Patrick DenardDirector Oregon Shoulder Fellowship, Oregon Shoulder Institute · Director Oregon Shoulder Fellowship at Oregon Shoulder Institute

Rotator Cuff Tear: Pain vs. True Weakness

19 Oct 2026 · 1 min

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In this segment, Patrick Denard explains how clinicians can differentiate between shoulder weakness caused primarily by pain and true muscular weakness, such as that from rotator cuff pathology. He describes a simple bedside maneuver: the patient attempts to raise the affected arm with assistance from the opposite side while a weight is added. If the patient can eventually hold the arm at the raised position despite initial difficulty, the limitation is likely pain‑related. Conversely, if the patient cannot actively raise the arm at all, this suggests genuine rotator cuff injury and true weakness.

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So how do you distinguish that pain-related weakness from true weakness? Well, if you're having trouble getting up, one thing is you can just raise with the opposite side and bring your arm up, and you could put a weight there as you do that and see, can you, can you hold it up? Typically, the person with more pain-related is going to have some difficulty getting there, but once they get there, they can hold their arm at that location. But if you cannot raise your arm In particular, that's a good indicator that there's, it's more likely that you have something going on with the rotator cuff.