Prehab For Shoulder Surgery

If you have an upcoming shoulder surgery, it's really important to prepare in advance. The better you prepare, the better you're going to do afterwards. So particularly if you're having a shoulder replacement, I really like to recommend doing strengthening exercises because this will help maintain or build bone density, and that can help reduce complications. So a couple of exercises I'd like to recommend. The first is simply a low row. You want to go back and squeeze your shoulder blades together. You can do this with an elastic band. This is a great exercise for strengthening the scapula, which is really important for stabilization. Next exercise, just a series of rotation exercises. This is really good for the rotator cuff. You want to go out to the side, keeping the elbow at the side and go internal rotation using the opposite arm. Again, just working on the rotator cuff, but you're also activating the deltoid, which is really good for building or maintaining bone density prior to surgery. So if you're unable to do the elastic band exercises for some reason, either decreased mobility or pain, you still want to find a way to maintain strength and help build that important bone density. So I like to recommend isometric exercises. What that means is you're holding in place. So you want to get against a wall and we're going to work on the deltoid. So I'll get against the wall and push forward and kind of hold 10 seconds. And I want to put my hand right here and feel the flex in my front or anterior deltoid. And then I'll go to the side and push out, and I'll feel the same thing on the side here, which is the middle deltoid. I'll hold that for 10 seconds. And then lastly, I'll go around and extend and feel the posterior or back part of my deltoid activate. That really is good for building the bone density around the shoulder prior to surgery. I recommend somebody does that every day, holding 10 seconds, going around 3 times each.