, this has to be pain free.
And you're probably going to work on
a lot of external rotation going back like this
exact same throwing motion.
- In the full range. motion.
- Yeah.
And those throwers, I think they're pretty experienced.
If you're a young thrower, take your time with this.
Don't worry about trying to, you know,
throw a hundred mile ball by really working it
because it could hurt your shoulder.
- Right.
- Wow. Bob, what do you say about that?
- All right. I say no more Brad.
- Say no more.
- All right.
Thanks everybody for watching.
- Throw the towel in.