Earlier this year I injured my shoulder by tearing one of the four muscles in my rotator cuff. Rotator cuff tears come in a large variety of shapes and sizes and can be triggered by a number of different events so I was fairly lucky in that my injury was only a partial tear not, thankfully, a full thickness tear.

I had a piece of furnitire badly and put a strain on my shoulder joint. I felt a sharp pain at the top of my shoulder and fortunately had the good sense to put it down. I gave my shoulder a rub and carried on but the next time I lifted I lifted properly. Everything seemed fine, that was until I woke up the next day.

When I woke up my shoulder hurt. Lifting my arm up in front of me, reaching for anything or even trying to tuck in the back of my shirt all resulted in a sharp pain at the top of my shoulder. Over the next three or four days things gradually became stiff up and the same movements became more and more uncomfortable. Not only was my shoulder giving me pain during the day but I was turning into an insomniac. When I lay on my bad shoulder the pain kept me awake. If I lay on my good shoulder, I had lie my arm carefully along my body to stop it dropping in front of or behind me as both those positions were painful Life was getting very difficult..

I resorted to sleeping on my back which did nothing for my marriage as I immediately started to snore like a trooper.

In the end, it turned out that I had torn my rotator cuff. I had managed to tear my Supraspinatus tendon which runs through a channel of bone just under my collarbone before attaching to the head of teh humerus (upper arm bone). As I had torn it it had become inflamed. Because it was inflamed it was getting snagged on the bone every time that I moved my arm in a particular way resulting in the muscle gradually fraying. Surgery was recommended. The aim was to remove a small piece of bone to give the damaged tendon more room to move so that it could heal properly. Being in the UK I had a pinful wait of three months before my surgery date.

I started researching shoulder injuries and their therapy and found out that the majority of rotator cuff injuries can be treated without resorting to surgery. Allow the muscle to heal with rest whilst treating the pain and inflammation with anti-inflammatory drugs and ice packs and then, once the pain has lessened start simple low weight exercises to build up and strengthen the rotator cuff muscles.

The most important element of this is the rest. If I had continued using my shoulder normally, I would have been damaging it further every time that I used that muscle. If I had managed to ignore the pain or even managed to work through the pain I could have eventually snapped the tendon completely. That would have definitely needed surgery!

In the end,by resting my arm amd avoiding any painful movement, by carefully treating the inflammation I gradually improved until I could do very basic easy exercises without suffering any pain. As the exercises strengthened my muscles I gradually regained the strength and movement in my shoulder and now ten weeks on I am pain free with full movement returned.

I'm lucky in that I have an office job. Just by changing my desk layout I could avoid using the damaged muscle. If you have a more physical job you may have to think a bit more about how to avoid using your bad shoulder, but it is vital that you do so as carrying on using it will simply make it worse and all the therapy in the world wont help if you manage to tear it completely. Rotator cuff exercise features in nearly all shoulder therapy programmes simply because the strength of the rotator cuff is fundamental to the health of your shoulders. Even if you have healthy shoulders it is worth spending a few minutes a day keeping these four muscles in good shape.