Are you looking for a way to fix your rotator cuff without having to have surgery? This video is perfect for you. My name is Dr. Molly and I’m with your Goals Physical Therapy. I have the pleasure of helping active adults overcome their aches and pains to keep them doing their favorite activities.
And in today’s video I’m gonna highlight Randall. Randall came to me when his rotator cuff was severely injured and to the point that just letting his arm hang by his side for any length of time was killing him.
He’s constantly trying to find a way to hold it. He’s constantly moving it and fidgeting with it. He couldn’t raise his arm out to the side and absolutely forget the idea of holding something away from his body because it just was killing him. Sleeping at night at the very end was very difficult.
He couldn’t find a comfortable position which made him rather moody, short tempered, and his wife handing him a phone number and telling him he needed to call me because she had had it with him ignoring the shoulder problem.
So that is what we’re gonna highlight today. He went from being outside, throwing baseballs with his son without having any pain to not being able to use his right arm, which would be his throwing arm.
I just got done speaking with him after his six month follow up to make sure there wasn’t any pain and to tie any loose ends. And he is doing fabulous. He hasn’t had pain since working with me over the last six months and he continues to be doing great now. Let’s find out how Randall got from not being able to sleep at night to being able to throw baseballs with his 10 year old son.
A little bit about Randall. Randall is 42 years old and has a desk job. I know that’s shocking, right? He works at a computer for very long hours. He’s answering the phone, he’s typing, he’s communicating with people all over the country. During the pandemic, his home became his office. Like all of us, we know that just because you work from home doesn’t mean you don’t work really long hours. He was stuck in his home office for so many hours and during the pandemic he decided this is not healthy.
He needed to get some form of physical activity. So they invested in a home gym, which he became very, dedicated to. He found a routine that worked for him. He got kind of in the groove where he is very used to working out. He gets up, works out and then does his job.
Then at night he has time to hang out with his family. This has just been his routine. He felt like he had made a lot of progress in his health. He was feeling pretty proud of himself. One day after a particularly good workout, you know, one of those workouts that just makes you feel like you’re a million bucks, he decided he was gonna take his son who’s 10 and go outside and throw the baseball. They were playing catch back and forth…
he noticed that after a short period of time, his right shoulders started to hurt. He decided to push through for a little bit longer until he absolutely couldn’t.
His shoulder was killing him. So he threw in the towel, and went inside. The next day he woke up, he was fine. So he didn’t really think much about it, but over several weeks every time he went outside to throw the ball his shoulder became more of a problem. It was irritated to the point that when he came in to see me, his arm was just hanging by his side he informed me it was throbbing & becoming unbearable. He could do it, but you could tell he was in pain by the look on his face. the real thing that got him was when his shoulder pain would not stop even as he was trying to sleep. So he found one position that worked, but if he rolled out of it, he’d wake up. It was interrupting his sleep. And as I mentioned earlier, his wife was not impressed by how short-tempered he was being with everything.
He really didn’t want to have surgery.
He was very worried that he was gonna need surgery or injections. So he just kept putting it off hoping it would heal on its own. He tried icing it. He went and got a massage. they just didn’t last and it didn’t get rid of all of his pain. When we met for the evaluation, we started talking about the problems were. He really wanted to know if his shoulder could be fixed with no pain without having surgery.
I said, well, that’s what we’re here to find out. So I will tell you once we get done with the evaluation, what I think. And so we went through, I started talking about the anatomy of the shoulder. I explained where some of the pain may be coming from. When you have a rotator cuff injury, this would be the way that this face is, this is your collarbone, this is your shoulder blade, and here is your humerus.
And that’s the muscle that’s responsible for your arm coming out to the side. And just like with my model here..if I bring this arm out, you can see how it’s gonna hit the top, it’s gonna hit that supraspinatus and that’s what happens to us and that’s what’s causing the injury because your rotator cuff would actually help pull this down and then rotate it so it would clear the space.
When your rotator cuff is not functioning like in this model, it’s not pulling right,then your deltoid is the only thing pulling you up.
And all that does is just jam your arm bone into your acromion, which is part of your shoulder blade. And that over time causes irritation in that supraspinatus. That’s the most typical, version of a rotator cuff injury. And over time what’ll happen is it’ll actually burrows a hole down into that until it’s torn. A complete tear would be where the whole thickness all the way across and all the way down is torn. Even if you have a full thickness tear, normally it’s, it’s more like a button hole like you where you would, you know, the hole you’d stick your button through, it’s just sort of burrowed in, but you’d still have attachments on either end.
And so with both of those, whether it’s just irritated or even if there is a little bit that’s burrowed in with improvement of your shoulder strength, improvement of your posture and improvement of your rotator cuff strength, there’s a lot that can be done where your arm has absolutely no pain when you’re done, when you’re done making all of those adjustments.
That’s where we started. I educated Randall on that, and then we did the assessment and I was able to show him where we needed to work on his posture, where we needed to work on some range of motion in his shoulder, where we needed to work on some other strengthening to help everything kind of balance out.
In the end, after collecting all of that data and moving his arm every which way, I was able to tell him that he is a hundred percent fixable, we are gonna be able to get you back to playing with your son without any problems!
The way that this process works is the first couple sessions are to help you get rid of all the pain. We need you to sleep to heal, we need you to have full range of motion without pain and that’s what we’re gonna be working on.
After that we’re gonna work on strengthening everything. Just making sure that you have well-balanced strength, your shoulder, your back, everything. The final phase is what I like to call life proofing because nobody wants to keep having the same injury over and over again. Nobody wants to do rehab exercises for the rest of their life because they’re boring. Let’s just be honest we want do a regular workout and just be healthy.
We don’t wanna to consistently do my therapy exercises and then my regular exercises for the rest of my life. I truly believe that with being able to absorb some of the principles behind how you’re supposed to move and get used to moving properly, you will life proof your shoulder. You will know how to move & strengthen your rotator cuff so that it will not matter what exercise program you choose to do after working with me, you will be able to keep your shoulder healthy.
I designed his personalized plan for exactly how we would accomplish this. After working through that plan, he got to where he could throw a baseball with his son for 30 minutes long enough for him to get a little bit bored without having any pain. And he has continued that now six months since the last time I saw him. This was our six month checkup and he is over the moon! He came in so worried that the only way to fix this was gonna be through surgery or through injections forever because what is all over the internet.
And here he is playing baseball, he is over the moon and now his younger son is getting into the same league. So there’s lots of baseball all the time.
His wife is happy because he’s not so moody. It’s so nice to see people get back to everyday life without pain.
If this is the type of care that you’re looking for and you’d like to have a chat to talk about your specific situation, I’m gonna leave a button below that says, talk to a therapist. When you, when you click that button, you’ll be brought to a for fill that out. I will contact you via preferred method and take about 20 minutes to see what it is that you’re looking to get back to and make sure that we’re the right fit for you.
If you are looking for things that you can do at home right now because your shoulder is just killing you and you need things you can do immediately. I have put together my best tips for how to help shoulder and neck pain. Your shoulder and neck are very closely related so you have to address both. I have my best tips for how to treat your pain in my book I created for you. I hope that this information is helpful until we have a chance to talk. Have a great day.
If you’re not quite ready to book an appointment yet, you might have some questions you would like answered first. Click below to request to speak with a PT firs.t
If you’re looking for more information on how to overcome neck and shoulder pain, I’ve put my best tips in this Free E-book “5 Secrets To Stop Neck And Shoulder Pain (No Brace, Medication, or Surgery required)” click the link below, fill out a quick form then check your inbox.’
MEDICAL DISCLAIMER:
All information on this website is intended for instruction and informational purposes only. The authors are not responsible for any harm or injury that may result. Significant injury risk is possible if you do not follow due diligence and seek suitable professional advice about your injury. No guarantees of specific results are expressly made or implied on this website.
