Shoulder Impingement Exercise Part 1-1: Low Row
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Good day everyone. Welcome to the Core Concepts Channel. My name is Chye Tuan. Today we are going to talk about shoulder impingement, more commonly known as Rotator Cuff Impingement. The rotator cuff muscle is a group of muscles around the shoulder joint that helps to stabilise the ball and socket joint. What happens in rotator cuff impingement is that the rotator cuff tendons (or muscles) are actually squashed or impinged between this ball and socket of the joint.
Imagine your shoulder blade here at the top as the roof and arm bone of this ball joint as the floor. The muscle in-between these two areas get impinged especially with overhead activities and overhead movements in sports, like tennis.
So what are we going to do today is to teach you how to improve your shoulder positioning such that these shoulder tendons (or muscles) don’t get squashed between these two structures.
So the first exercise I am going to introduce to you today is called the Low Row.
1. Low Row
For the first exercise, what you are going to do is to have a mid-height cable, take a step away with a gentle squat. With your arms straight out this way, you’ll want to pull this (cable) back. Pull the shoulder blades back, and release slowly.
The muscles you are trying to train for this are the middle and lower trapezius.
What these muscles do is to help you to re-track your shoulder blade to bring it back this way. When your posture is in this position, there is a lower chance for you to impinge on your rotator cuff muscles.
And this is the low row.
[Read on for Shoulder Impingement Exercise Part 1-2: Upright Row ]
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