Hi guys, my name’s Jules from Reach Physiotherapy in Brighton.
Today I’m going to talk about the rotator cuff muscle group, situated in and around the shoulder.
A lot of people come to us with shoulder problems, and a lot of the time the rotator cuff is implicated in some of those problems.
A lot of people have heard of the rotator cuff, but they don’t always know exactly what it does, so I’m just going to explain a little bit about that, and why it’s important.
The rotator cuff, as I said, is a muscle group within the shoulder joint. There are four muscles, and they all arise from the shoulder blade. We’ve got muscles that come from the back side of the shoulder blade, the top and the underside of the shoulder blade as well, and they all go up in a certain direction and they literally cuff with their tendons at the top of the ball and socket joint of the shoulder.
Because the shoulder has a really big range of motion, the compromise for that range of motion is stability. That’s where the rotator cuff comes in. To try to keep the ball nice and congruent within the ball and socket joint, these muscles come up and they cuff the top of that ball, and, as we are doing big movements with our arms, the rotator cuff helps to keep stability; it helps to keep that ball within the socket essentially.
So you can imagine, then, that if you have a problem with one or more of those muscles of the rotator cuff group, we’re possibly going to have issues with the stability and congruence within the shoulder joint.
If you’re experiencing any issues with your shoulder, let’s have a chat about how we can help.
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