I wanted to replay an interview I sent to my newsletter list last year with Exerciseforinjuries.com founder, Rick Kaselj.  Injuries happen to everyone not just athletes, and learning how to recover from them can make your way of life a lot easier. Most of my clients deal with two injuries – knee and rotator cuff. I wanted to find information that would help you treat these injuries and get better.

So through some contacts, I met Rick Kaselj. Rick Kaselj is a personal trainer in Vancouver, Canada that specializes in designing exercise programs for clients recovering from injuries. Rick has trained thousands of clients and completed his Master’s of Science degree focusing on injury recovery. He was kind enough to have a little Q&A with me, so I thought I would share Part 1 of that Q&A today. Today’s questions deal with rotator cuff, so without further ado:

AK – In my experience I am seeing more baby-boomers with rotator cuff issues, is this just because of some traumatic injuries to these people that is affecting the rotator cuff or are there common reasons why people have these injuries?

RK – I have also seen a rise in rotator cuff issues with baby boomers.

I am finding that the rotator cuff injury is often due to wear and tear or an old injury, compared to a trauma.

Let me explain what I mean by wear and tear.

With more of us in sitting jobs, this ends up affecting our posture especially in our shoulders. As our shoulders move more forward and rounded this puts greater stress on the rotator cuff.

Even if you are not in a sitting job but drive a lot or spend your evenings watching TV or being on your computer, it is a good chance you have rounded shoulders.

When we have good posture, there is a balance of work between the rotator cuff and the shoulder blade muscles.

As the shoulder moves forward, the shoulder blade muscles are not able to do their job and the rotator cuff muscles have to pick up the work of the shoulder blade muscles. The rotator cuff muscles can pick up the extra load for a while but in time, they can’t take it any more and become injured.

AK – For more younger audience, what should individuals do to try and avoid rotator cuff problems when they get older (potential exercises or avoidance of specific exercises)?

RK – Looking at younger people, two things they should do in order to prevent rotator cuff injuries is to make sure to do some shoulder blade exercises and address muscle imbalances.

Lets start off with shoulder blade work or scapular stabilization exercises.

Exercises that work the shoulder blade muscles are rowing exercises, for example seat row exercises with elbows high or low.

One other one that I like to do are pulley pull up where you pull a pulley cable in a standing position from one knee, across the body to above the shoulders at a 45 degree angle over the other shoulder.

The second thing that young people need to do is address muscle imbalances in the shoulders.

Many times muscle imbalances in the shoulders, leads to rounded shoulders. We talked about rounded shoulders above. We can address these muscle imbalances by working on the shoulder blade muscles and working on stretching the chest.

Speaking of chest stretching, I don’t like a typical wall chest stretch as I find it is too easy to cheat. I like a corner doorway stretch where you stand in a doorway, reach up with the left hand into the corner of the doorway or until your arm is at 115 degrees to your body. Then step forward with your left leg until you feel a light stretch in your chest.

I’m going to send out Part 2 in a couple days. That part of the interview will focus on a lot of knee issues.

Rick has a great program that helps strengthen the rotator cuff called the Effective Rotator Cuff Exercise Program. If you have rotator cuff issues, you will want to read about this program. I’ve got 2 current clients that have had rotator problems and through strengthening, we have seen dramatic improvements with them. Click here to read about the Effective Rotator Cuff Exercise Program.

We will talk about this more in Part 2 of this interview, but if you want to see his Knee Injury Solution program, you can click here to go to www.KneeInjurySolution.com.