Function of Rotator Cuff
The rotator cuff are a group of muscles that are inside your shoulder joint. Their functions are to raise you arm, twisting of the arm and keeping the shoulder joint stable. If your rotator cuffs are weak, tight or injured/torn you will have trouble using your arms normally. Here is why neglecting these muscles will lead to problems down your life.
Every single action you will do in your life will involve your arms and hands in one way or another. They will either be used touch, pickup and/or hold something or to give yourself balance. Your arms are connected to the rest of your body at the shoulder joint. This joint is made up of the humerus (arm bone), scapula (shoulder blade), acromion, clavicle and the coracoid process.
Since the shoulder is a ball and socket joint just like your hips, they are made to be mobile much more than they are made to be stable. Your knees are incredibly stable if healthy but they are not mobile much at all since they only open and close like a door hinge. The shoulder and arm can move in a massive range of motion to the front, top, side and behind the body. This means there is a lot more that can go wrong in terms of injuries to them. So we have to do the work to protect them from injury.
A strong/healthy rotator cuff leads to better performance on exercises where you have to push weight since that movement involves your arms moving.
How to Strengthen and Protect the Rotator Cuff Muscles
To protect these muscles you are going to have to make pretty big life style changes. If you spend lots of time seated than your shoulders often round and push forward so you end up looking slumped. You need to start being conscious of this when it happens and correct it as over time this repeated action will lead to constant shoulder pain as the nerves that go through the shoulder are pinched/rubbed on by bones and muscle. Sleeping on your side while putting your weight directly onto your shoulder can lead to pain as the bed is pushing the humerus into the socket. If you sleep on your side just slightly turn your torso so you’re more on your back. Or for the best sleeping position just sleep on your back. Here are exercises that you can also start doing in the gym to strengthen and protect your rotator cuff muscles.
For shoulder stability any movements that force you to push or hold weight above your head will be perfectly goods movement to start with. To build pure stability you can do overhead carries with dumbbells or kettlebells. To do this just put a manageable weight over your head and walk back and forth slowly.
This exercise forces the muscles in your shoulder to work of course but the rotator cuffs are doing the majority of the work keeping the humerus stable and unmoving with weight above the head. If you do it with a barbell the benefits are kind of lost because dumbbells and kettlebells isolate the shoulders from each other forcing them to depend on themselves instead of shared force like a barbell.
The cable face pull is an excellent choice to strengthen your rotator cuffs because it trains a movement called external rotation. To do this have your arms out in front of you while holding onto the cable machine then pulling until your elbows are flared out to your sides and the handles are near you ears like in the picture.
External rotation is when your arms are turned outside rather than inside when you do internal rotation. Your arms are normally turned inside whenever you are doing a task in front of your body. The problems begin when people have an imbalance of strength between the muscles that do internal and external rotation. The face pull forces you to externally rotate your arms which strengthens the infraspinatus and teres minor; the muscles responsible for pulling your humerus to the outside. When you have balanced external and internal rotation strength, your shoulders will sit in a neutral position as the humerus is not being pulled in one direction way more than the other.
I argue you should do face pulls every day you are in the gym because you will never do enough tasks that force you to externally rotate your arms in real life. These can also be done with bands if you don’t have access to a cable machine.
Scapular pull ups are another great exercise to keep your rotator cuffs and shoulders in general very safe from injury. To do it is very simple; hang completely loose so your shoulder blades should be almost near your ears, then focus on driving your shoulder blades down and together. The goal is not pulling up your entire body.
Doing this exercise strengthens all the muscles that are responsible for moving the shoulder blade around on your back. This matters because your rotator cuffs use the shoulder blade as an anchor. Any injury that causes shoulder blades to not function properly means your rotator cuffs will not function well either. The muscles that control the shoulder blade movements of up and down are the the rhomboid major and minor, trapezius (traps), levator scapulae and the serratus anterior.
Any other exercises that force you to pull weight towards your body always remember to engage the shoulder blades to get the work in for those important muscles.
The Y raises on a flat bench specifically are huge for creating strength in the external rotators. To do this lay on your stomach on a bench with weights in your hands. You arms should be straightened out and be near the ground. Then you want to push the weight up until your like the guy on the right and squeeze the muscles on your upper back.
This exercise done a bench forces your rotator cuffs to work right against gravity which is a very effective way to be moving weight in any exercise. Done standing it doesn’t do much for external rotation since your deltoids will take the majority of the load. Do this with weight that is challenging but still possible to move and move it slowly to really feel the muscles in your scapula work to externally rotate and stabilize the humerus.
Thanks for reading on a topic I feel is underrated. It is personal since I used to deal with awful shoulder pain for a while then I treated it myself using the exercises here. For all the exercises focus on doing it slow because if you rush than other muscles will take over the weight when you want your rotator cuffs and other scapular muscles to do the work. And always use weight that is challenging but a safe amount that you will not injure yourself or others if you mess up.
Nothing on this post should be used as medical advice since I am not a doctor.. Just a Titan looking out for your very important muscles in your body.