6 Moves For Your Shoulder & Rotator Cuff (And 2 Exercises To Avoid)

Hey, it's Ben Greenfield. And believe it or not, you don't have to go to the gym to fix your shoulder problems or to make your rotator cuff stronger. I want to show you a few things you can do in your office, at home or anywhere else to make sure that you don't deal with shoulder issues. So I'm also going to show you two exercises that I see a lot of people doing that you want to completely avoid if you've got shoulder and rotator cuff issues. So the first exercise that you're going to do for your rotator cuff is simply arm circles. Don't worry, they won't all be exercises that you know, but you probably know this one. You hold your arms up out of arm's length. You do repetitions, typically 10 to 20 repetitions in this direction and this direction. You can stand up while you're at work or in your home and just do these. You can go through this entire sequence once per day and you'll build a real bulletproof rotator cuff. So you start off with the arm circles. Next exercise is a Cuban press. I have no clue how it got that name, but that's what it's called. So Cuban press, you're going to start here, shrug your shoulders. Next, you bring your hands up like this. You press, you come down, reverse direction and back down again, up, out, rotate, press overhead, down, rotate and reverse back to the beginning. You can use a light set of dumbbells for that, but you don't need to, especially if you're just getting started with that exercise. It'll help improve your shoulder range of motion. Ok, the next one is a push up with what's called scaption. So the way that you do this is you get down on the ground and you're going to do a push up. But you overemphasize the movement of the shoulder blades. So you drop and as you push up, you draw your shoulder blades as high as possible and then you come down again, come up, draw your shoulder blades as high as possible so you're almost locking yourself up in that slightly hunched back position. Alright, next exercise you're going to do is basically a thoracic rotation exercise. The mid back region of your spine and immobility in that mid back region can really affect the health of your shoulders. This is a simple exercise. Again, you can do this with just body weight or if you'd like, you can use a light medicine ball or a light dumbbell. But when you're just getting started, you can just use Body weight. Hold your arms out. Rotate as far as you can to one side. This is called a Russian twist. Rotate to the other side and back. OK, so you can do anywhere from 10 to 20 Russian twists in each direction. Try and make sure that your head follows the direction that your hands are going. Alright? Next exercise is a pull apart. So for the pull apart, you simply stand here. You've probably done this exercise before. You pull for three seconds, two, three. You reverse direction. You pull again for three seconds, one, two, three. And you do anywhere from five to ten repetitions per side. Last exercise, you'll need a door for you simply open the door and this is a seated row.

You're going to drop down into this position. You can use just about any door for this. I'm tall, so I filled the door up pretty well. You can probably see my dog in the background. You're just going to pull yourself forward and extend and try and keep your shoulder blades squeezed back as you pull. So now that I've got this door open, I want to show you an exercise that you need to avoid if you've got rotator cuff or shoulder problems. You've probably seen people doing this exercise before. Hands up and roll through the door. That's fine if you've got healthy shoulders, but if you've got shoulder issues, shoulder impingement issues, or a rotator cuff problem, that's really going to aggravate it. The other exercise that you'll see people doing that I'd really recommend you avoid, I see this one often as a warm up in the gym, is to take the arms out like this and do a ballistic reverse fly. Avoid that motion as well. That can also aggravate an already injured shoulder or a weak rotator cuff. So there are six exercises that you can do for your rotator. Cu2 to avoid. I'll make sure that I list these over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com so you can jot them down, write them down and remember. But hopefully that helps you get your shoulders stronger and avoid injury.