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Shoulder Injury - Now back in the gym

Jim_Junkie

New member
Hi, I've just recovered from a shoulder injury and can now start hitting the gym properly again. Can someone please help me come up with a shoulder workout that works the whole shoulder as well as rotator cuff. Cheers :D
 
Have you been to see a physio? If not, its probably best to have one assess you and give some exercises to suit your injury/recovery. Unless you are fully confident that it has healed?
 
The physio generally gives you a bunch of exercises.

Though unless you are a beast or the equipment at the gym goes very light, you can't do many of them at the gym, all of mine involved thera-bands(sp?) and a 1 or 2 kg dumbell.

Mine wasn't a rotator cuff injury, I have a tear in the labrum, apparently a strong rotator cuff protects this.
 
nope, but exercising the rotator cuff muscles and tendons are different to bodybuilding exercises to develop shoulder delts and so on, for your shoulders standing Military pressing BB or DB will give the shoulder a good workout as it engages lots, or isolation such as those arm raises, but to specifically target rotator to strengthen as said above only need light weights or usually those rubber bands
 
Cheers brendon! I'll do MP and maybe some upright rows I think, but yeah don't worry about rotator cuff I've got some stuff i can do with cable pulleys :)
 
Don't do upright rows.

I agree with Panty Sniffing Dave on this one. I had some rotator cuff problems, few months after I recovered I thought I'd try upright rows for the first time (used to only do db work for the shoulder). First night I did them I had some painful impingement which passed after a couple of days. I've permanently canned upright rows. I've read quite a few write-ups saying they're an injury risk.
 
Do a search on internal and external rotations, using dumbbells. They're exercises specifically for strengthening the rotator cuff.
 
If you did not read through the other thread fully this is what I would do for a high level rehab.

Firstly, you want to start of by working on being able to use your scapula properly. If you do not have good scapula positioning and control all the external rotation exercises will not be of use as your shoulder joint will still be in a poor position (stretching and weakening the external rotators). So you need to work on stretching your major internal rotating muscles and in specific your pec minor and major and anterior deltoid. In conjunction with this you need to strengthen the scapula retractors and depressors which are mainly your rhomboids and lower and mid traps.

You should be looking to be doing 3 times as much back work as pressing. Cut out benching and dips (which I see you can not do) and anything similar. If you have been to physio you should be able to do military press (light weights) for learning scapula control. Basically you are focussing on making sure your scapula moves correctly whilst you perform a MP. You can also do this with lateral raises if you have serious issues with the MP. Your back exercises should include a row (seated, bent over, t bar), a unilateral dumbbell row and prone t's and y's (reverse dumbbell flyes). You can also swap in some band pull-a-parts or face pulls for one of the rowing exercises if you would like. For now that should assist in getting your scapula issues corrected you should be looking at doing that for at least 8 weeks so that your issues are far behind. If you have sufficient scapula strength and control by then you can reduce the pull to press ratio to 2:1 (reducing one row). You can do the external rotation exercises with light weight or use therabands and focus on the contraction and utilise higher repetitions for now.

Exercises should look like this. 3 times a week:

Seated Row (5-8 reps, your heavier back strengthening exercise)
MP (12 reps focus on keeping the scapula moving with the arm and returning to a retracted position at the end)
One arm Row (12 reps, focus on the movement)
Reverse dumbbell flyes (higher reps 15 area)
 
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