Should I Exercise My Rotator Cuff if it Hurts?

This is a question we get a lot from our patients.

If you have pain in your shoulder, I still actually encourage everyone to continue to exercise and even do exercises with their shoulder. But I don’t want you to do things that hurt.

In general, if you can see your hand, it’s less stress on the cuff. If you’re pressing in low rows, biceps, triceps but it’s fine, short arc, lighter weights, those types of things, you want to press in ways that don’t irritate the shoulder and lift. You want to do strengthening exercises for the cuff that don’t cause pain.

Anything that’s above a two or a three, that’s too much at your body telling you that you’re overloading the system. You need to shut it down. And if you feel more than two or three after your workout or that night or the next day, that’s too much.

You still should exercise, you just need to modify it in a way that doesn’t irritate your shoulder. And if doing that fixes it, great. If not, come in and see us, and we’ll figure out how to fix it for you.