Functional Yoga Anatomy: Rotator Cuff Exercises

hi kathy madeo here back with another video this one all about my latest course called functional yoga anatomy under my online yoga school kathy madeo yoga this functional yoga anatomy course is taught by dr eden goldman who's a sports medicine doctor chiropractor and a yoga teacher and he's been a lifelong yoga practitioner he's actually born into a yoga family so he's got a great blend of easter knowledge and western knowledge this course is designed for yoga teachers yoga students movement specialists and really anyone who is looking to understand their body more and bring more health and wellness into their life this series has over 60 videos filled with lectures and applied exercises that you can integrate right into your home practice or if you're a teacher or movement specialist with your students and your clients i wanted to give you a sneak peek inside the course at what some of these exercises look like so let's go take a sneak peek inside [Music] [Music] as we go into training the rotator cuff muscles we'll start in the lunge position with one leg out in front and the other leg back and on the floor you can place a blanket or a towel underneath the knee if you need and we'll take a theraband here into one hand now if you don't have a partner that you're working with you can just tie the theraband on the bottom of a table the bottom of a couch even to a doorknob if it won't move and basically you just need something to hold the resistance we're going to also take a piece of paper and place it in her flank between the arm and the flank just to make sure that the elbow doesn't move what you want to be clear on is that the elbow stays in by the side and doesn't start to float out to the side so for this exercise what we'll do is we'll be on the side of the arm that we're working and we'll start at a 45 degree angle just a little bit out to the side creating the resistance from there we'll bring the hand in the direction of going toward the belly button and we'll do that a few times we'll do again anywhere from about 5 to 15 reps if you need more challenge you can always shorten up the range on the band and then the band gets more taut and gives you more resistance if you need less you can always make the band a little bit longer or stop pulling on it as strongly so after this rep we'll let that go we'll switch legs we'll switch arms with the band we'll move the piece of paper and we'll do the same thing here bringing the hand to the belly button and again doing about five or six reps you can do at home or on your own up to about 15 if that feels good to you and this is working those internal rotators the subscapularis and the cousin to the rotator cuff the teres major muscle when you're done with those you'll go ahead and switch legs going back to the first leg and we'll do external rotation so taking the hand we'll change the orientation of where we're pulling from and now we'll go from a position where the hand is directly in front of you so directly in front of you and then you'll bring it out to that 45 degree position it'll be a smaller range than you had in the internal rotation but we're working those external rotators here and i usually do them second so that the shoulder ends up in an open position rather than a rounded position at the end we're doing about five or six reps we've got one more rep here and then we'll switch legs we'll switch sides and again we'll go into the position and create the resistance and make sure you don't go past the 45. if you go past the 45 oftentimes your rib cage will pop forward and you'll lose the core activity so just be mindful about that as you do it and keep going with that external rotation movement when you get to the last one you'll do that rep let it go and come back to a kneeling position take a few breaths and release and relax another great way to work the rotator cuff specifically the teres minor and the infraspinatus is in a side lying position with a weight so you want to grab a weight maybe as low as two to three pounds or a water bottle or a 5 10 15 pound weight would usually be about the limit for this position unless you're a bodybuilder so bringing the elbow onto the flank of the body onto the side of the body holding on to the weight will start without keeping the hand all the way at the floor kind of like midway lifting off the floor and then we'll take it into external rotation bringing that weight up and then dropping it down again to that starting position which isn't directly on the floor the idea here is again not only are working the concentric strengthening of those rotator cuff muscles but we're working the internal rotators uh just slightly as the hand comes back we're also working the eccentric lengthening in a strength position for those muscles as they come back to that neutral position after you've done about 5 to 15 reps you can let the weight go take a little break before you switch over to the other side as you flip over to the other side you'll again then set yourself up with the knees bent lying down make a little pillow with your hand underneath grab the weight and go ahead and place the elbow right onto the side of the flank by the rib cage and we'll start with those external rotation exercises make sure again that the weight is not too heavy for you if it does you'll start to use momentum too much and not use the direct action of the muscle as much so again we're doing about five to 15 reps when you're done you'll just place the weight down onto the floor you can come onto your back and just give your knees a little hug and turn the chest another way to work the external rotators is more from the field of athletics and involves a squat like position not a full squat but a squat-like position as we train the external rotators so we're going to grab a thera-band and you will need a partner to do this exercise you'll hold on to both grips on the thera-band and first what we're going to do is just pattern the movement we're taking a a mini squat knees back butt out chest up and lining up the elbows in line with the shoulders as you can see right make sure that they're set up there and that you have a nice 90 degree angle at your elbows and that's the most important part is maintaining this what you don't want to happen is the elbows to dive down as you go into internal rotation or the hands to open up the elbow you want to keep that nice 90 degree angle with the elbows in line with the shoulders so we're not going to hold any resistance first we're going to start just by patterning external rotation and what that looks like again make sure that the elbows don't dip or open up they stay in that 90 degree positioning after about three to five times of patterning it then we'll add a little bit of resistance so we'll move with the elbows so that that way we don't overpower them using the muscles of the rotator cuff we'll do about three more reps and again you can do up to about 15 reps