Understanding the rotator cuff is crucial to shoulder treatment and health, and it’s a more complex story than the one we’ve been taught in Western anatomy.
The hip has a rotator cuff as well, which isn’t defined as such. But it makes sense if we remember that before we evolved into two-legged beings, our hips and shoulders were much more similar.
If anatomists had begun with living movement rather than by dissecting a face-up dead body, the rotator cuff might well have been named the stability cuff instead.
The big muscles that gym-goers know the names of lever the bone; the rotator cuff fibers are distributed around the shoulder blade and humorous in a way that centers the joint no matter where your arm is levered in space.
Without these muscles, nothing you do with those fabulous ‘gym muscles’ will result in coordinated movement.
That’s what core strength really is: being able to move one part without throwing the rest of the body off. Your ‘rotator cuffs’ are core strength muscle groups.
The most obvious gliding movements in a ball-and-socket joint are rotational since the bone spins in place. All the rotator muscles working together cancel out the rotational activity, drawing the head of the bone into the socket, snugly and safely, cartilage to cartilage.
Working all those muscles activates them because there is more contractile potential when a muscle isn’t already contracted. Mobilizing the joint is also important if the muscles are to do their jobs ably.
I can teach you to mobilize the hip and shoulder. Contact me: Click here
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