What is The Rotator Cuff?

Chances are, you've heard the term "rotator cuff" at some point in your life. 

You tell your friend your shoulder is bothering you and they start telling you about someone they know who tore their rotator cuff.

You may also know someone who had rotator cuff surgery and heard their war stories about the rehab for it. 

In my experience, most people know that the rotator cuff is associated with the shoulder...but not much more than that. 

So, allow me to elaborate!

The rotator "cuff" is a actually a group of 4 muscles that originate off of the shoulder blade and attaches to the upper arm. 

It's primary role is to stabilize the shoulder joint (a ball and socket joint) by attaching to the ball and pulling it into the socket. You can see a picture of the rotator cuff muscles below.

Chances are, if you've injured your shoulder before, the rotator cuff was involved one way or another. 

It is the most important structure related to our shoulder regarding movement and stability so injuries to this muscle group are fairly common. 

If your shoulder hurts, strengthening the rotator cuff is almost guaranteed to help. 

Damage to the rotator cuff, however, does not mean that you'll experience pain. There are many people found to have tearing, fraying or inflammation of the rotator cuff via MRI who have no shoulder pain whatsoever. 

Gone are the days of immediately reparing a torn rotator cuff to "fix" shoulder pain as we now know that damage to the rotator cuff is not always correlated to pain. 

Nowadays, anyone with shoulder pain would benefit primarily from physical therapy before ANY type of surgery is considered when all else fails. 

Most shoulder rehab programs are focused around loading and strengthening the rotator cuff while improving it's ability to stabilize the ball in the socket so a person can experience pain free use of the shoulder. 

All without the need for surgery or meds. 

These 4 muscles all perform different motions of the shoulder which allows us to strengthening them individually by applying resistance to those specific motions or strengthen them as a group with more functional movements. 

If you need some exercise ideas for shoulder pain, check out our YouTube playlists for Overhead Shoulder Pain and Anterior Shoulder Pain. 

If you've reached the end of your patience with shoulder pain and are looking for any type of help you can get, look no further! Book yourself a free phone consultation here and put this shoulder pain behind you!