The act of tearing your rotator cuff sounds painful and it is. Your rotator cuff is a group of muscles and tendons that surround your shoulder joint, which keeps your joint in its socket. When you tear your rotator cuff, you may experience a deep ache in your shoulder, arm weakness, pain when you try to sleep on it, or pain when you perform simple tasks that require lifting your arm above your head. Rotator cuff injuries are often due to repeated overhead motions, which can be associated with certain sports, professions, or actions.
There are many methods of treatment available for rotator cuff injuries. The conservative treatments are favorable to the alternatives and sometimes all you need to recover. Such treatments include rest, ice, and physical therapy. Physical therapy is probably one of the first treatments your doctor will recommend, since it’s noninvasive and can help restore strength to the muscles in your shoulder. If the pain is too intense for you to handle, your doctor may recommend steroid injections, which will often help temporarily. However, these injections could further damage your tendons, so they should be used sparingly. The final option for treatment is surgery.
Athletes in certain sports run the risk of enduring a rotator cuff injury due to the repetitive motions they inflict on their shoulders each day. For example, athletes that are involved in baseball, tennis, football, rowing, and wrestling are at risk because of the nature of their sport. This increased risk comes with certain professions or having pre-existing conditions, such as carpentry or tendinitis. You could even tear a rotator cuff doing something mundane, such as raising your arm against force, performing an overhead activity, or lifting something repeatedly.
1. Raising the Arm Against Force
Known as an acute rotator cuff tear, this often occurs when you experience a sudden resistance in your shoulder. Lifting a box that you were too proud to ask for help with, for example, or twisting your arm in an awkward position to hit your sibling in the back seat of a car, could give you a rotator cuff injury. They both come with force that your shoulder will have to fight to resist. Sometimes your shoulder will lose that fight and the rotator cuff will tear. Rotator cuff injury risk raises with age, so it takes a considerable amount of resistance if you’re under the age of thirty.
2. Overhead Activity
Another common cause for rotator cuff injuries is exerting overhead activity. Perhaps you threw the neighbor’s frisbee back over the fence a little too hard, or you discovered that your son was too heavy for the superman game. Lifting your arms over your head, with your shoulder resisting force, could cause your rotator cuff to tear. It could also be caused by something you’ve done several times before. Maybe you throw that frisbee over the fence every single day because your neighbor’s dog loves it so much, but today it hurt. Too much force could cause it to tear, as well as repeated force (even if the force isn’t that intense).
3. Baseball
As mentioned, certain sports have higher risk of rotator cuff tears; baseball is one of these because of the repeated arm motions. With pitchers throwing fast balls that meet speeds up to one-hundred miles per hour and position players gunning down baserunners, it’s no wonder that rotator cuff injuries are so populous in baseball. Since baseball is such an arm-heavy sport, many coaches have their players on an off-season program to strengthen their rotator cuffs, which reduce risk of injury during baseball season. The program is often tiered to different positions, so it’s specific to the types of motions their rotator cuffs will be subjected to during the season.
4. Tennis
Remember the overhead activity we talked about? Tennis is one of those sports that uses overhead action extensively. Being an unnatural movement, tennis players often surpass the limits of their joint. When a tennis player serves to start a match, the player uses force to propel the tennis ball as accurately and as powerfully as he or she can. This is a direct overhead movement. Then, throughout the course of the game, players continue to use the same shoulder in dynamic ways to meet the momentum of the ball and send it in the opposite direction. That’s a lot of force on one shoulder, which can lead to a rotator cuff tear.
5. Football
Football is a brutal sport and comes with the highest risk of rotator cuff injuries in its players. There are many ways that football players can tear their rotator cuffs. Such ways include trauma from coming in contact with another player, falling, or from overuse. There are a lot of repetitive movements involved in football, including throwing the football, that could cause rotator cuff injuries over time. It’s important to wear properly fitted equipment, especially shoulder pads, to prevent injuries. Another way football players can tear their rotator cuffs is by not following the proper techniques when throwing, tackling, and blocking.
6. Tendinitis
Tendinitis, also known as rotator cuff tendinitis or impingement syndrome, is a gradually occurring condition rather than an abrupt one. Tendinitis looks similar to a rotator cuff tear, except it’s an irritation of the tendons instead of a rip. Tendinitis will occur where the tendon attaches to bone, which will have poor blood supply. This causes the injury to take time to heal and could possibly lead to the tear of the rotator cuff. Treatments and symptoms resemble those of a rotator cuff injury: risk increases with age, athletes and other professionals with consistent overhead motions as part of their job descriptions and is usually treated with physical therapy.
7. Rowing
Due to rowing’s repetitive nature, athletes are at risk for tearing their rotator cuffs. Since rowing is a demanding sport, relying heavily on back and shoulder use, there are many ways that rowers can injure themselves. Rowers exhibiting poor technique or not training enough before hitting the water can put themselves at risk. The opposite is true, as well: if the rower is overtraining, particularly participating in unsupervised resistance training or excessive running, the rower could be at risk. It’s important to look out for possible tears or injuries, so you can minimize your time off the water.
8. Wrestling
Talk about force and resistance, wrestlers use their shoulder muscles to take down their opponents. Various wrestling maneuvers have the potential to tear a rotator cuff just from the sheer force the wrestler needs to extend. Yes, wrestling can lead to a gradual rotator cuff tear, however, it is much more probable that the tear will be immediate. Although, there are many ways that wrestlers prepare themselves against such injuries, acknowledging their risk. For example, wrestlers may use dynamic stretches, static stretches, or utilize a jump rope to strengthen their muscle flexibility and prevent damage to their rotator cuffs.
9. Carpenters
Unlike athletes, carpenters and other professionals are probably not thinking about protecting their rotator cuffs from harm. Carpenters make and repair objects for a living, so they perform many repetitive tasks each day, just like athletes. For example, using the same piece of equipment each day, which requires the same back and forth movements, will take a toll on the shoulder. When they cut and shape wood, drywall, plastic, and other materials, they would extend their arms above their head repetitively until the job is done. Unlike athletes, these professionals don’t know to watch for these risks, so the carpenter may work through it, worsening the condition instead of getting looked at early.
10. Repetitive Lifting
Another mundane way to tear a rotator cuff is to lift something repetitively. There are many professions that require this of their employees. For example, stockers, warehouse professionals, manufacturers, construction workers, and even teachers have to repeatedly pick things up as a part of their job descriptions. People responsible for stocking shelves are to continually transport boxes of goods and then proceed to put them on shelves, which is an overhead motion. Not only are they picking things up constantly each day, but then they’re lifting those items over their heads, which increases their risk dramatically. Most professions are at a risk for tearing a rotator cuff.
